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tulipsandroses

tulipsandroses's Journal
tulipsandroses's Journal
August 21, 2021

Anthony Mackie will be the new Captain America

EXCLUSIVE: Anthony Mackie has closed a deal to carry the shield and his first superhero picture in Captain America 4, sources said.

Kevin Feige’s Marvel Studios keeps its details well under wraps and it isn’t clear whether the movie will involve Sebastian Stan, who starred with Mackie in the well-received Marvel Studios Disney+ limited series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
https://www.google.com/amp/s/deadline.com/2021/08/anthony-mackie-captain-america-4-movie-deal-disney-marvel-malcolm-spellman-1234817327/amp/


Wingnuts are going to lose their shit. This and The new Superman being gay. There will be a lot of foaming at the mouth

August 19, 2021

Just another reminder of republican BS. Trump policy endangered Afghan allies

Trump admin broke law with visa delays for Afghans, Iraqis who worked for U.S., judge rules
Calling the government's arguments "untenable," the court ordered the Trump admin to produce a plan in 30 days on how to fix the visa application problem
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1057846

August 19, 2021

Liberating women and girls is just another lie

These women were used to justify war and the lie was was repeated over and over to make us feel good about this 20 year abomination. Yes trump is a buffoon, but to convince him to send more troops into Afghanistan after he was elected, he was shown pictures of women in miniskirts and told that is what life was like for women. before the Taliban. Trump may be a buffoon but the evil doers that got us into this mess were not buffoons. They used similar tactics to convince us. The "oppressive burqa".
][link:https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hr-mccaster-donald-trump-afghanistan_n_599c6105e4b06a788a2c2026|
President Donald Trump was reluctant to send more troops to Afghanistan after years of saying the war was “wasting our money.” So national security adviser H.R. McMaster used a 1972 photo of Afghan women in miniskirts to show the president that the country had once adopted Western values and to convince him to escalate the war, according to The Washington Post.

McMaster reportedly showed Trump a black-and-white snapshot of bare-legged women in Kabul to illustrate that the region might be able to embrace Western ideals again. Miniskirts were replaced by full-body burqas in the mid-1990s, when the Taliban took over Afghanistan, banned Western clothing and rolled back women’s rights. The Taliban now controls only parts of the country, but many Afghan women still choose to wear traditional burqas because it makes them feel safer from violence and judgment in a society where gender-based violence is rampant.



There are so many threads to pull on in this horrible saga. I posit this is one of them that needs closer examination.

Someone posted an article of women in Afghanistan crying after the fall of Kabul. At the bottom of the article is a tiny blurb about the women in rural areas who are conservative. A tiny blurb, when 76% of women live in rural areas. So how much liberating were we really engaged in?

While I empathize with the women who may see their gains erased, it boils my blood that this liberation was a lie to keep the war going. Just like the support the troops mantra. They will come up with another slogan eventually to tug at our heart strings to support their atrocities.

I was watching a guest on MSNBC a few days ago, talk about the plight of the rural women. She said those rural areas were often bombed. Women lost their children, sometimes whole families. They are dirt poor despite the trillions of dollars we poured into Afghanistan. We even spent 6 million dollars on special goats for crying out loud. The goats died shortly, there after. War is ugly, its brutal. The powers that be knew for many years this was a clusterfuck.
One can google and find numerous articles about what a failure this was. So what did we think would happen to these women after we left? We have been demanding that our troops come home for several years. What did we really think would happen?
Smarter people than I knew what would happen. But they kept repeating this lie, using these women and playing on American heartstrings.
Note they are not saying they did not expect the Taliban to come back. They are only " surprised at how fast it happened".
This was always going to be the outcome. The Taliban coming back 6 months, or one year from now would not have changed the possible future of these women.
We did not care about the women we liberated in cities like Kabul. We knew all along this would be a temporary change. We definitely did not care about the women that lived in the rural areas.

Instead of economic, social, and political empowerment, Afghan women in rural areas—where an estimated 76 percent of the country’s women live—experience the devastation of bloody and intensifying fighting between the Taliban and government forces and local militias. Loss of husbands, brothers, and fathers to the fighting generates not only psychological trauma for them, but also fundamentally jeopardizes their economic survival and ability to go about everyday life. Widows and their children are thus highly vulnerable to a panoply of debilitating disruptions due to the loss of family men.

Not surprisingly, the position of Afghan women toward peace varies greatly. Educated urban women reject the possibility of another Taliban emirate. They dream of a peace deal in which the Taliban are a weak actor in the negotiations and is given some political and perhaps government representation, but not the ability to shape the rewrite of the Afghan constitution and the country’s basic political dispensation. Rather than yielding to the Taliban, some urban women may prefer for fighting to go on, particularly as urban areas are much less affected by the warfare than are rural areas, and their male relatives, particularly of elite families, rarely bear the battlefield fighting risks. For them, the continuation and augmentation of war has been far less costly than for many rural women.

By contrast, as interviews with Afghan women conducted by one of us in the fall of 2019 and the summer of 2020 showed, peace is an absolute priority for some rural women, even a peace deal very much on the Taliban terms.9 This finding was confirmed in a recent International Crisis Group report. The Taliban already frequently rule or influence the areas where they live anyway. While rejecting a 1990s-like lockdown of women in their homes that the Taliban imposed, many rural women point out that in that period the Taliban also reduced sexual predation and robberies that debilitated their lives.

SNIP




[link:https://www.brookings.edu/essay/the-fate-of-womens-rights-in-afghanistan/|


These are excerpts from an older article, but still relevant - Its long but definitely a good read.
What Afghan Women Want
Western politicians, generals and do-gooders cite women's rights as a key benefit of keeping the Taliban out. But the women of Kampirak don't hold many grudges against the Taliban, who ruled their village from 1997 until 2001. The single most important event of the last 15 years of their lives was the Hezb-e-Wahdat raid at the beginning of the U.S.-led occupation that orphaned, widowed and violated them. To them, that morning remains the main legacy of the war Westerners often claim to be fighting in their name.
SNIP
International donors have contributed more than $60 billion to Afghanistan since 2001. Some of this money was supposed to bring free healthcare, deep-water wells, schools, and electric power to villages like Kampirak. Because of mismanagement and kleptocracy, it barely has. The absence of the most basic necessities is one explanation for why Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality and the fifth-lowest life expectancy in the world.

[link:http://|][link:https://pulitzercenter.org/pt-br/node/11777|

August 17, 2021

33 yr old vaccinated woman dies from COVID 19

A 33-year-old woman has died in New Orleans despite being vaccinated against COVID-19, a “breakthrough” case that her family hopes will serve as a reminder to Americans to continue to wear masks.

Angelle Mosley told her mother and sister in July that she had tested positive for the delta variant of coronavirus, but her mom told CBS News her health quickly deteriorated because she was obese.


Her mother, Tara Mosley, was asked if doctors specifically told her that her daughter’s weight was a factor in her severe illness. “He did,” she said in response. “He did. He says that she’s a large person. Her heart could not pump like it should have been pumping.”



Obesity is one of the comorbidities that can put a person at risk for severe symptoms of COVID-19. Others include kidney and heart disease, as well as asthma and a history of cancer. The CDC recommends that people with comorbidities continue to wear masks and social distance — in addition to vaccination.
https://thegrio.com/2021/08/17/new-orleans-angelle-mosley-covid-19-vaccination/

July 17, 2021

RIP Biz Markie

Damn, this has been a tough year for hip hop. Another legend gone.

July 16, 2021

The police shooting we are not talking about. Ben Crump representing family of white teen killed

KARK: Lonoke deputy fired for not having active body cam when he killed teen

Our news partner KARK reports that Sgt. Michael Davis has been fired by the Lonoke County sheriff for violation of the policy on use of body cameras.

It was not activated when he shot and killed Hunter Brittain, 17, who was unarmed when Davis stopped him on a state highway near Cabot. Brittain’s family and a companion that night said he held only a jug of antifreeze that he intended to put behind a wheel of his truck to keep it from rolling. He’d been test-driving the truck following work on his transmission about 3 a.m.


It had been reported previously that Davis had a body camera, but no video had surfaced. Brittain’s family has hired lawyers who represented George Floyd’s family after his murder by Minneapolis police in seeking more information about his death.

The State Police is investigating and has said it won’t comment during the course of the investigation.
[link:https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2021/07/01/kark-lonoke-deputy-fired-for-not-have-active-body-cam-when-he-killed-teen|

Rev Al delivered the the eulogy at his funeral.


][link:https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/status/1408944568188522499|

July 14, 2021

TN Republicans threaten to dismantle health department over kids Covid Vaccine

This is sickening. I am so tired of these ignorant jackasses. The party of law and order has no respect for the law.

She Says She Was Fired For Saying That Teens Don't Need Parental Consent For Vaccines

A memo sent in the spring started the series of events that ended with Fiscus' ouster
The events leading to her being fired "can only be described as bizarre," Fiscus said.

It all started in the spring, when Fiscus says several health care providers asked her office for clarity about how to handle the then-looming authorization of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for minors as young as 12. As she prepared a memo on the subject, she turned to the Tennessee Department of Health's general counsel, which replied with a doctrine based on a 1987 Tennessee Supreme Court ruling.

The doctrine, which says teens from ages 14-17 don't need to get their parents' or guardians' consent before getting the vaccine, was posted online "and is blessed by the Governor's office on the subject," the legal office said, according to Fiscus. The office reportedly added, "This is forward facing so feel free to distribute to anyone."

But when Fiscus sent a memo sharing that guidance, critics seized on the message and called it a governmental overreach, threatening to disband the state Department of Health, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. At a hearing in Tennessee's legislature, a Republican legislator said the health department's ad campaign encouraging teens to get vaccinated amounted to an attempt "to target children."


[link:https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/07/13/1015742588/tennessees-ousted-vaccination-chief-blasts-politics-over-teen-vaccines|
July 12, 2021

The billionare backlash, misses an important point. NASA opened the door.

And yes it is absolutely about business. You can have a separate discussion about whether space travel should only be done by the govt.I don't agree with that argument, but thats a different discussion from the rich guy vanity argument.


By moving into orbit with its Commercial Crew Program and partnering with private companies to reach the lunar surface, NASA hopes to change the economics of spaceflight by increasing competition and driving down costs. If space travel truly does become cheaper and more accessible, it’s possible that private citizens will routinely visit space and gaze upon our blue, watery home world—either from space capsules, space stations, or even space hotels like the inflatable habitats Bigelow Aerospace intends to build.

[link:https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/future-spaceflight|

Private forays into space aren’t anything new. Since 2000, several deep-pocketed tourists have spent tens of millions of dollars to fly to the International Space Station. In addition, NASA has gradually encouraged private companies to take over U.S. launches of cargo and astronauts to the ISS. Commercial cargo flights for NASA began in 2012, and commercial crew flights began in 2020.|
Science on the edge of space.

SNIP
Much of the discussion around Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin has focused on the race between Branson and Bezos. But as these dueling billionaires fly toward the heavens, the vehicles their companies have built have enabled new kinds of research.

SNIP
Already, the two companies have flown science payloads and tech demonstrations, with the support of NASA’s Flight Opportunities Program. The Unity 22 flight included a human-tended experiment that recorded changes in plants’ gene activity just as the plants started to experience weightlessness, designed by the University of Florida and run by Virgin Galactic employee Sirisha Bandla.


][link:https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/what-virgin-galactic-milestone-flight-means-for-the-future-of-tourists-in-space|


2009 report from FAA regarding commercial space travel


The Economic Impact of Commercial Space Transportation on the U.S. Economy in 2009
EMERGING COMMERCIAL SPACE MARKETS
In the coming years, commercial space transportation may enable new markets that are currently emerging or have yet to develop (pre-emerging). As with the current enabled markets, these new markets may lead to measurable impacts within the U.S. national economy. Because these markets are, or may soon be emerging, they are not included in this report in measuring the economic impact of the space industry. As these market sectors mature and as their revenues increase, they will likely be included in future reports.
Market studies project that public research, educational, and adventure space transportation sectors will become significant revenue-producing markets in the foreseeable future. For example, market studies have shown that “space tourism,” whereby customers pay a fee to experience suborbital spaceflight, could become a billion-dollar market within 20 years.

[link:https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/media/Economic%20Impact%20Study%20September%202010_20101026_PS.pdf|
July 11, 2021

King T'Challa lives! Disney's new upcoming Marvel Series- What if??

[link:

|

Don't know how much he will be in this, but its so bitter sweet.
July 10, 2021

Yesss! Biden Admin working to help working class people -Ban on non compete clauses

The rest of the country might finally be catching up to California when it comes to workers’ right to hop between jobs.

The Biden administration asked the Federal Trade Commission to ban or limit noncompete agreements nationwide as part of a broad executive order Friday. These agreements, which typically prevent workers from quitting their jobs and going to work for a competitor of their current employer, are already unenforceable in California. The administration argues that they serve to keep wages down and disempower employees from demanding better working conditions.

This executive order comes as noncompetes are on the rise across the country, with anywhere between 27% and 46% of all private-sector workers subject to the agreements, according to a 2019 survey by the ements, according to a 2019 survey by the Economic Policy Institute. Though broadly intended to discourage employees from taking trade secrets along with them when they switch jobs, noncompete clauses are increasingly worked into jobs across the economic scale.

The sandwich chain Jimmy John’s became a poster child for the practice in 2016, when attorneys general in New York and Illinois sued the company for barring employees from taking another job with competing sandwich shops for two years after quitting and from working for any establishment that made more than 10% of its revenue from sandwiches located within two miles of a Jimmy John’s location.


[link:https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2021-07-09/what-bidens-executive-order-on-non-compete-agreements-means-for-tech-workers|

I am currently in a non compete clause. Not only can I not work for a competitor - it bans me from even working for myself.

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