Women in Journalism and Other Intriguing Realms

Women in Journalism 2020

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Thu, 14 May 2020 21:26:00 +0000

Make journalism support and respect women

“Should we be cautious in describing our experience, careful not to alienate the men in the room or offend the funders who have so generously invested in our organizations? Or should we dispense with politeness and say in public what we say to each other in private?”

Christa Scharfenberg is CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting.

This fall, Monika Bauerlein from Mother Jones and I spoke at a gathering of media funders about being women CEOs. A couple of days beforehand, we talked strategy: Should we be cautious in describing our experience, careful not to alienate the men in the room or offend the funders who have so generously invested in our organizations? Or should we dispense with politeness and say in public what we say to each other in private?

We opted for honesty. I’ve never had so many people reach out after a talk to thank me and share their own stories.

That experience, along with a mini-sea change in women taking over leadership of nonprofit news organizations — which gives us all a community of women to turn to for advice, guidance, and commiseration — has gotten me thinking about the change that’s possible as women step in to shape the future of journalism.

There’s some truth to the stereotype that women often bring a more collaborative approach to leadership. (Monika and I have both been accused of being too collaborative, often by men who equate leadership with decisiveness above all else. I’ve decided to respond by being totally decisive about my commitment to being collaborative.) So in that spirit, I turned to the women in my newsroom to ask how journalism can get better for women in 2020.

Their responses are a blueprint for us all:

Hire more women as full-time journalists rather than freelancers.

Stop laying off skilled senior women. Women of color. White women. The most experienced women would now be leaders had they not been shown the door by top national and regional news organizations.

Make long-term investments in women who are local reporters in rural areas. In the South. In seasonal farm country. Marginalized women from these regions have unique insights ahead of the election and hold the cultural competency to root out compelling stories that the rest of the country remains ignorant about.

Put an end to women playing the “office mom” role of throwing all the parties, doing other people’s disgusting dishes, and/or scolding other people about not doing their own disgusting dishes.

Assign more women to cover “hard news” — politics, economics, and international.
Stop assuming that all women are the same. This industry is experienced differently by women of color. And our differences aren’t only racial: disabled, trans, undocumented, and other marginalized women are seldom the beneficiaries of inclusion initiatives.
Take women seriously. Just because we are women doesn’t mean we aren’t prepared, educated, and ready to ask tough questions.

Stop being afraid of crying at work, whether the tears come from fury or sorrow.
Take up the issues of gender and racial parity together, as one ambition.
Stop turning to women to pull everything together in the end — to pick up the pieces when someone else has failed to plan.

Men need to start to really understand what it’s like for women to be paid less, to face sexism, to not be taken seriously. And then they need to decide to do something about it.
Stop sexual harassment. Start paying women more. Mentor and support women. Advocate for women to be in leadership positions.

Demographics are on our side: Women far outnumber men in journalism schools. We are the future of this profession. Let 2020 be the year we stop making excuses and start making journalism a place where women — all women — are respected, treated fairly, and supported. Our newsrooms will be better places to work, and our journalism will better represent the public we are here to serve.

Gerda Taro War Photographer

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 00:34:00 +0000

What to Know About Gerda Taro, the War Photographer

By JAMIE DUCHARME

August 1, 2018

Google is paying tribute to pioneering photojournalist Gerda Taro with its Google Doodle on Wednesday.

The Doodle comes on what would have been Taro’s 108th birthday — but the trail-blazing war photographer lost her life at just 26 years old, while covering the Spanish Civil War in 1937. Nonetheless, Taro managed to accomplish quite a bit in her short career.

Taro — born Gerda Pohorylle in Stuttgart, Germany — left Germany for Paris in 1933, after Adolf Hitler become chancellor. In Paris, Taro met and fell in love with photographer Robert Capa, who taught her the basics of the craft, according to the International Center of Photography (ICP). They began covering the Spanish Civil War as a team starting in 1936, the BBC reports, capturing images of troops, conflict and Spanish refugees and sending them back to French newspapers.

Eventually, Taro began venturing out alone on photographic missions — including the one in 1937 that led to her death, after she was inadvertently crushed a Loyalist tank, according to ICP.

A decade ago, an exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, featuring many never-before-seen images taken by Taro and Capa, gave her work new life. Although Taro’s work has been overshadowed by Capa’s, and her legacy remains largely unknown, she is considered one of the world’s first frontline female war photographers, and the first to die in action.

The World's First Investigative Journalist - A Beautiful Woman Called Nellie Bly

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Tue, 26 Jun 2018 20:41:00 +0000

Nellie Bly's 72-Day Trip Around the World

BY ROMA PANGANIBAN | SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

In 1873, French author Jules Verne published Around the World in 80 Days, the fictional account of a man named Phileas Fogg who took advantage of new nineteenth-century technologies to circumnavigate the globe. It wasn’t sci-fi by any means, since those means of traveling—steam ships, omnibuses, and railroads—did exist at the time, but it took one daring woman to make the made-up journey a reality.

The Pitch

Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, under her journalist pseudonym Nellie Bly, had already earned a reputation as the world’s first investigative reporter and a fearless individual. Her previous escapades, including uncovering the plight of female factory workers and checking herself into a mental institution for ten days, had been sensational adventures that introduced a new frontier of hands-on journalism, but her popularity was waning as more reporters began to parrot her style. After reading Verne’s novel, Bly approached her editor at the New York World with an outrageous pitch: If he would allow it, she would make the journey and document her experience for the paper.

John A. Cockerill, managing editor of the World, was intrigued by Bly’s proposal; the business manager, however, was not so easily convinced. A journey of the scale Bly proposed was unprecedented by man or woman, and although Bly insisted that she could undertake it without a chaperone, the male senior staff at the paper were unconvinced of the woman’s ability to succeed, preferring to send a man instead. Bly had her answer at the ready: “Very well. Start the man and I’ll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him.” The editors conceded.

Bly planned ahead and packed light—extremely light. Rather than the “dozen trunks” her editors had derisively predicted she would need to carry with her, Bly took along just a single piece of luggage, sixteen inches wide and seven inches high. In a bag easily small enough to comply with today’s airline carry-on regulations, she packed a few changes of underwear, toiletries, writing implements, a dressing gown, a tennis blazer, a flask, a cup, two caps, three veils, a pair of slippers, needles and thread, and some handkerchiefs. She packed not a single spare dress, wearing only the garment she commissioned from a dressmaker made of “a plain blue broadcloth and a quiet plaid camel’s-hair.” In her only concession to vanity, Bly did carry a single jar of cold cream. She refused to take a revolver, assured of “the world's greeting me as I greeted it.”

Not-So-Smooth Sailing

The World, now fully backing Bly both financially and with a front-page story on the day of her departure, saw her off from Hoboken Pier in New Jersey. From the start, Bly was exact with her timing, marking her departure on the Augusta Victoria at 30 seconds after 9:40 p.m. on November 14, 1889. Ambitiously, she aimed not merely to match Phileas Fogg’s ‘round-the-world record, but to beat it, hoping to be on the road for no more than 75 days and four hours.

Bly’s journey got off to a rough start, as she—a first-time traveler—found herself violently seasick on the transatlantic crossing to London. The sight of food made her nauseated, and her fellow passengers were rather judgmental of the queasy woman proposing to travel around the entire world. In attempting to sleep off her nausea, Bly awoke 22 hours later to a knock on her cabin door; the Captain feared she had died. The long sleep seemed to do the trick, however, and Bly managed the rest of the journey in good health and with good appetite, making fast friends with her shipmates.

Upon arriving at Southampton, Bly was faced with a critical decision. Jules Verne himself had issued an invitation to the reporter to visit him at his home in Amiens, France, but she only had one chance to make the trip without missing her connection in London. She went without sleep for two nights to do so, and was greeted at the station by the author and his wife “with the cordiality of a cherished friend.” Though forced to employ the services of a translator, the two writers had a pleasant visit, during which Bly learned that Verne’s story had been inspired by his reading a newspaper article—a fitting detail to share with a journalist.

A Rival Traveler

Hoping to ride the wave of Bly’s publicity, Cosmopolitan magazine sent a rival reporter to race her, headed in the opposite direction. Elizabeth Bisland left New York the same day as Bly, with only six hours’ notice to prepare. While the public took interest in this second traveler, Bly herself was unaware of Bisland’s competition until her arrival in Hong Kong on Christmas Day, when she was called into the office of the Oriental and Occidental Steamship Company prior to her departure for Japan. When asked if she was the Nellie Bly having “a race around the world,” she naïvely responded that yes, she was running “a race with Time,” only to be told, “I don’t think that’s her name.” Bisland had passed through Hong Kong three days prior, with a blank check from Cosmopolitan to offer ships bribes in any amount to accommodate her schedule. Bly’s response was assured:

I am not racing with anyone. I would not race. If someone else wants to do the trip in less time, that is their concern. If they take it upon themselves to race against me, it is their lookout that they succeed. I am not racing. I promised to do the trip in seventy-five days, and I will do it; although had I been permitted to make the trip when I first proposed it over a year ago, I should then have done it in sixty days.

Making New Friends

As a single woman traveling alone, Bly attracted considerable male attention, despite her best efforts to deflect it. On the ship from Italy to Egypt, a rumor spread that she was “an eccentric American heiress, traveling about with a hair brush and a bank book,” and she was made an offer of marriage by a man with eyes on her (falsely reported) wealth. On another occasion, she described being called upon by a ship captain whose “smooth, youthful face” and “tall, shapely, slender body” belied her expectation of a grizzled old seaman. Though Jules Verne had winkingly predicted that Bly might find herself a companion along the way, as Phileas Fogg did, she was determined that hers was a voyage to be made alone.

Bly’s journey was populated by a vibrant cast of characters, whose differences both great and small she delighted in reporting. On her first oceanic voyage, she took note of an American girl whom she claimed knew more about politics, art, literature, and music than any man on board, and she chronicled the “peculiarities” of a man who took his pulse after every meal, another who counted every step he took each day, and a woman who had not once disrobed since departing from New York, determined that if the ship were to sink, she should be fully dressed. She made the acquaintance of other female travelers, including a pair of Scottish women traveling around the world as well, but over the course of two years—a much more leisurely pace.

While some of Bly’s observations about other races and ethnicities would now be seen as explicitly offensive, she made conscious efforts to respect the cultures she encountered. She made missteps along the way, as when she inadvertently insulted the Italians by offering a coin to a beggar child, but spent most of her time documenting Japanese fashion, Italian cuisine, and Egyptian alligator-hunting. She was treated to a ride by the finest team of ponies in Hong Kong, but was not too much of a snob to see the appeal of a humble burro named Gladstone “with two beautiful black eyes” at Port Said.

Bly dispatched what brief notes she could to The World by cable, though she was surprised in Brindisi when the Italian-speaking cable operator asked her what country New York was in. Her more detailed, handwritten reports, however, traveled by ship, as slowly as she did. Her editors, forced to string out the story to maintain the public’s interest, began printing reaction pieces from foreign papers and geography lessons on all the countries Bly was visiting. After an 8000-mile journey across the Pacific and two weeks of silence from the woman of the moment, it was a relief to everyone when Bly arrived safely in San Francisco, back on American soil at last.

Home Sweet Home

The World, in a hurry to get their world traveler home again, chartered a one-car train to get her across the country with haste. She was greeted as a conquering heroine along the way, met at all stops by cheering crowds and well-wishers in their Sunday best. A Kansas man invited her to come to the Midwest that they might elect her governor; the mayor of Dodge City himself greeted her on behalf of his citizens; the Chicago Press Club held a breakfast in her honor; and the whole nation reverberated with cries of “Hurrah for Nellie Bly!”

Nellie Bly arrived in Jersey City at 3:51 p.m. on January 25, 1890, only 72 days, six hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds after she had left it. She beat her own itinerary by three days, and Verne’s story by eight. Elizabeth Bisland did not arrive for four and a half days afterward. Bly’s trip was an unqualified success, but on arriving, she professed: “I took off my cap and wanted to yell with the crowd, not because I had gone around the world in seventy-two days, but because I was home again.”

For more insight into Nellie Bly’s around-the-world adventure, her book, Around the World in Seventy-Two Days, is available in the public domain.

Can Hillary Still Win the Election?

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 06:48:00 +0000

Hillary Clinton Could Still Win the 2016 Presidential Election

Prominent computer scientists, election lawyers cite “persuasive evidence” of hacking to support Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania recounts.

By Beth Dalbey (Patch Staff) - November 23, 2016

Claiming to have uncovered “persuasive evidence” that suggests election results were hacked in three big battleground states that swung the 2016 presidential election to Donald J. Trump, a prominent group of election attorneys and computer scientists are pressing Hillary Clinton to ask for a recount in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

If they’re right, more history would be made in an already history-making election. The former secretary of state would become the nation’s first woman president, and Trump wouldn’t make history as the first person in modern times to win the presidency without having served in elected or public office, or in the military. He would also become the first candidate to win the first tally of electoral votes only to have the victory reversed in a recount.

New York Magazine reported Tuesday that the group, which includes J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, and voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz, hasn’t spoken publicly about what it found.

The group is said to be lobbying Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and general counselor Marc Elias to make the case for a recount in the three swing states, which together control 46 electoral votes. If the Clinton campaign decides the gambit is worth it, they don't have much time — the former secretary of state would have file for a recount by Friday in Wisconsin, Monday in Pennsylvania and Wednesday, Nov. 30, in Michigan.

According to the New York Magazine source, the computer scientists and attorneys cited as evidence supporting a recount: In Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that used electronic-voting machines when compared with those that used optical scanners and paper ballots. According to their analysis, Clinton could have been shorted about 30,000 votes, enough to turn the state blue.

Currently, Clinton is about 1.7 million votes ahead of Trump in the popular vote, but trails Trump, 232 to 306, in all-important electoral votes. If Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), Michigan (16 electoral votes) and Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) flipped in a recount, Clinton would win in the electoral count, 278-260.

Michigan’s votes were still outstanding until Tuesday, when counties submitted their final results. Trump was still the winner, but by a less than 1 percent margin of 9,528 votes. According to the Cook Political Report, a Washington-based newsletter, Trump won by slightly more than 1 percent in Wisconsin (27,190 vote difference) and Pennsylvania (68,965 vote difference).

Russian Hacking Allegations

In a normal year, the differences might not merit an independent review, but this has been far from a normal election cycle. The Obama White House has accused the Russian government of deploying its hackers to meddle with and manipulate the outcome of the U.S. election with ongoing cyberattacks that roiled the Democratic National Committee and cast suspicion on the integrity of the electoral process.

The report from the analysts comes on the heels of South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s call on Congress to investigate whether allegations of a Russian cyberattack are true.

“We cannot sit on the sidelines as a party and let allegations against a foreign government interfering in our election process go unanswered because it may have been beneficial to our cause,” Graham said.

“Faithless Electors”

There’s one other path to the White House for Clinton — “faithless electors,” who could rebel against Trump in record numbers when the Electoral College meets on Dec. 19, Politico reported. At least half a dozen electors are trying to convince 37 Republican electors to reject Trump — but even in the unlikely event that happened, the decision on the presidency would go to the Republican-led House of Representatives, which would almost certainly rubber-stamp Trump’s election.

The faithless electors have never decided a presidency, though it is fairly common to have one or two, including in 1948, 1956, 1960, 1968, 1972, 19676 and 1988. A blank ballot was cast in the hotly contested election of 2000, the only other time in modern history that the winner of the popular vote (Al Gore) didn't win the electoral vote. The election that year went to former President George W. Bush.

Neither scenario is likely, though. The evidence for a recount is circumstantial, and there’s nothing that suggests the results were hacked. And there are plenty of skeptics.

Data analysts Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight and Nate Cohn of The New York Times immediately rejected the notion the results had been hacked. And election officials spent weeks reassuring voters how difficult it is to manipulate election results in response to Trump's blistering “rigged election” claims — which, incidentally, disappeared almost entirely when pre-election polls swung in his favor.

What’s Not at Issue is Halderman’s Credibility

But no one seems to be doubting Hadlerman's credibility. He's widely respected, and has famously demonstrated flaws in voting technologies before, including both domestically in Washington, DC, and abroad in Estoniaand Australia, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting’s Reveal News.

It took Halderman and a team of his students less than 24 hours to hack into the pilot internet voting system in the nation’s capital and alter votes and spy on voters.

“Halderman is very credible, and if he says there are anomalies that deserve investigation, they should be investigated,” Rick Hasen, a professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine, wrote on his Election Law Blog.

Ballot hacking is a complicated issue, Halderman told the Center for Investigative Reporting.

“This is more complicated than attacking an online voting system that is directly connected to the internet,” he said. “But it’s within the capabilities of nation-state attackers, and it would not require a large conspiracy.”

Voting machines don't even need to be hooked up to the internet to be hacked, Halderman explained.
“...Their software can potentially be attacked through a stuxnet-style attack that spreads via the memory cards that are used to load the ballot design,” he said.

Although it’s unclear whether Clinton will ask for a recall, some of her allies are suggesting it on social media. Heba Abedin, sister to top Clinton adviser Huma Abedin, encouraged her Facebook followers to lobby the Department of Justice to take a second look at the Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania results.

“A shift of just 55,000 Trump votes to Hillary in PA, MI & WI is all that is Needed to Win,” she wrote.

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr Commons

Fast Food Workers Sexual Harassment

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 22:48:00 +0000

40 Percent of Female Fast Food Workers Experience Sexual Harassment on the Job

By Eater | Dana Hatic

A new report on women working in the fast food industry reveals that 40 percent experience sexual harassment at work, and that some may feel trapped in their jobs as a result, according to surveys conducted by Hart Research Associates.

The research firm polled 1,217 women aged 16 or older who were working in non-managerial positions in fast-food restaurants between July 22 and 27, 2016. The interviews indicated that 40 percent of the women experienced unwanted sexual behavior at work, with 28 percent reporting multiple incidents of harassment, including sexual jokes or teasing, touching, kissing, or comments about sexual orientation.

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According to the study, this type of harassment in the workplace negatively impacted the women surveyed, with reports of increased stress, anxiety, depression, and loss of appetite, along with difficulty sleeping. Of the women polled, some adjusted their schedules after experience unwanted sexual behavior, while others cut back on hours or quit, and 42 percent of women who experienced harassment reported feeling the need to accept it rather than lose their jobs.

Hart Research Associates concluded that one in eight women working in fast food experience sexual harassment in the workplace, but feel trapped in the situation and incapable of leaving.

In 2014, when Restaurant Opportunities Center United deemed sexual harassment in the restaurant industry an “endemic,” they released a study that said 90 percent of restaurant employees — men and women — reported having experienced sexual harassment on the job. However, the survey respondents were employees at casual full-service chains like Applebee’s and Denny’s rather than fast food restaurants like McDonald’s or Taco Bell. In explaining the study ROC’s National Research Director Teo Reyes said, “a lot of restaurants have harassment policies but they just don't get applied or enforced.”

While the Hart Research report did not identify the individual women’s workplaces, these issues have recently surfaced around the country, and some incidents have reached the courts. Just this week, McDonald’s came under fire for allegedly ignoring claims of sexual harassment. Last month, a teenaged worker who sued Chipotle over sexual harassment by her supervisor was awarded $7.65 million, and NYC’s landmark Le Cirque currently faces a lawsuit from former employees who claim to have experienced sexual harassment on the job.

• Teen Chipotle Worker Wins $7.65M in Sexual Harassment Suit [E]

• Le Cirque Sued by Former Employees for Sexual Harassment [ENY]

• McDonald’s Accused of Ignoring Harassment Claims [E]

Sexual Abuse Gymnastics

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Thu, 04 Aug 2016 17:44:00 +0000

USA Gymnastics routinely ignored warnings of sexual abuse by coaches, report alleges

The Washington Post | Matt Bonesteel

From Gymnastics - Quantum Theory and the Periodic Table

A stunning, detailed investigation published Thursday by the Indianapolis Star found that USA Gymnastics, the sport’s governing body in this country, did little to investigate numerous claims of sexual abuse levied against gymnastics coaches across the country, routinely dismissing the allegations as hearsay “unless they came directly from a victim or victim’s parent” because of fears that the allegations would damage the reputations of the coaches in question.

This approach runs counter to best practices when dealing with reports of sexual abuse against minors and is possibly illegal, as every state in the country has a law requiring people to report suspected sexual abuse of a minor to authorities. But instead of investigating or reporting the allegations, USA Gymnastics routinely filed them away.

“USA Gymnastics would not disclose the total number of sexual misconduct allegations it receives each year. But records show the organization compiled complaint dossiers on more than 50 coaches and filed them in a drawer in its executive office in Indianapolis,” the Star’s Marisa Kwiatkowski, Mark Alesia and Tim Evans write, adding that their contents remain hidden under judicial order as a lawsuit filed by a woman whose daughter was abused by a USA Gymnastics coach winds its way through the courts.

The Star’s reporters found four instances in which USA Gymnastics did not report coaches to the authorities after receiving warnings about suspected sexual abuse. “Those coaches went on, according to police and court records, to abuse at least 14 underage gymnasts after the warnings,” the Star writes.

USA Gymnastics issued a statement after the story’s publication on Thursday morning, alleging that “the Star left out significant facts that would have painted a more accurate picture of our efforts” but saying that the organization cannot provide specifics because of the pending lawsuit in Georgia.

“Addressing issues of sexual misconduct has been important to USA Gymnastics for many years, and the organization is committed to promoting a safe environment for its athletes,” the second statement read. “We find it appalling that anyone would exploit a young athlete or child in this manner, and recognize the effect this behavior can have on a person’s life. USA Gymnastics has been proactive in helping to educate the gymnastics community over the years, and will continue to take every punitive action available within our jurisdiction, and cooperate fully with law enforcement.”

The most damning incident involves a coach named William “Bill” McCabe. According to the Star, USA Gymnastics received at least four complaints about him starting in 1998, when one gym owner warned the organization in a letter that McCabe “should be locked in a cage before someone is raped.” One of the girls whom McCabe abused was the daughter of a woman named Lisa Ganser, who filed the lawsuit against USA Gymnastics:

USA Gymnastics never reported the allegations to police and, according to federal authorities, he began molesting an underage girl in 1999. McCabe continued to coach children for nearly seven more years, until Lisa Ganser went to the FBI with concerns about emails to her then-11-year-old daughter. McCabe was charged with molesting gymnasts, secretly videotaping girls changing clothes and posting their naked pictures on the internet. He pleaded guilty in 2006 in Savannah, Georgia, to federal charges of sexual exploitation of children and making false statements. He is serving a 30-year sentence.

According to the Star, McCabe was fired by a gym in Florida in 1996 after he was accused of preying on young girls. When the Florida gym’s owner, Dan Dickey, discovered that McCabe had been hired by a gym elsewhere in the state two years later, he sent USA Gymnastics the letter warning officials about him.

“Dickey’s letter, received by USA Gymnastics on Oct. 24, 1998 — and included in records in the Georgia lawsuit — described how he fired McCabe after a staff member had told him that McCabe bragged about having a 15-year-old girl in her underwear and said he thought he would be able to “f— her very soon,” the Star writes.

USA Gymnastics responded with a letter saying that it was “awaiting an official letter of complaint from a parent and athlete.”

The owner of the second Florida gym also sent USA Gymnastics a letter after McCabe resigned following sexual-harassment allegations in 1998, detailing reports of other gyms that had fired him and saying that parents were “appalled” that USA Gymnastics had not revoked his credentials. McCabe continued to coach, however, and USA Gymnastics renewed his membership in December 1999.

Robert Colarossi, the organization’s president at the time, admitted in a court deposition last year that USA Gymnastics dismissed the allegations against McCabe as hearsay.

McCabe continued coaching until 2006, eventually co-owning a gym in Rincon, Ga. Ganser, the woman who has filed the lawsuit against USA Gymnastics, enrolled her daughter at the gym in 2002. Four years later, Ganser discovered disturbing emails on her 11-year-old daughter’s computer that purportedly were written by Carly Patterson, a U.S. gold medalist at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

“The exchanges started with casual gymnastics talk but escalated to sexual requests. Ganser’s daughter also received pictures of naked female body parts,” the Star writes.

Authorities say the emails were sent by McCabe, who was pretending to be Patterson. The FBI, alerted by Ganser, also discovered that McCabe had secretly recorded videos of young gymnasts as they changed clothes and posted the videos online. Prosecutors in McCabe’s trial also said he had molested girls who were as young as fifth- or sixth-graders.

When asked by attorneys in the Ganser lawsuit why USA Gymnastics refused to investigate the claims, Steve Penny, the organization’s current president, said it was over “concern about potential danger to a coach’s reputation if an allegation proved to be false,” a practice that could deter people from reporting abuse in the future, according to experts contacted by the Star.

“And one of the most important reasons that you substantiate a claim is because the potential for, if you will allow the expression, a witch hunt, becomes very real,” Penny said in court papers uncovered by the Star. “And so it’s possible that someone may make a claim like this because they don’t like someone or because they heard a rumor or because they received information through other third parties.

“You have to take that very seriously,” Penny continued, “because the coach is as much a member as the athlete.”

Penny refused to be interviewed for the Star’s story, with USA Gymnastics issuing a statement touting its “long and proactive history of developing policy to protect its athletes” and pledging to “remain diligent in evaluating new and best practices which should be implemented.”

Shelley Haymaker, an Indiana attorney who represents victims in child-welfare cases, told the Star that USA Gymnastics’ approach “sickens” her.

“USAG may not have been the hand that ultimately abused these innocent children,” Haymaker said, “but it was definitely the arm.”

More on the Olympics:

A (pommel) horse is more than just a horse, of course, when there’s gold at stake

Brazil’s Olympic women’s soccer team played a game, and it sounded like fun

Hillary Clinton Emails

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Wed, 25 May 2016 22:57:00 +0000

Here are the most critical parts of the State Department inspector general report on Clinton’s email use

The Washington Post | Carol Morello, Jia Lynn Yang

© AP Photo/Kevin Lamarque, Pool, File In this Oct. 18, 2011, file photo, then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton checks her Blackberry from a desk inside a C-17 military plane upon her departure from Malta.

The State Department’s independent watchdog released an 83-page report Wednesday to lawmakers concluding that Hillary Clinton’s email practices did not comply with department policies.

Below are some of the most revealing parts of the findings:

1. The report concludes that Clinton’s use of a personal email account was “not an appropriate method.” This knocks down a key argument made in Clinton’s defense — that because she had emailed State Department officials on their government accounts, records of her communications were preserved.

2. In June 2011, there were two hacking attempts on the Clinton email system in one day. An adviser to President Bill Clinton tried to shut down the server each time.

3. There were warnings issued to senior State Department officials that hackers were targeting personal email accounts. Below, an excerpt from a March 11, 2011, memo written by the assistant secretary of diplomatic security.

4. The audit also covered Clinton’s aides, some of whom did not cooperate when asked to respond to a questionnaire about email use. Some of the aides used their personal email accounts extensively for official business.

5. The package of emails turned over by Clinton was “incomplete.”

6. IT security officials were concerned about Clinton’s use of personal email and held meetings to discuss the need to preserve records and security. One staff member said the security director said the email system had been approved by state’s legal staff. The IG did not find evidence that the department’s legal adviser had reviewed or approved Clinton’s email system.

Another staff member who raised issues was told that their mission was “to support the Secretary, and instructed the staff never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.”

7. The report also criticizes Colin Powell’s handling of official emails during his tenure as secretary of state, saying it was also “not an appropriate method” for preserving emails that are part of the federal record. When asked to defend her email system, Clinton has said that her predecessors also used personal accounts.

But the report also notes that by the time Clinton became secretary of state, the guidance on email use was much more detailed, suggesting that pointing to Powell is not an entirely fair comparison.

Tom Hamburger, Rosalind Helderman and Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.

Cherokee Nation Violence Against Women Act

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 21:52:00 +0000

Osiyo!

Monday marked the third anniversary of the signing of the Violence Against Women Act, with the Cherokee Nation celebrating with a proclamation ceremony in the W.W. Keeler Tribal Complex in Tahlequah. Currently, eight tribes now have criminal jurisdiction to prosecute non-Indians in tribal court for acts of domestic violence, dating violence and violations of protection orders. The Cherokee Nation expects to also have its laws VAWA compliant to prosecute non-Indians in tribal court by the end of the year.

The Cherokee Nation dedicated the newly constructed $1.7 million Wickliffe Creek Bridge last week with Mayes County dignitaries. The tribe recently completed the bridge project, located about three miles east of Salina on Kenwood Road, using funds from the Tribal Transportation Program budget. The former bridge was deemed unsafe for travel, because of a sufficiency rating of 18.5 percent. The integrity of a bridge is measured on a scale of 0 to 100.

Cherokee Nation citizen Mary Smith was named this month to lead the federal Indian Health Service. Smith, who formerly worked as an IHS deputy director, was appointed to the principal deputy role by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell. Smith, a Chicago native with family ties in Westville, Okla., will make top decisions for IHS, the federal agency that funds and provides American Indians’ health care.

For more information on Cherokee Nation events and news, click on the links below.

Wado.

Cherokee Nation celebrates 3rd anniversary of VAWA – 03/07/2016

Monday marked the third anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act, with the Cherokee Nation celebrating with a proclamation ceremony in the W.W. Keeler Tribal Complex in Tahlequah.

Cherokee Nation citizen selected to lead Indian Health Service – 03/04/2016

Cherokee Nation citizen Mary Smith was named this week to lead the federal Indian Health Service.

Cherokee Nation, Mayes County officials dedicate new Wickliffe Creek Bridge – 03/02/2016

The Cherokee Nation dedicated the newly constructed $1.7 million Wickliffe Creek Bridge with other dignitaries in Mayes County Tuesday.

Cherokee Nation Calendar of Events for March – 03/01/2016

Cherokee language classes kick off in the month of March, along with a culinary arts training program for Cherokee Nation citizens and other activities.

Cherokee Nation, IHS sign agreement for largest tribal health center ever built – 02/25/2016

The Cherokee Nation signed an agreement with Indian Health Service Wednesday to secure the largest joint venture funding project ever among tribes. The agreement allows for IHS to fund the hospital at an estimated $80 million or more per year. The funding would last a minimum of 20 years, or potentially for the life of the hospital.

Cherokee Nation honors veterans in February – 02/23/2016

The Cherokee Nation honored three Vietnam War veterans with the Medal of Patriotism during the February Tribal Council meeting. A fourth veteran, who broke his hip, was also honored in his hospital room with the medal earlier this month.

Cherokee Nation merging housing programs – 02/19/2016

The Cherokee Nation announced Friday that, because of the high demand for citizens’ housing needs, it is merging its department that repairs homes to be under the Housing Authority of the Cherokee Nation, which builds homes and offers rental assistance programs.

Principal Chief
Bill John Baker

Cherokee Nation
P.O. Box 948
Tahlequah, OK 74464
918-453-5000
www.cherokee.org

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Masculinism what is it? Journalism, what is that? Feminism Journalism Masculinism

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 21:36:00 +0000

He's got a masculine intuition there might be something about Violence. It brings out the best in you sometimes. She's got a feminine intuition that something can be done about the Violence - if we gang up while behaving.

Women are Underrepresented in the Entertainment Industry

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 08:30:00 +0000

From C-Suite to Characters on Screen: How inclusive is the entertainment industry?

FEB. 22, 2016

Public Affairs Staff

Updated Feb. 22, 2016

USC Annenberg | School for Communication and Journalism

Ahead of entertainment’s most exclusive and glamorous night of the year, a new study demonstrates just how exclusive film and television can be when it comes to women, people of color and the LGBT community. The results reveal that the prequel to #OscarsSoWhite is #HollywoodSoWhite.

The Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity (CARD) is the first of its kind — an exhaustive analysis and ranking of film, television and digital streaming services that catalogues speaking characters, people behind the camera, CEOs and executives.

Authored by professor Stacy L. Smith and released by the Media, Diversity & Social Change (MDSC) Initiative at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the analysis found that only 28.3% of all speaking characters across 414 films, television and digital episodes in 2014-15 were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. This is 9.6% below the U.S. population norm of 37.9%. One-third (33.5%) of speaking characters were female. Behind the camera, a mere 15.2% of all directors and 28.9% of writers across film and every episode of television and digital series were female. Less than one-quarter (22.6%) of series creators were women across broadcast, cable and streaming content.

“This is no mere diversity problem. This is an inclusion crisis,” said Smith, Founding Director of the MDSC Initiative. “Over half of the content we examined features no Asian or Asian-American characters, and over 20% featured no African-American characters. It is clear that the ecosystem of entertainment is exclusionary.”

The report examined 109 films released by major studios and their art-house divisions in 2014. Additionally, 305 television and digital series across 31 networks and streaming services were analyzed. Smith and her team evaluated over 11,000 speaking characters for gender, racial and ethnic representation, and LGBT status. Additionally, in excess of 10,000 directors, writers, and show creators, along with more than 1,500 executives at the different media companies studied were evaluated based on gender.

“This is a landmark study,” Smith said. “No one has looked from CEO to every speaking character across film, television, and digital content. The results speak to the landscape of media and the erasure of different groups on screen and behind the camera.”

Ten companies responsible for media content were graded based on their on screen and behind the camera representation of women and people of color.

None of the six film distributors examined received a passing grade on the Inclusion Index. Of the 30 tests conducted, 24 or 80% yielded a Not Inclusive ranking. On a standard academic scale where 100% equals a perfect score, no film distributor earned a final inclusion grade above 25% across all tests.

The Inclusion Index for television and digital content revealed places for improvement and a few bright spots. Of the 50 tests conducted, seven Fully Inclusive and nine Largely Inclusive scores were awarded across the 10 companies evaluated on TV/digital content. The Walt Disney Company and The CW Network were the strongest performers in television, while for streaming content, Hulu and Amazon tied.

The report also assessed the executive ranks of the 10 companies. Roughly one-fifth of all chief executives, corporate boards, and executive management teams were comprised of women. Near gender parity was reached in television at the Executive Vice President level. Across film, television, and digital divisions, women were 46.7% of all Senior Vice President-level positions.

“A finding from our other studies regarding women in film is true of executive ranks as well. When power or influence increases, the percentage of females decreases,” said Katherine Pieper, USC Annenberg research scientist and one of the study’s authors.

The authors provide concrete solutions for the big challenges of increasing diversity on screen and behind the camera. “Organizations can take steps to solve inequality,” Marc Choueiti, one of the study authors, stated. “Our hope is that companies begin to implement these solutions and that the numbers will improve.”

The Inclusion Index rates organizations on five indicators regarding their media content and behind-the-scenes hiring practices. Those metrics are the percentage of females and underrepresented racial/ethnic groups on screen and the percentage of women working as directors and writers. Film companies were also scored on their representation of LGBT characters, while television and digital companies were graded on the percentage of female series creators working behind the camera.

On Feb. 22, USC Annenberg will host an event to examine the results of CARD. Industry thought leaders will gather to discuss solutions to Hollywood’s diversity problem. Read more about “Inclusion or Invisibility?” here.

USC Annenberg’s commitment to diversity

The report is the latest from the Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative. Located at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, this is the first signature study of its Institute for Diversity and Empowerment, a research center examining inclusivity across media industries. IDEA’s goal is to make positive, long-lasting change and facilitate civic engagement.

“This important work is possible because USC Annenberg fosters great diversity and empowerment of women and people of color – in everything we do, from hiring to programming to curriculum,” said Dean Ernest J. Wilson III. “Lifting up the voices of the underrepresented is central to the mission of our school.”

The school has a broad and lasting commitment to diversity. USC Annenberg is the recipient of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC)’s Equity and Diversity Award in 2012. The same year, the school won a Federal Communications Commission competition to examine media ownership rules and their effect on localism and diversity, organizing a national consortium of 30 social scientists, legal scholars, journalists and communication experts. And last year, the Women’s Leadership Society at Annenberg M{2e} (Media, Economics and Entrepreneurship) formed with the aim of disrupting the male-dominated media and entertainment industries and building new opportunities for a future generation of thought leaders.

For the past two years, USC Annenberg has hosted a Summer Institute on Diversity in Media and Culture, which brings together students and faculty members from across the disciplines of Communication and Media Studies, around the United States, to focus workshops and seminars on issues of race, gender and media.

Just last month, the school announced a $5 million gift from the Annenberg Foundation to boost diversity in newsrooms by offering scholarships to students and fellowships to early-career journalists from diverse backgrounds. More information on The Annenberg Leadership Initiative is available here.

Key Findings

Females are Underrepresented On Screen Across the Entertainment Ecosystem

Female characters fill only 28.7% of all speaking roles in film.

For scripted series, less than 40% of all speaking characters were girls and women (broadcast=36.4%, cable=37.3%, streaming=38.1%).

Only 18% of stories evaluated were gender balanced, with film (8%) the least likely to depict balance and cable the most likely (23%).

A full 42% of series regulars were girls/women. Streaming featured the most females in the principal cast (44.2%), followed by broadcast (41.6%) and cable (41%).

35% of all characters were 40 years of age or older. Men fill 74.3% of these roles and women 25.7%. Film (21.4%) was less likely than broadcast (26.9%) or cable (29.4%) to show women 40 years of age or older. Streaming was the most likely, with females filling 33.1% of roles for middle age and elderly characters.

Females were more likely than males to be shown in sexy attire (Females=34.3% vs. Males=7.6%), with some nudity (Females=33.4% vs. Males=10.8%) and physically attractive (Females=11.6% vs. Males=3.5%).

Females Face Erasure Behind the Camera, Particularly in Film

A total of 4,284 directors were assessed for gender across all episodes of 305 scripted series and 109 motion pictures. A full 84.8% of directors were male (n=3,632) and 15.2% were female (n=652). This translates into a gender ratio of 5.6 males to every one female behind the camera in popular media.

Only 3.4% of all film directors were female (n=4). Among TV and digital series, broadcast had the highest percentage of directors (17.1%) and streaming the lowest (11.8%). 15.1% of directors were female across cable shows.

Across 6,421 writers, a full 71.1% were male and 28.9% were female. This means that for every one female screenwriter there were 2.5 male screenwriters.

When compared to streaming (25.2%), females were the least likely to have screenwriting credits in film (10.8%) and the most likely in broadcast (31.6%). Females comprised 28.5% of writers on cable shows.

A total of 487 creators were credited across the sample of TV/digital offerings. Almost a quarter of these creators were women (22.6%) and 77.4% were men. Of these show creators, 22% were female on the broadcast networks, 22.3% on cable channels, and 25% on streaming series.

Stories with a female director attached had 5.4% more girls/women on screen than those stories without female direction (38.5% vs. 33.1%). For writers and creators, the relationship was more pronounced (10.7% and 12.6% increase, respectively).

Across the 10 companies evaluated, women represent roughly 20% of corporate boards, chief executives, and executive management teams.

As power increases, female presence decreases. In film, television, and streaming executive ranks, 46.7% of Senior Vice President-level executives are female. In television, near gender parity has been reached at the Executive Vice President tier.

Racial/Ethnic Groups Still Face Invisibility in the Entertainment Ecology

28.3% of all speaking characters were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, which is below (-9.6%) the proportion in the U.S. population (37.9%).

Only 22 stories depicted proportional representation with U.S. population on the broadcast networks (19%), 18 on cable (13%), 1 on streaming (2%), and 8 in film (7%).

At least half or more (52%) of all cinematic, television, or streaming stories fail to portray one speaking or named Asian or Asian American on screen. And, 22% of shows and movies evaluated fail to depict on screen one Black or African American speaking character.

Out of the 407 directors evaluated, 87% were White and 13% were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups. Only two of the 53 underrepresented directors in film and television/digital series were Black women.

Cable shows (16.8% of directors) tended to attach an underrepresented director to their season premiere episodes more than broadcast (9.6% of directors) or streaming (11.4% of directors) shows. Film held an intermediate position across media, with 12.7% of all directors across 109 motion pictures from underrepresented groups.

The percentage of on screen underrepresented characters increases 17.5% when an underrepresented director is at the helm of a scripted episode or film. Only 26.2% of characters were underrepresented when directors were White whereas 43.7% were underrepresented when directors were from racial/ethnic minority groups.

Equity in Portrayals is Not Existent for the LGBT Community

2% of all speaking characters across the 414 movies, television shows, and digital series evaluated were coded LGB.

Only seven transgender characters appeared across 414 stories evaluated.

Almost a third of the 229 LGBT characters appeared in cable shows (31.4%, n=72), 28.8% (n=66) in film, 24% (n=55) in broadcast, and 15.7% (n=36) in streaming. Over half of the portrayals (58%) in movies were accounted for by two films.

Of all LGBT characters, nearly three quarters (72.1%) were male and 27.9% were female. The vast majority of LGBT characters were White (78.9%) and only 21.1% were from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups.

Few LGBT characters were shown as parents or caregivers, with females (24%) slightly more likely to be shown in this light than males (16.4%).

Key Differences Exist between Film and Television/Digital Inclusion Profiles
Of the 30 tests conducted for film companies, 24 or 80% yielded a Not Inclusive ranking. On a standard academic scale with 100% a perfect score, no film distributor earned a final inclusion grade above 25% across all tests. As such, every film company evaluated earned a Failing score on inclusivity.

Of the 50 tests conducted, seven Fully Inclusive and nine Largely Inclusive scores were awarded across the 10 companies evaluated on their TV/digital content.

The Walt Disney Company and The CW Network are the top performers when it comes to inclusion in television/digital series. Disney succeeds in representing women and underrepresented characters on screen. Both companies evidence hiring practices behind the camera for writers and show creators that approach balance.

Hulu and Amazon performed strongly due to their inclusivity of women. Amazon was the only company rated Fully Inclusive for hiring female directors.

AUTHOR

Public Affairs Staff

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Wed, 23 Dec 2015 18:02:00 +0000

Refugee crisis: Hungarian camerawoman trips, kicks migrants

By Holly Yan, CNN

Hugarian camerawoman trips, kicks migrant

Thursday, Sept 20, 2015

Story highlights

The camerawoman worked for Hungary's nationalist N1TV news station
Her behavior "was completely unacceptable," and she has been fired

(CNN)The video defies explanation. A Hungarian camerawoman, documenting the wave of desperate migrants sprinting from a holding camp, sees a man running with a child in his arms. So she trips him.

The man, carrying all his belongings, falls on top of the boy as they tumble to the ground. He screams in disbelief.

Moments later, the same camerawoman kicks other migrants as they run, including a young girl in the leg.

The videographer, who worked for the Hungarian nationalist N1TV station, has been fired, Editor-in-Chief Szabolcs Kisberk said.

"The camera operator behavior was completely unacceptable," N1TV said in a statement.

The station did not identify the camerawoman, but thousands took to a Facebook "shame wall" to criticize her acts.

The woman is being investigated on suspicion of committing a public nuisance offense, a spokesman for the Public Prosecutor's Office of Szeged told CNN on Thursday. Prosecutors are also considering whether to investigate her on more serious offenses, the spokesman said.

The camerawoman was one of the videographers filming the flood of migrants trying to get through Hungary on the way to Austria and Germany. The migrants include refugees trying to escape the carnage brought on by terrorists and war in their homelands.

After crossing from Serbia into Hungary with only the belongings they could carry, the migrants were stuck for days at a holding camp in southern Hungary. Many complained about uncomfortable or inhumane conditions in the camp.

Opinion: Why U.S. should do more in refugee crisis

After breaking through the holding camp's police line Tuesday, they scrambled across a field, walked and hiked about 4 miles -- many dropping their possessions on the ground.

Two children from one family lost the shoes they were wearing. They walked barefoot over a train track and rocks for miles, hoping to reach a country more welcoming of refugees.

Hungary, a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention aimed at protecting refugees, has come under criticism for its handling of migrants and for erecting a razor-wire fence to stymie the flow.

But the Hungarian government has said it is just trying to enforce European Union rules on the movement of migrants without proper documentation.

Are countries obligated to take in refugees? In some cases, yes

CNN's Lindsay Isaac, Arwa Damon at the Hungarian-Serbian border and Brian Walker in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Safe Horizon's Marianna Houston

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 20:27:00 +0000

Marianna Houston: Healing Through the Arts

By Safe Horizon

Marianna Houston always wanted to pursue a career that combined both the arts and social justice. “I’ve always loved theater, acting and writing,” Marianna explains. “But I also realized that I could use the arts to make a difference in the world.”

Marianna retired from the Theater Development Fund where she was the Education Director. Now Marianna dedicates her time to helping victims of abuse heal through art as a volunteer at Willow House, one of our eight domestic violence shelters. She’s using her passion for working in theater and the arts to run workshops that help residents express emotions through creativity.

Marianna’s Journey to Helping Victims of Abuse

Marianna heard about Safe Horizon through a friend and began volunteering in Safe Horizon’s training department where our diverse staff learn different skills to prepare them for working with victims of violence. Marianna worked with our Senior Director of Program Training, Elizabeth Speck, to teach our program staff how they could use the arts to help their clients heal. One of the shelter directors who attended these trainings recommended that Marianna facilitate workshops at Willow House.

Workshops that Inspire Hope

Marianna facilitates several workshops for residents including: writing a group poem where each participant contributes a line to create a whole poem, writing a letter to any person alive or dead, and describing what someone in a photo is thinking. "The workshops give the survivors options they didn’t know they had for working through and processing problems, for communicating, for being noticed and for being proud that they have a talent for writing,"Marianna explains. "Several survivors mentioned that because of the workshop they’ve continued writing."

How Marianna is Inspired by the Work She Does

“Volunteering at Willow House gives me a keener understanding of and appreciation for the journey a domestic violence survivor is on," Marianna says. "Their stories are tragic and heartbreaking, but I see such strength and resolve to create a new and better chapter in their lives." She is now going to school to become a licensed clinical social worker.

Marianna also supports our #PutTheNailinIt campaign to end domestic violence. The campaign involves donating to Safe Horizon, painting your left ring fingernail purple and sharing a photo of the purple fingernail on social media using hashtag #PutTheNailinIt. Marianna explains why it’s important to create this simple outward show of support;“Painting your nail purple can give a victim of domestic violence a sense that they are not alone. It could inspire them to believe in themselves and encourage them to get help.”

Get Involved

Sustainable Development Goals for Women and Girls - the United Nations

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 00:08:00 +0000

No More Déjà Vu

THE BLOG | Alexander Sanger, Chair of the International Planned Parenthood Council

Posted: 09/25/2015 10:44 am EDT Updated: 09/25/2015 11:59 am EDT

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will define the global development agenda for the next 15 years, will be formally adopted by heads of state at the United Nations beginning today.

The goals set out an integrated plan for achieving global equity by eradicating poverty, combating climate change, and ensuring educational equity, among others. They also include a goal on achieving gender equality, and call for the realization of universal access to sexual and reproductive health services, including contraception.

The creation of this agenda has been in process for years, and its finalization was a hard-won victory that required sustained advocacy by International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region staff and our partners throughout the Americas and Caribbean. And, the SDGs are a huge step forward from the its predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which did not encompass reproductive health until after their formal adoption in 2000.

But while this new agenda is a victory in terms of building international consensus on reducing inequalities as a shared global enterprise, it fails to take into account some of the lessons learned from the MDGs, specifically in relation to accountability and implementation. This is especially true at the local level where individuals are most likely to access sexual and reproductive health services.

Take for example the ambitious Millennium Development Goal on maternal mortality, which set out to reduce deaths related to pregnancy and childbirth by three-quarters by 2015. In the sexual and reproductive health and rights community, this goal has the distinctive dishonor of being one of the least realized MDGs. While these unnecessary deaths have decreased significantly in many countries, in others, rates have remained stagnant. In Trinidad and Tobago, the maternal mortality ratio has actually risen in recent years!

Once the goals are formally adopted by governments, the UN Secretary General has the opportunity to guide UN agencies in helping governments implement the promises they made in New York. Let's hope that these implementation plans are robust and meaningful. Let's hope that women and girls are central to these implementation plans, not only on issues related to reproductive health, but on all of the issues in which women and girls bear the brunt of the burden of inequity: education, employment, poverty, and sanitation.

It's time. Women and girls have waited long enough.

Sara Hill appointed new Secretary of Natural Resources for the Cherokee Nation

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Tue, 13 Oct 2015 23:40:00 +0000

Sara Hill, Senior Assistant Attorney General

Biography

Sara is a Senior Assistant Attorney General for the Cherokee Nation who has represented the Nation in tribal, state and federal courts since 2004. She primarily focuses on Environmental issues for the tribe, at this time, but has extensive experience in Indian Child Welfare, Employment Law and Tribal Criminal Law. She served as counsel for the Cherokee Nation in Cherokee Nation v. Nomura and State of Oklahoma v. Tyson et al.

While in law school, Sara was a member of the National Trial Competition team and received honors designations in numerous courses. As an undergraduate she won more than twenty awards for public speaking and debate, placing in three national tournaments. She was selected as debater of the year for Northeastern State University in 2000.

Bar Admissions
Sara is admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of Oklahoma, the courts of the Chickasaw Nation and Cherokee Nation, the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern and Northern Districts of Oklahoma and the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Education
2003 J.D., University of Tulsa College of Law
2000 B.A., with Honors, Northeastern State University

Contact:

sara-hill@cherokee.org

918-207-3836 - office

918-458-6142 - fax

BY THE CHIEF OF THE CHEROKEE NATION:

At the Cherokee Nation we are committed to protecting our air, water, land and wildlife for future generations. That’s why I recently announced the first ever appointment to an important cabinet level position in my administration. This position was originally established by the 1999 Constitutional Convention. Unfortunately, it was never filled, but this key advisory role cannot go vacant any longer.

I have appointed attorney Sara Hill as the new Secretary of Natural Resources, and this week she was confirmed by the Cherokee Nation Tribal Council and took her oath of office. In her role as secretary she will ensure our natural resources are properly preserved for the future of the Cherokee Nation and our people. I am so proud to say we are finally making our natural and environmental resources a priority. Our natural habitats and environment must be a factor in every decision we make. We have a responsibility to leave this land, this water and this air pure and clean for future generations.

Sara previously served as the Deputy Attorney General of the Cherokee Nation, with expertise on environmental issues, water rights and natural resource protection. Her hard work has helped the Cherokee Nation maximize our inherent sovereign rights, and she has been critical in developing preservation programs that benefit our citizens.

She chairs the Cherokee Nation Interdisciplinary Water Work Group and is working on the feasibility of a potential hydroelectric project on the Arkansas River. Sara has long served the Cherokee Nation in many ways, successfully representing our interests before the Oklahoma Supreme Court in Cherokee Nation v. Nomura – a case that successfully upheld full compliance of the Oklahoma Indian Child Welfare Act for out-of-state Indian child adoption cases. Additionally, she is a dedicated Special Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Oklahoma.

Part of her mission will be ensuring that sustainability is a part of every conversation we have and every decision we make at the Cherokee Nation. Since time immemorial Cherokees have considered the impact of our actions on our environment and our surroundings. Our elders teach us about our connection to plants, animals and all natural elements.

We must be steadfast in the stewardship of our natural resources. We have an obligation to protect these precious resources for the next seven generations. As our teachings tell us, that is the Cherokee way. We cannot leave today’s environmental issues for our children and grandchildren to solve. That is an unfair burden. The Secretary of Natural Resources will work at the highest level of my administration, assuring that we are protecting and preserving our natural resources and environment. We have a better vision of preservation, and we must take action to ensure we reach our goals.

With the Secretary of Natural Resources in place, coupled with the leadership of the Cherokee Nation Tribal Council, we have the ability to develop laws that will truly enhance the sustainability of our land, water and air for generations to come. The Cherokee people deserve that. Clean air, safe water and a fertile land will always be our foundation for long-term health as a tribe and a people.

Hire a Book Ghostwriter Info: Book Review: The Rainbow Horizon - A Tale of Goofy...

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 20:10:00 +0000

Hire a Book Ghostwriter Info: Book Review: The Rainbow Horizon - A Tale of Goofy...: A journey into life and all its quirks and humor , August 19, 2015 By Linda Leon "book marketing professional/consu... (USA) ...

Amanda Knox conviction based on "flaws" in courtroom proceedings

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 01:37:00 +0000

Italian court: 'Stunning flaws' led to Amanda Knox conviction

The Guardian

BY Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome

Italy’s highest court acquitted Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, her former boyfriend, of the 2007 murder of the British university student Meredith Kercher, because there were “stunning flaws” in the investigation that led to their convictions, according to judges’ legal reasoning.

A panel of judges at the court of cassation in Rome found that the state’s case against the pair, who were definitively cleared of murder in March, lacked enough evidence to prove their wrongdoing beyond a reasonable doubt, and cited a complete lack of “biological traces” in connection to the crime.

The 52-page legal motivazioni, published on Monday, detailed the reasons for the stunning acquittal of Knox, an American exchange student, and Sollecito, who each served four years in prison for the murder of Kercher before they were released and then retried.

Releasing the details involved in a court decision months after a verdict has been announced is common practice in Italy’s highest court.

“The trial had oscillations which were the result of stunning flaws, or amnesia, in the investigation and omissions in the investigative activity,” the judges wrote in their decision.

The judges also said that the probe into the murder was ultimately hindered by the fact that investigators were under pressure to come up with answers once the case became prominently covered in media around the world.

“The international spotlight on the case in fact resulted in the investigation undergoing a sudden acceleration, that, in the frantic search for one or more guilty parties to consign to international public opinion, certainly didn’t help the search for substantial truth,” the judges wrote.

They also criticised prosecutors and lower court judges for failing to establish a clear theory on what would have prompted Knox, who is now 28, and Sollecito, 31, to commit the murder, and that they instead had bought into a “theory of complicity” – for instance suggesting that Knox had been resentful of her flatmate – with little facts to back them up.

The judges denounced as “illogical” the argument by prosecutors that there was not more physical evidence linking Knox and Sollecito to the crime because the then suspects selectively cleaned the crime scene, saying that such an act would have been impossible.

Related: Who is Amanda Knox?

Instead of being wary of the lack of evidence, the panel said the lower court in Perugia that initially found Knox and Sollecito guilty in 2009 had ignored experts that had “clearly demonstrated possible contamination”. The lower court had also misinterpreted evidence about the knife that prosecutors argued was used as the murder weapon.

They said evidence pointed to the guilt of one man – Rudy Guede, a drifter from Ivory Coast, who received a 16-year prison sentence for Kercher’s murder following a fast-track trial in 2008. At the time of his conviction, it was stated that he did not act alone. In their decision, the judges said Guede may have had accomplices but that prosecutors had not proven those to have been Knox or Sollecito.

The court added that the only crime of which Knox was guilty was the false accusation she made to police days after the killing of her roommate, in which she blamed her boss, Diya ‘Patrick’ Lumumba, a bar owner, for the crime. Lumumba was in jail for two weeks before he was exonerated. Although the charge carried a three-year sentence, it was deemed moot because of the time Knox had already spent in prison.

The Knox case became a media circus in Italy and was the subject of intense attention in the press, which nicknamed the young American “Foxy Knoxy”. The Washington state native was portrayed in sensational reports either as a harmless innocent or a sex-crazed killer.

The case began on the morning of 2 November 2007, when the body of Kercher, a 21-year-old Leeds University student from Surrey, was found in the bedroom of the flat she shared with Knox in Perugia, central Italy, where both were studying abroad. Her throat had been slashed and she had been sexually assaulted.

Kercher’s family expressed profound dismay when Knox and Sollecito were acquitted in March. At the time, the family’s lawyer, Francesco Maresca, called the decision a “defeat for the Italian justice system”.

Today, the case itself – and the fact that Knox and Sollecito were first found guilty, then not guilty, and then guilty again, before finally seeing their case thrown out – is seen by many as an indictment of the Italian court system.

While the case continues to captivate people’s interest, the court said there was no possibility that Kercher’s death would be investigated again. It would be impossible to offer, at this late stage, any more “answers of certainty”.

Lawyers for Knox and Sollecito did not return requests for comment.

Hillary Clinton Email Scandal - Gefilte Fish

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Sat, 05 Sep 2015 21:25:00 +0000

Why Hillary Clinton sent a bizarre email about Gefilte fish

Business Insider

blogiurato@businessinsider.com (Brett LoGiurato)

One day back in March 2010, Hillary Clinton sent a simple email to Richard Verma, then the assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, and aide Jake Sullivan.

The subject line: "Gefilte fish."

The body of the email: "Where are we on this?"

Turns out they were somewhere.

Yair Rosenberg, a writer at Tablet Magazine, detailed the backstory. Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, wrote in his memoir that Clinton, then the secretary of state, was trying to get Israel to sign off on a blocked shipment of Asian carp from the US. This type of carp is used to make Gefilte fish, a traditional Jewish dish.

Oren wrote:

"America signed its first-ever free-trade agreement with Israel back in 1985, but the treaty exempted certain Israeli products liable to be eradicated by their cheaper American counterparts. Apples, avocados, and oranges fell into this category, and, so, too, did the carp cultivated by Galilean farmers. Which is why four hundred thousand pounds of the frozen fish were denied entry into the Promised Land.

"Still, in the view of the possible diplomatic damage, I thought Israel should make this one exception, and told that to the Ministers of Trade and Finance. ... 'You think finding Middle East peace is hard,' Secretary of State Clinton blithely told reporters. 'I'm dealing with carp!' Netanyahu called to question me, 'What's all this carp stuff?'"

After days of back and forth, Oren wrote, a compromise was eventually reached, and the nine containers were allowed into Israel on a one-time basis.

The email was one in thousands of pages released by the State Department on Monday night. Of those emails, 150 were retroactively classified.

Deadly On-Air Shooting at CBS Roanoke affiliate WDBJ-TV

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 23:54:00 +0000

Gunman in deadly on-air attack dies after

manhunt

CBS/AP August 26, 2015, 8:33 AM

Last Updated Aug 26, 2015 6:56 PM EDT

MONETA, Va. -- A TV reporter and cameraman were shot to death during a live television interview on CBS Roanoke affiliate WDBJ-TV Wednesday by a gunman who recorded himself carrying out the killings and posted the video on social media after fleeing the scene.

Play VIDEO

Station GM's emotional reaction to news crew shooting

Authorities identified the suspect as a journalist who had been fired from the station in 2013. Hours later and hundreds of miles away, he ran off the road and a trooper found him with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He died at a hospital later Wednesday.

Virginia State Police Sgt. Rick Garletts said a license-plate reader alerted troopers to the suspect's vehicle.

The shots Wednesday morning rang out on-air as reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward were presenting a local tourism story at an outdoor shopping mall. Viewers saw her scream and run, and she could be heard saying "Oh my God," as she fell. Ward fell, too, and the camera he had been holding on his shoulder captured a fleeting image of the suspect holding a handgun.

WDBJ quickly switched back to the anchor at the station, her eyes large and jaw dropping as she said, "OK, not sure what happened there." The station later went live again, reporting on their own station and staff as the story developed.

Play VIDEO

Ex-ATF official on WDBJ shooting

Parker and Ward were killed as the gunman fired about 15 shots. Their interview subject, Vicki Gardner, was in stable condition later Wednesday after surgery for her wounds.

The gunman was Vester Lee Flanagan II, 41, of Roanoke, who appeared on WDBJ as Bryce Williams, authorities said.

In an interview with CBSN, Jeffrey Marks, WDBJ's president and general manager, said Flanagan's name came to mind "instantly" when he heard about the shooting.

Play VIDEO

Two journalists fatally shot during live on-air segment

"He left here in a cloud ... We asked him to leave and that itself was difficult," Marks said.

Marks said Flanagan had to be escorted by police out of the station when he was fired. Marks described him as "an unhappy man" and "difficult to work with," always "looking out for people to say things he could take offense to."

"Eventually after many incidents of his anger coming to the fore, we dismissed him. He did not take that well," Marks explained.

Vester Flanagan

Video posted hours after the shooting on Bryce Williams' Twitter account and Facebook page showed an outstretched arm holding the handgun and firing repeatedly at Parker as she tried to run away.

The shooter appeared to walk up to the victims and stand a few feet away from them while holding the weapon. The three, in the midst of a live TV interview, do not seem to notice the gunman, who doesn't start shooting until Ward points the camera at Parker.

Ward was engaged to a producer at the station, Melissa Ott, who was celebrating her last day on the job and was in the control room, watching it live, as the shooting unfolded, Marks said.

Tweets posted on Williams' Twitter account Wednesday described workplace conflicts with both victims. They say Williams filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Parker, and that Ward had reported Williams to human resources.

Marks said Williams alleged that other employees made racially tinged comments to him, but said his EEOC claim was dismissed and none of his allegations could be corroborated.

"We think they were fabricated," Marks said.

ABC News reported on its website that the network received a 23-page fax from someone claiming to be Williams. The network said the fax was turned over to authorities.

ABC News reports that a man using Williams' name called the network in the past few weeks asking to pitch a story and wanting to fax information. The organization says the man never said what the story was.

Then, ABC News says, a fax arrived with a time stamp of 8:26 a.m. Wednesday, nearly two hours after the shooting in Virginia. He called the network just after 10 a.m., introducing himself as Bryce but saying that his legal name was Vester Lee Flanagan and that he had shot two people. That document is being analyzed by investigators, Franklin County Sheriff W.Q. "Bill" Overton Jr. said at a news conference.

The 23-page document is a manifesto of sorts, saying he was motivated to kill his former co-workers after the recent Charleston church shootings. The document says Williams bought a gun June 19, two days after authorities say Dylann Roof killed nine people inside a black church. Police have called the Charleston massacre a racially motivated hate crime.

According to the network, the man claiming to be Flanagan says in the "suicide note" that he was seeking revenge for racial discrimination, sexual harassment and workplace bullying he said he suffered as a gay black man. The document also cites the Virginia Tech and Columbine High School killers as influences.

"This gentleman was disturbed at way things had turned out at some point in his life. Things were spiraling out of control," Overton said.

President Obama spoke about the shooting during an interview Wednesday evening with CBS affiliate KIRO in Seattle, saying that his heart goes out to the victims and their families.

"I think it's one more argument for why we need to look at how we can reduce gun violence in this country," Mr. Obama said. "Right now, the FBI has been helpful with local authorities in trying to solve what is really a tragic day."

Both the victims were romantically involved with other employees at the station, according to Parker's boyfriend, WDBJ anchor Chris Hurst. He wrote online that they hadn't shared their relationship publicly but "were very much in love." He said they had just moved in together and wanted to get married. "I am numb," he said.

The shooting happened around 6:45 a.m. at Bridgewater Plaza in Franklin County, as Parker interviewed Gardner about the upcoming 50th anniversary festivities for Smith Mountain Lake, a local tourism destination.

Ward, 27, graduated from Virginia Tech and was engaged to a producer at the station, Melissa Ott, said WDBJ spokesman Mike Morgan.

"Adam was our go-to guy. He pretty much was available to do anything that we asked," Morgan said. "He did live shots during our morning show for several years."

Parker had just turned 24 and had joined the station as an intern after attending James Madison University, where she was the editor of the school's newspaper, The Breeze. According to her Facebook page, Parker spent most of her life outside Martinsville, Virginia. She was an avid kayaker and attended community theater events in her spare time.

The station is based in Roanoke, Virginia, and serves the southwest and central part of the state. The shootings happened at a mall just off Smith Mountain Lake in Moneta, about 25 miles southeast of Roanoke.

911 Survivor Dies in 2015 of Cancer from the Terrorist Attack

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 10:04:00 +0000

9/11 Survivor Captured In Iconic Photo Dies Of Cancer

Marcy Borders, a survivor of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks who was photographed covered in dust after fleeing the World Trade Center, has died of stomach cancer.

Borders' family announced her death Tuesday on Facebook. She was diagnosed with stomach cancer last year at the age of 41.

The photo of Borders, taken by AFP photographer Stan Honda as the attacks on the Twin Towers unfolded, has endured as a haunting reminder of the chaos and horror of Sept. 11.

"I was near a building lobby and a police officer was pulling people into the entrance to get them out of the danger," Honda recounted ahead of the 10th anniversary of the attacks in 2011. "I went in and outside became black for a few minutes. A woman came in completely covered in gray dust. You could tell she was nicely dressed for work and for a second she stood in the lobby. I took one shot of her before the police officer started to direct people up a set of stairs, thinking it would be safer off the ground level."

Borders, who was 28 at the time of the attacks, was working on the 81st floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower when the first plane hit. She fled down the stairwell and emerged from the building as the South Tower fell, covering her in dust and debris.

"I couldn't see my hand in front of my face," she told the New York Post in 2011. "The world went silent."

Borders told the Post a stranger pulled her to safety in a nearby building, where Honda took the now-famous photo. According to the Telegraph, Borders kept the clothes she was wearing -- still covered in ash -- in a plastic bag in her wardrobe, but as of 2011 had never looked at them.

In the decade following Sept. 11, Borders grappled with depression and substance abuse. She checked into a rehabilitation center in 2011.

In an interview with the Jersey Journal last fall, Borders speculated that her cancer was related to the attacks.

"I'm saying to myself, 'Did this thing ignite cancer cells in me?'" she said. "I definitely believe it because I haven't had any illnesses. I don't have high blood pressure ... high cholesterol, diabetes. ... How do you go from being healthy to waking up the next day with cancer?"

The number of cancer cases linked to Sept. 11 has grown in recent years. As of May 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 4,000 first responders, rescue workers and survivors who have been diagnosed with cancer linked to the attacks. According to the CDC, skin cancer, prostate cancer and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma are among the most common illnesses among those individuals.

The Huffington Post's Michael McAuliff, who covered the attacks for ABCNews.com, wrote about his own experience with the Ground Zero dust in 2011:

No one can tell me why I have not gotten ill the way so many have, especially thousands of the people caught in those tissue-searing clouds. In fact, in my exam at Mount Sinai, my lung capacity was as high as 140 percent of what it should be for a 45-year-old my size.

Just breathing through a shirt might have made the difference. "That simple action may have saved you a lot of trouble," Landrigan said.

But no one really knows, and no one can stay what’s in store for me or the tens of thousands of people who lived or worked in the disaster zone.

Read McAuliff's full story here.

Hire a Book Ghostwriter Info: Book Review: The Rainbow Horizon - A Tale of Goofy...

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 00:33:00 +0000

Hire a Book Ghostwriter Info: Book Ghostwriter

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Sun, 09 Aug 2015 02:41:00 +0000

Hire a Book Ghostwriter Info: Book Ghostwriter: Book Ghostwriter

Hire a Book Ghostwriter! Hi, are you intrigued by ghostwriting? Do you wonder what it's a...

NYT Bestselling Book Ghostwriter - New Books by Karen S. Cole

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Sat, 08 Aug 2015 23:15:00 +0000

Canada Aboriginal Missing Women Murders

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 17:56:00 +0000

Too many aboriginal women have died. It’s time for action!

How many more mutilated women’s bodies will it take? How many more haunting ghosts of the disappeared?

Some 600 cases of murdered and missing aboriginal women have been catalogued, half of them in the past decade.

There is a crying need for action. Consider that, if non-native women were dying and disappearing at a proportionally similar rate, the number would exceed 20,000. Do you think that would be a priority?

The Native Women’s Association of Canada and the Assembly of First Nations have called for a national inquiry to probe this horrific litany of slaughter and propose a national action plan.

Last Thursday and Friday, the ministers of justice, aboriginal affairs and status of women from all 13 provinces and territories gathered in Winnipeg to mull over the idea.

The federal government refused to participate – an act so contemptuous one can barely find the words to describe it. What do ministers of the Crown who have a constitutional responsibility to aboriginal people possibly have on their agenda that was more important?

At least the provinces and territories had the courage to try, but, disappointingly, their conclusion was that they need more discussion and they won’t make a decision until at least 2014.

Bob McLeod, premier and aboriginal affairs minister of the Northwest Territories, said governments are committed to taking action to reduce violence against aboriginal women, but before agreeing to an inquiry, they want to ensure it has a “very clear mandate.”

While the caution is understandable, the delay is unacceptable.

Solving the murders of hundreds of young women – most under the age of 30 and victims of sexual violence – and preventing hundreds more deaths has to be a national priority for police, justice and public health officials, and for politicians too.

The ministers are correct in saying that an inquiry into the deaths, if it is to be useful, needs to have a clear purpose.

It can’t simply be an open-ended exercise in venting – though, Lord knows, Canada’s first nations, Inuit and Métis peoples have a lot of legitimate grievances.

Aboriginal groups have said they want the inquiry to examine two specific areas: 1) how police investigate missing persons and homicide cases and; 2) the effect poverty and socio-economic factors have on aboriginal women.

The former is a must because of the persistent belief that, when aboriginal women go missing or are killed, the efforts are slower and lesser. The latter is a bit more tricky: While nearly all the dead and disappeared came from troubled backgrounds and/or were considered high-risk because they did sex work, had substance abuse or other mental-health issues, or lived a transient lifestyle, those vast challenges cannot be tackled across the board.

The focus of an inquiry on murdered and missing aboriginal women has to zero in on whether police investigations are done properly and how to better ensure the safety of aboriginal women who work in the sex trade and have substance-abuse problems.

If we expect too much of a single inquiry, it will be doomed to failure.

There are, so far, two provincial inquiries under way examining the deaths and disappearances of aboriginal women, and they both offer some cautionary lessons.

Manitoba has created a police task force, called Project Devote, that is examining the cases of eight missing persons and 20 homicide victims in the province (whittled down from a larger list of 85). Most, but not all, of the cases are aboriginal women and they were all involved in high-risk activities such as the sex trade. Solving even some of those cases would be a victory – but still unsatisfactory because it will not offer solutions.

B.C. has the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, charged with examining the missing and murdered women of Vancouver (most of them aboriginal sex workers) and probing the 1998 decision to stay charges against mass murderer Robert Pickton. That inquiry, which has delved into the socio-economic issues, became hopelessly bogged down in legal battles about standing and procedure. Wally Oppal’s report should be released later this month and there is no doubt it will leave many unanswered questions.

So, yes, a national inquiry is required, and a clear mandate is essential.

It shouldn't take two more years to figure out terms of reference. The ministers – provincial, territorial and federal – should lock themselves in a room and not come out until they've figured it out.

Given the bloodshed, the heartache and the desperate need for solutions, it’s the least they can do.

Lesbos is not exactly for lesbians, and wasn't to begin with. Greek Island for feminist wives of Ancient Greek Senators, possibly none of which were attracted to anything but the opposite sex.

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 23:34:00 +0000

Sun, sea and Sappho...island of 87,000+

Lead in by Karen S Cole

I'll bet Sappho was dark, and anything but "handsome." Probably, beautiful. And something like Juliet's age all in all, something like in late teens or early twenties. But it's just as possible she was in her 30s, 40s, or 50s and was a leader of some type, I guess. Of Greek wives of men.

Being a feminist doesn't make you a lesbian, but people assuming you are one...you're supposed to "make the decision" and "come out of the closet." Well, aren't I a good girl then. Doing what I'm supposed to do and everything. Sorry, I've never been one. I didn't do what 100% of the human race is "supposed to do" and become gay. Nope, it's somehow been the guys for me. But because I don't wear makeup, have short hair and sport myriad freckles...omigod, everybody "knows who I am!"

I think it's actually on my Washington State ID. Sorry, I'm happily married to the second man I've been married to. Had my children with him too, enough already about me.

Please now get the part where 100% of the human race is "supposed" to become gay. I doubt it. Meanwhile, 100% of it is born straight, and wants to mate with the opposite sex. But some folks do other things. Meanwhile, the Island of Lesbos is full of straight people, not gays.

Some of them do end up doing otherwise. Maybe, 100,000 people?

Oh, then what does that make me. A female "intellectual?" Maybe not, maybe so. I think I've done some things in my life better than those you think are the only ones who do them. Well, maybe you know something I don't know...namely, how to avoid personal pain.

Afraid not, it's been two husbands. One died, the other is amazing. I always did love Woody Allen. He's my height, you see.

Meanwhile, gee, I may have had a sex life back there somewhere. So what?

Apparently, everybody "has gaydar" nowadays. Like I said, although makeup is fun, I'm just not that into it. This kind of weather, it melts right off anyway.

Me, I'm of the opinion that even George Takei is inwardly straight, not gay. I'm a Freudian. The biological imperative is so strong, I still think everyone is secretly heterosexual all the time. Animals really want to reproduce. Even gay people want to mate up in a straight, heterosexual manner, somehow or other, and have children or adopt children or whatever along those lines.

So about Sappho...mystery to me...no photos from way back then.

In which case, she was "showing her years," then. Probably an older woman, maybe dark looking, and purportedly jumped off a cliff, all alone and by herself. The original Satan then could have been Sappho. You know, the bit about "the Great Fall." Check the spelling. With a little bit of Wednesday thrown in, I think: mix Sappho with Wotan, you get "Satan." Maybe it's a very weird coincidence. Or, name calling, period. Given the time period, I guess Satan could have been a name crossing Sappho with Wotan, as people used to travel around the world even in those ancient days.

Fictional characters are indeed fictional characters.

No, believe in Jesus, he's Real! And send $1,000,0000 to:

PUTTING RICH WHITE CHICKS WHERE RICH WHITE CHICKS BELONG.

But, what are "chicks?" Ummm. I'm a "coward" myself, either.

On the other hand, the human race is 100% heterosexual.

So, please don't label me that until you catch me in bed with a woman, loving it, orgasming and thinking it's the time of my life and that I'm in love with her, married to her, and having children with her. Wait until then, please. Next time.

I'm interracially married, to a brown man, instead.

Meanwhile, I look interracially married to myself, but somehow it just doesn't photograph. I look white as a sheet, which makes me think I'm some kind of cosmic reverse vampire, because none of my "freckles" or brownness shows up in pics at all. Why? Who knows.

It's been said Sappho got labelled a "lesbian" because she was with a LOT of Greek wives. And didn't seem to have a guy. Maybe it was one long poem she wrote, about jumping off a cliff in order to protest for women's rights. Against a bunch of VERY sexist Greco-Roman types who wanted something called the Lupercalia, which was a weird annual festival where the idea was to run down and rape every available young girl or woman.

Yes, that may have been it. Some of those ladies were not so into that sort of thing.

And now, heeeeere's Julie!

By Julie Bindel

Should only those born on the Greek island of Lesbos be allowed to call themselves lesbian? Yes, say some islanders embarrassed by the word's more common usage. Don't be ridiculous, say the lesbian tourists - and the locals who welcome them. Julie Bindel flew out to join the fray.

Two women on the beach at Lesbos. Photograph: Teri Pengilley Teri Pengilley/Teri Pengilley

Thursday 8 May 2008 09.28 EDTLast modified on Friday 16 May 200809.28 EDT

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Arriving at the tiny airport of Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos, I walk past a sign advertising "Lesbian wine". I'm on my way to Eressos, a small Greek village where, I am told, lesbian tourists are 10 a penny. This island in the Aegean Sea is to some lesbians what Torremolinos is to 18-30 holidaymakers - the destination of choice for those who want to sunbathe and party with kindred spirits, and be open about their sexuality.

Lesbians began to visit the island in the 70s, and have been coming back ever since. But now trouble is brewing. Three Lesbians (natives of the island of Lesbos) have submitted a legal challenge in an attempt to stop the Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece (OLKE) from using the term "lesbian". The use of the word to denote a sexual preference derives from the island's association with Sappho, the ancient poet who wrote about her love for women. But according to Dimitris Lambou, editor of the rightwing publication Davlos (Torch), and two female colleagues, using lesbian in this way "disgraces them around the world"; islanders, they say, are suffering "psychological and moral rape", due to being confused with lezzers such as myself.

It is early morning when I arrive in sleepy Eressos, just days after the international press got wind of Lambrou's intervention. The narrow beach stretches for three kilometres, ending with the huge, sheer rock from which Sappho leapt to her death. Greek music plays in the many bars and tavernas, and a van selling bread crawls through the winding streets.

I head for the popular The Tenth Muse, a lesbian-run bar in the main square. The local cats sit expectantly, waiting for scraps and attention. The animals are as reliant on lesbian tourists as the villagers. For all the hype about Lesbos being the world's top place for lesbians, this small village has only two lesbian-run bars open outside high season, both sharing a space in the square with a huge sculpture of Sappho.

Lena Tzizounaki runs The Tenth Muse. She came from Athens to live in Eressos 11 years ago, and tells me that the only arguments that occur in her bar are between lesbians, rather than the women clashing with the locals. "Mainly, though, the women have a great time together," she tells me. "It makes for great people-watching, because there is so much holiday romance."
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At the bar next door, four men, all with thick moustaches and huge bunches of keys hanging from their belts, drink espresso and smoke strong cigarettes. I ask if they mind the lesbians. "So long as they leave our women alone, they are welcome," chuckles one.

Dina Astalaki, owner of the other lesbian bar and restaurant in the village, Aubergine, is known affectionately as Mamma Eressos, because she looks out for the younger lesbian tourists. Astalaki lives with her German partner of 13 years. "Sometimes the women get a bit over the top," she says, "particularly in high season. But it's nothing compared with what groups of men get up to on holiday, I would imagine."

There has been the odd scandal surrounding the lesbian tourists on Lesbos, but not for a while. Eight years ago, the Candy Bar, a lesbian bar in London, organised a group trip to the island. Flyers advertising a "Wet Pussy Party" flooded Eressos, prompting the then mayor of the village to try to stop around 100 British lesbians from disembarking from their cruise ship for a stop off. Behaviour was lewd and loud, and to make matters worse for the islanders, the group was accompanied by a film crew from Channel Five, making a fly-on-the-wall documentary, Lesbians Go Mad on Lesbos.

"We are still recovering from that," says Anastasia, who works at the Parasol bar which is perched on the seafront. "Some of the women were like men. They were shouting things to women that few men would dare, such as 'Lovely tits'." One, she tells me, had a "full beard". What disgusted Anastasia most was that they had brought their own stripper, to entertain them in the evenings. "We would not tolerate local men doing such things, so why would we put up with lesbians behaving like pigs?"

Not long after this debacle, there were calls for the lesbians to be "fenced off", out of the public eye, when they visited Lesbos. The head of the island's hotelier's association at the time said that the women can be "rude and wild", "look like men" and "offend the locals." But things have calmed since then.

Many returning tourists choose to settle in Lesbos and take jobs, or run their own businesses. From 60% to 70% of lesbians living on the island are English and German, but a sizable minority are from mainland Greece.

Selina Firth lived in Eressos between 1990 and 1995, and returns regularly for holidays. She, along with increasing numbers of lesbians from the UK, began to visit Lesbos in the early 1980s when cheap charter flights made it easier to get to. She later decided to sell off her possessions, and move to Eressos. "At that time, there was only me and two other lesbians living here," she says, "and the holidaymakers would live in benders on the beach in the summer, which pissed the locals off no end."

The women who came to Eressos in those days were mainly lesbian feminist separatists, Firth says. They were angry and confrontational with men, and would clash with them regularly. The men, in the main, she says, were hardcore misogynists, who hated not having sexual access to the women, and would become deeply offended at any sign of affection between them. There were a number of attacks on lesbians, including sexual assault, and confrontations between male islanders and lesbian tourists were commonplace. "This square," says Firth, referring to the area with the two lesbian-run bars, close to the Sappho statue, "used to be inhabited almost entirely by local families on Saturday nights. There would be an uproar when women, after a few drinks, would lose their inhibitions and start snogging and sitting on each other's knees."

Firth says that during the time she lived in Lesbos, she fell madly in love with a Greek woman who used to visit from Athens. "But she would not even dare hold hands under the table when we were out," she says. "And at the time, it proved impossible for two women, one of them Greek, to keep a relationship going. The macho, village mentality was against us." That woman was Dina Astalaki, owner of Aubergine and now one of the most prominent lesbian businesswomen on the island.

Eventually, the villagers grew used to the lesbians, and in turn, the women less confrontational. "Some of the villagers knew I was a creative, and one of them asked me if I would make a sign for his shop," says Firth. "Soon, I was doing them for loads of the small businesses, and we became friendly at last."

Male villagers, says Firth, were almost totally unused to doing business directly with women, so that was a learning curve, too. "Now, us women, lesbians to boot, own and run our own businesses."

There is a terrible culture of machismo in Greece, I am told by countless people, but one that is weaker now that the men are living among independent, strong women. "When I first lived here, I felt like a third-class citizen," says Firth. "A woman, foreign and a lesbian. But now I feel accepted, and equal."

Sasha Roseneil also recalls hard times in the early days of lesbian tourism to the island. "There were some tensions back in the 80s, when there were lots of women camping there for extended periods of time," she admits. "But since the free campsite has more or less been dismantled, and the lesbian tourists bring in more money, there seems to be widespread acceptance of this niche market that Eressos has developed."

George, a waiter in the village, says he has no problem with lesbian visitors to the island. "How can I mind them?" he asks, "They are our livelihood. People who tell them they are not welcome must have too much money. These girls spend a lot. They drink like men."

Partly because of the documentary, and popular stereotypes, it is easy to imagine Eressos being inhabited by shaven-headed, butch women, covered in tattoos, and carrying solar-operated dildos in each hand. But the women I met in the village are anything but.

What do the visitors think about Lamrou challenging their right to be called lesbians? "Thank God Sappho was born on Lesbos, not Rhodes," says Sandra, on holiday from Leeds with a group of friends to celebrate her 60th birthday. "Or we would be stuck being known as Rhodesians."

Lisa Evans is in Eressos for her fourth season, working at Aubergine. "Lots of Greek girls, from Athens and other islands, come here to be together," says Evans. "They can be themselves, and blend into the crowd."

Some women come to the bar to "pull a new girlfriend and party hard", she says, whereas others come for birdwatching, walking, and, of course, to take in the significance of being in Sappho's birthplace.

"There is lots of trapping off going on here," says Evans, "and folk back home say to me, 'You must have a new one on the go every week.' But I'm too busy working. I have to do the bottling up when the bar closes."

"Lesbos has often felt like a wonderful retreat," says Roseneil. "In Eressos it was OK to be a lesbian, to hold hands with your girlfriend, long before it was in England."

There are few visible local women in Eressos, but I speak to an older shopkeeper, who tells me that the lesbians bring some excitement to what is a "very ordinary Greek village".

"I could easily be a lesbian if I was younger," says another local woman. "It would be far easier. Those women are lovely and I have a horrible husband."

Mercia Powis moved to Lesbos from the UK five years ago, and now runs a successful estate agency. "The Candy Bar debacle, and the documentary" she tells me, "it destroyed the image of this island, and the image of lesbians who come here. The women were portrayed as "louts, ladettes, and sexual predators". Was it an accurate portrayal? "Not far from the truth," admits Powis.

During my time in Lesbos, I see no bad behaviour. The women are lovely - friendly, amusing, respectful and great fun. In the evening they dance and roar with laughter in The Tenth Muse, downing Metaxa, smoking Greek cigarettes and generally having a great time. It could, aside from the smoking, be any lesbian bar in Hackney or Soho. I have seen far worse behaviour from British and other European men in holiday resorts.

Wendy Jansen came from Holland to work at Sappho Travel in Eressos five years ago. I ask her about the kerfuffle over the ownership of the word "lesbian". "There are homophobic people in every society," she says. "But in this place, where everyone relies on tourism, we cannot afford to ignore it." If there is negativity towards lesbians, says Jansen, it is from visiting Greeks, not the islanders.

"In this village, people are so used to lesbians that if the returning tourists come on holiday with a different partner, the locals notice. And if a couple [enter into a civil partnership], and come here on their honeymoon, locals often send champagne or flowers to them." One tourist, from London, tells me that when she split up with her girlfriend, whom she had been on holiday to the village with the year before, some of the islanders refused to speak to her when she turned up with a new woman. "They thought I was cheating on my ex," she laughs.

"At the end of the day, this is a Greek village," says Jansen, "not a lesbian one. It has not been 'invaded', or taken over. More than anything, it is cosmopolitan."

That may be true, but the place has "lesbian" running through it like a stick of rock. At the Eressos women's festival this September, organised by Jansen, events will range from the mother earth (holistic healing and dance-based meditation) to the cutting edge (drag king workshops and music sessions by DJ Miss Thunderpussy). The very different styles of event sit comfortably, side by side, just like the locals and the lesbians. In Sappho Travel, Jansen is laughing about last year's festival. The mayor, she says, came to the opening on the beach. He was the only man and surrounded by hundreds of lesbians, "some with loads of piercings, tattoos, and kissing each other. But the mayor took it in his stride and made us realise that the locals have become educated about gay issues, simply by living among lesbians." It is ironic that, bearing in mind the popular image of the Greek male - all moustache and machismo - that these villagers have accepted the women, despite the odd bit of tension and complaint.

As for our right to the label "lesbian" being challenged in the courts, no one I spoke to took it seriously. The current mayor of Lesbos has said publicly that he does not support Lambrou's case. One local woman has suggested that, if Lesbos gained independence from Greece, we could all move to the island and apply for Lesbian passports. Perhaps it's time that Lambrou got a little Lesbian pride.

· This article was amended on Friday May 16 2008. Sasha Roseneil was not a founder, nor a member, of the direct action group Lesbian Avengers as we said in an article headed Sun, sea and Sappho. This has been corrected.

Ida B. Wells Lynching Crusader Suffragist Suffragette

noreply@blogger.com (Karen S. Cole - Ghost Writer, Inc.) — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 20:03:00 +0000

Ida B. Wells, Anti-Lynching Crusader and Mother of Intersectionality

Hillary Crosley Coker
Filed to: IDA B. WELLS 7/16/15

(Editor's Note: Hangings. I wonder why sometimes...why not anti-shooting and anti-burning? Why was lynching the one thing people used to work against so much? It has seemed: some of the people being lynched, it was for crimes such as murder that they actually committed. I'm not so sure about lynching victims in general - unusually idiotic punishment still exists there, too. But why didn't more people care about shooting and burning victims, back then? Was it witchcraft accusations, or something? Maybe it was difficult to nab shooters, really, because of evidence tampering with bullets. Harder to catch the perps, I guess, if you don't really know who shot somebody. But I have to wonder why not on burning victims...blacks were certainly burned alive often enough. There is plenty of photographic evidence of it, too.

Does it have to do with so-called witches? Or possibly the "bravery cult" thing? Where religious types got into persecution for persecution's sake? About the shooting, maybe too many other types of people were being shot dead? Whites shot Indians and Mexicans, Mexicans shot Indians, Whites shot other Whites...kind of whoever. You have a gun, it's easy. Lynching parties are bigger, harder to form, more of a lasting impact. I read somewhere that the KKK formed up a major lynching party once in the 1800s and ran around lynching literally anybody they could grab, blacks, white, women, children, again whoever. It's kind of short, fast and over with unexpectedly.)

Ida B. Wells-Barnett—journalist, suffragist and anti-lynching activist—is Thursday’s Google doodle, in honor of her 153rd birthday. An often unsung American icon, Wells was an outspoken woman who fought with the national president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, Frances E. Willard, about intersectionality before the word was even invented.

Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862, Wells was the eldest of eight children. Her parents were active in the Republican party during Reconstruction and the board of Rust College, but died of yellow fever when Ida was just 16. Instead of allowing her siblings to be split up between her parents’ friends, Ida became a country teacher to support herself and her five remaining siblings.

Later, when her siblings were older, the Wells family moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where Ida attended Fisk University and worked as a teacher. During her stay, she got into an altercation with a train conductor. Wells had purchased a first class ticket which was not in the Jim Crow segregated section and the train’s conductor tried to forcibly remove her from her seat. Ida wasn’t having that and “fastened her teeth on the back of his band,” according to PBS. Wells was kicked off the train that day but she sued and won $500, though her victory was ultimately overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court.

In Memphis, Wells co-owned and edited the black newspaper called The Free Speech and Headlight, where she wrote about “violence against blacks, condemned violence against blacks, disfranchisement, poor schools, and the failure of black people to fight for their rights.” When she was fired from her teaching post for her incendiary ideas suggesting that blacks were humans that deserved rights, she became a full-time journalist.

In 1892, a black store owner named Tom Moss, along with Calvin McDowell and Will Stewart, were arrested for protecting Moss’ store from racist attacks and then dragged from their cells and lynched by a white mob. Wells was vocal about the racial violence and terror in her paper and told her fellow black residents to move out of Memphis. She traveled the South gathering stories of other blacks who’d been lynching, essentially kicking off the anti-lynching movement,according to Biography. One day, while she was away traveling, an angry white mob destroyed her newspaper office and declared that she’d “be killed if she ever returned to Memphis.”

Wells moved on to Chicago, where she wrote an investigative piece on lynching in America for the black newspaper called the New York Age, run by a former slave T. Thomas Fortune and lectured nationally. She partnered with freed slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass and a lawyer and editor named Ferdinand Barnett to call out the ban of black exhibitors during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, when she wrote and distributed a pamphlet called “The Reason Why the Colored American Is Represented in the World’s Columbian Exposition.” Later that year, she released A Red Record, her own examination of America’s lynching epidemic.

On the women’s rights side, Wells worked with the National Equal Rights League to stop “discriminatory hiring practices for government jobs” and earn women the right to vote. But she and her contemporaries Frances E. Willard, national president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and Susan B. Anthony, a leader in the suffrage movement along with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, fell out around the passage of the 15th amendment, which gave black men the right to vote—in theory, because of course thanks to all of the voter discrimination and outright murders of blacks to keep them from the polls, African Americans couldn’t vote freely until the 1960s—and not women. Resentment built among white suffragists, and meanwhile Wells felt Willard and Anthony weren’t helpful to the causes of African Americans who were still being lynched for sport. From NPR:

[Willard] was even willing to court white Southern women, at the expense of blacks, even though her parents had been abolitionists. “ ‘Better whiskey and more of it’ is the rallying cry of great, dark-faced mobs,” Willard said in an 1890 interview with the New York Voice. “The safety of [white] women, of childhood, of the home, is menaced in a thousand localities.”

Wells was furious, as Willard was supposed to be a friend to the black community and black women had even joined her organization, the WCTU. Wells wrote in her autobiography Crusade for Justice that Willard “unhesitatingly slandered the entire Negro race in order to gain favor with those who are hanging, shooting and burning Negroes alive.”

This disloyalty caused Wells to realize that she didn’t know what to do with “good white people,” and she took her cause to England in 1893, lecturing on anti-lynching. Despite Wells’ rallying cries, many British couldn’t believe that Willard would ignore the struggles of black Americans so heinously. So Wells called Willard to the carpet in 1894 when the pair were invited to speak to temperance advocates as guests of Lady Henry Somerset, head of the temperance movement in Britain. And it went down.

Wells came to the lecture armed with a copy of the 1890 interview with the New York Voice that echoed such racist thinking. Willard had told the publication that the local tavern “is the Negro’s center of power ... the colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt.”

When asked her opinion of Willard, Wells chose to read the interview. With Willard at her side and little time to actually speak, Wells asked the audience how influential white women could continue to turn a blind eye to the white mobs who threatened black lives. Afterward, she was able to get a British journal, the Fraternity, to reprint Willard’s interview.

Lady Somerset was so enraged by Wells’ commentary that she demanded that the Fraternity article not be printed, or Wells would never be heard in Britain again. The article was published anyway.

Now Lady Somerset was furious and called Wells’s friend and ally Douglass and told him to upbraid Wells. Douglass didn’t, but he wasn’t really helpful to Wells’s cause either, she wrote in her autobiography. Many feel that was because he didn’t want to muss up ties to Anthony and the suffragists or Willard and the temperance movement.

Back home, she formed the National Association of Colored Women in 1896. By 1898, she’d taken her anti-lynching cause to the White House with a protest in Washington, D.C. where she and her supporters called for President William McKinley to “make reforms.” She also married Ferdinand that year and hyphenated her married name to Ida B. Wells-Barnett, which was a big deal then. Though the couple had four children, Wells kept at her anti-lynching cause. In 1908, she attended one of the first conferences by the organization that would be the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or the NAACP. She’s considered a founding member of the NAACP, but she left the organization because she felt they were more talk and less action-based.

To top it all off, in 1930 she ran for the Illinois State Senate (though she didn’t win).

In 1931, Wells-Barnett died at 69 years old of kidney disease. But even now, it’s heartening to know that there’s a legacy of women who fought for the rights of black America when the stakes were incredibly high. Wells-Barnett was a woman of fire, ideals and purpose with no time for foolishness, whether it came from white men, women or otherwise.

Contact the author at Hillary@jezebel.com.

Image via Google, photo via Getty.

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Ida B. Wells Lynching Crusader Suffragist Suffragette