In a heavily guarded sports complex in Kabul, Afghanistan, loud thumps echo from the hall as young girls grab their partners by the arms and hurl them onto a thin mat covering the carpeted concrete floor. At times, some of the girls pause to adjust their headscarves, partially covering their all-white judo uniforms, while others have not covered their heads at all. This, despite the fact that their trainer is a man. Afghanistan, a country that is often in the headlines for its dismal record with women’s rights, is perhaps the last place on earth where one would expect to find enthusiastic girls practicing a combat sport and dreaming of…

Students demand change in Myanmar. Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.In Myanmar, as university students around the world begin to exalt their summer freedom, a national student movement continues to demand greater political freedom. At the end of May 2015 Myanmar’s parliament was still discussing proposed amendments to a National Education Law put forth by a coalition of student groups. The students have expressed their concern over the lack of academic freedom and the centralized control inherent in the law, which was passed in September 2014. Since its adoption, students and other activists have been campaigning around the country. In many ways, the struggle around education reform can be seen as…

Dan Rather is not fading gently into the night. The 85-year-old former CBS news anchor penned a powerful letter on his Facebook page about how his fellow journalists should handle reporting on Donald Trump’s lies: “It is not the proper role of journalists to meet lies—especially from someone of Mr. Trump’s stature and power—by hiding behind semantics and euphemisms. Our role is to call it as we see it, based on solid reporting. When something is, in fact, a demonstrable lie, it is our responsibility to say so.” The letter came in response to an interview with Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker, who told NBC’s “Meet the Press” host…

Second day of peaceful Freddie Gray protest in Baltimore. Demotix/ Angel Mayas. All rights reserved.In the months following a police officer’s killing of unarmed African-American teenager, Michael Brown, on August 9, 2014 something changed. Ferguson, Missouri quickly became the improbable backdrop for the beginning of a movement that propelled the American nation into a debate on race and inequality within our communities. As more instances of civil resistance are being publicized, leading US universities are also beginning to offer courses on The Ferguson Movement. And it’s true, Ferguson sparked greater appreciations of racial, cultural, and political sensitivities in the US, an awareness that also resonated internationally.  These issues have not…

Click:api602 forged gate valvePart 12 of 14 See all › Issue 39: The OGOD Issue Next: Hillary Clinton’s Biggest Secret—Revealed! In 1915, five years before women in the United States won the right to vote, American author Charlotte Perkins Gilman published Herland, a sui generis piece of steampunk speculative fiction about a fantasy feminist utopia. When I discovered the all-but-forgotten novel when it was reissued in 2014, I expected an unintentionally funny, naively fu­turistic throwback to a bygone time. Instead, I discovered a scorchingly relevant Victorian take on the nar­rative roots of patriarchal oppres­sion, which became, unfortunately, even more relevant post-election. The story begins with narrator Vandyck “Van” Jennings, a…

It seems that antisemitism is everywhere these days. Violent attacks on Jews in Copenhagen and Paris come on top of surveys and monitoring exercises that suggest that antisemitic incidents and attitudes may be on the rise in Europe. Yet it is perhaps more accurate to say that discourse about antisemitism is everywhere these days. The question of what antisemitism is, how it can be measured, what causes it and how to address it, are all heavily contested. This is a highly emotive debate in which, on the one hand, some argue that antisemitism is routinely disguised, excused, or denied, and on the other hand, others argue that antisemitism is exaggerated…

Over the last years, NSA spying revelations and anxieties over the “Pivot to Asia” have cast a new shadow over the transatlantic relationship. In response, US and EU policymakers are attempting to forge a comprehensive Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (or TTIP), which promises to deepen trade and jumpstart the transatlantic economy. But to its seemingly rising chorus of opponents, TTIP is an attempt by the powers-that-be to impose a neoliberal agenda on Europe through the back door of opaque negotiations and shadowy private courts. The participants of the European Students Conference (ESC) at Yale that took place in February 2015 took stock of the debate and came to their own conclusions, seeing…

It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that male-dominated societies don’t bode well for women’s liberation. Domestic abuse, pay gaps, double standards, and sexual objectification just scratch the surface of what women face as a result of patriarchy. Now, thanks to a new report published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, our suspicions have been confirmed: Sexism isn’t working for men either. Analysts reached this definitive conclusion after looking at 78 independent studies that investigated the relationship between masculine norms and mental health outcomes over the past 11 years. By following a total of nearly 20,000 men, psychologists found that the normalization of toxic masculinity not only conditioned men to…

SOMALIA,March 25,2017: Another displaced family migrates to IDP camp in Mogadishu. Thousands of Somalis have recently trekked to Mogadishu seeking food and aid. NurPhoto/press Association. All rights reserved.During Somalia’s 2011 famine, in which a quarter of a million people died, Hassan lost many of his cattle. With the few that survived, he managed to stay at home in Qansahdheere, in southwestern Somalia. Six years on, as Somalia faces yet another humanitarian disaster, Hassan and his family have fled to Mogadishu hoping to find aid. Hassan and his family made it to the capital city’s only government-managed camp, Badbaado. Half of Somalia’s population of 12.3 million people currently need humanitarian assistance.…

Pro-Palestinian activists protest at John Lewis. Mark Kerrison/Demotix. All rights reserved. Events have a far reaching impact. People share them on social media, writers and journalists report and visualise them, historians contextualise them, social scientists analyse them and philosophers and intellectuals interpret them. Recently, Israeli and international agencies extensively reported on the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement against the Israeli occupation. Back in 2005, BDS was founded by Palestinians to pressure Israel to end the occupation, adopting non-violent means. At the time negligible, if any, concern was paid to BDS and Israeli officials claimed it would not work. Nowadays, the Israeli far right and Zionists view BDS as an existential threat to Israel, calling for war…