Saturday, April 22, 2017

Signs From The Science Marches


Today is the day when people march for science and against Trump's unreality views of the world.

I picked some of my favorite signs:













I don't have the photographer's credit for the top three.  The last one is from here.  More fun placards here.

And one more, added later:




And added even later, because who can resist this one:


Friday, April 21, 2017

Alex Jones. The Conspiracy Theorist Who Has Trump's Ear.







Alex Jones is an American far-right radio pundit and conspiracy theorist.  His website, InfoWars.com, is one of the central factories producing fake news for the white male supremacist movement, politely called the Alt Right.

It's a sign of these unsettling times that the current president of the United States, one Donald Trump,  called Jones's reputation "amazing" in a 2015 interview, promising not to let Jones down.  It's another sign of these troublesome times that Trump appears to get some of his "news" from Jones's fake news factory.


Thursday, April 20, 2017

Bill O'Reilly, Sexual Harassment and the Sound of Silence




Bill O'Reilly has been let go by the Fox News, not because he sexually harassed women and had to pay many millions in compensation, but because he got caught, all this became public, and advertisers started to withdraw their loot from Fox.

I'm joyous over the advertisers' boycott.  It shows that the times are changing for the better.  They are not changing fast enough, of course.  As evidence I point at the Pussygrabber-in-chief.

The O'Reilly case made me think of what it means that successful settlements of sexual harassment cases require the accusers to be silent about what has happened:
The end for O’Reilly was set in motion by a scathing New York Times investigation in early April that revealed that he and Fox had settled five allegations of harrassment brought by Fox employees over a 15-year period. The company and O’Reilly paid out $15 million in exchange for his accusers’ silence.
Because of that silence, every new post-settlements victim of O'Reilly could well believe that she was almost the only one, that if she came forward nobody would believe her but that her career would be over.  And because his tendency to sexually harass women was not something we were supposed to know*, new female employees at Fox News might not have been aware of the risks of, say, entering a room alone with Bill O'Reilly.

Indeed, requiring such silence as the price of compensation benefits the serial sexual harassers and hurts any future victims they may one day have.

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*  I don't know if older employees warned newcomers about O'Reilly's penchant for violating women's private space, but even if those warnings existed, the whole scope of his activities may well have been unknown, with the exception of the one earlier case extensively covered in the media.






Tuesday, April 18, 2017

More Pleasant Reading About Women


More pleasant than my usual topics, that is.  I am passionate in wanting to see a fairer world and that makes me focus on covering work that still needs to be done.  But sometimes it's good to sit back and enjoy the gains we have already won.  Yes, they can be lost, and vigilance in this context is as important as in the context of refusing to normalize Trumpistan.  Still, I hope you enjoy what follows:


1.  Kathrine Switzer participated in the Boston Marathon in 1967 and again this year:

Fifty years ago, a runner officially entered as K.V. Switzer participated in the Boston Marathon. On Monday, she did it again at age 70.
Kathrine Switzer’s marathon in 1967 became historic because she was the first woman to complete the all-male race as an official entrant — her registration as “K.V. Switzer” hid her gender. The race resonated far beyond a footnote in the record books when an official tried to force her from the course after a few miles.

2.  Mother Jones has put together a partial list of women's inventions or other deeds which history later erased or assigned to men.  I have not checked the validity of all of them, but it's a fun list to contemplate in these cold and dark days of the Trump-Putin-Erdogan-etc. era and among much religious fundamentalism.  Religious fundamentalism and dictatorships are not exactly conducive to independent female lives or general equality.


3.   The US women's national team (USWNT) has ratified a new five-year contract with US Soccer:

On Wednesday, U.S. Soccer announced that it had ratified a five-year collective bargaining with the U.S. women’s national team, ending a contract negotiation that’s been in overdrive for over a year, particularly since the USWNT filed a federal complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charging U.S. Soccer with wage discrimination last March.

The USWNT launched an “Equal Play, Equal Pay” campaign to highlight the pay discrepancy between the women’s and men’s national teams last summer, and while this new CBA doesn’t provide exact equality, it is a significant improvement over the previous deal.
The wage discrimination case that led to the new contract can be read in this Atlantic article.


4.   A 57-year old female astronaut made her eighth space walk last month. 

5.  Some interesting recent "firsts" for women: 

Parliament Square in London, England, will get its first female statue to go with the existing eleven statues of men.  It will be of Millicent Fawcett, a suffragette and a feminist, to celebrate the centenary of British women's right to vote.

Dr. Vera Songwe from Cameroon became the first woman to become the Executive Secretary for  the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

Becca Longo became the first woman to win an NCAA football scholarship to play for a Division II team or higher.

Second Lt. Lillian Polatchek:

became the first female graduate of the Army’s Armor Basic Officer Leaders Course, and the first woman to lead a Marine tank platoon.

Cressida Dick will be the first woman to lead London's Metropolitan Police Force.









Trump and Erdogan, Sitting In A Tree


Our Dear Leader has congratulated the Dear Leader of Turkey on the latter's increased dictatorial powers:

Donald Trump has congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his victory in Sunday's referendum that gave him sweeping new powers.
The US president's phone call contrasts with concern by European leaders who have pointed our how the result - 51.4% in favour of the changes - has exposed deep splits in Turkish society.
Mr Erdogan has rejected criticism from international monitors who said he had been favoured by an "unequal campaign".
"Know your place," he told them.

"Tyrants of a feather flock together?"  Or is Trump doing realpolitik?