Category Archives: Viva!

Friday Open Thread |Our Gems Week: Nina Simone | 3CHICSPOLITICO If you love Nina – you have to bookmark this – thanks 3CHICKS!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BTNjeKqpEk

She was one of the most extraordinary artists of the twentieth century, an icon of American music. She was the consummate musical storyteller, a griot as she would come to learn, who used her remarkable talent to create a legacy of liberation, empowerment, passion, and love through a magnificent body of works. She earned the moniker ‘High Priestess of Soul’ for she could weave a spell so seductive and hypnotic that the listener lost track of time and space as they became absorbed in the moment. She was who the world would come to know as Nina Simone.

Source: Friday Open Thread |Our Gems Week: Nina Simone | 3CHICSPOLITICO

Raul Castro: Blockade Most Serious Barrier to Economic Progress | News | teleSUR English

Destroying a bridge is easy and requires little time. To solidly rebuild one is a much longer and difficult task.After four failed attempts, as a symbol of willpower and perseverance, on September 2, 2013, U.S. swimmer Diana Nyad managed to swim across the Florida Straits, without a shark cage.For this feat, overcoming the distance that geographically separates our countries, on August 30, 2014, to the tune of the national anthems of Cuba and the United States, she was presented with the Order of Sporting Merit, awarded by the Cuban Council of State.This accomplishment contains a strong message, it should serve us as an example for bilateral relations, as it confirms that if she could, then we too can.I reiterate our thanks to President Obama for his visit and the willingness of the government of Cuba to continue moving forward in the coming months for the benefit of our peoples and countries.

Source: Raul Castro: Blockade Most Serious Barrier to Economic Progress | News | teleSUR English

Femen earn victory in right to protest topless – The Local

Three Femen activists were acquitted of exhibitionism on Wednesday for a topless protest staged as former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn arrived at his trial for “aggravated pimping” in February 2015. “It’s the first acquittal in a trial against Femen on the charge of sexual exhibition,” their lawyer Valentine Reberioux told AFP. “A political demonstration should not be confused with sexual aggression,” she said. “These are political acts using the nude torso as a mode of expression and it ends there.”

Source: Femen earn victory in right to protest topless – The Local

By Jane Fonda Written for Lenny: My Convoluted Journey to Feminism | Jane Fonda

this is not about replacing one “-archy” with another, it’s about transforming social and cultural norms and institutions so that power, violence, and greed are not the primary operating principles. It’s not about moving from patriarchy to matriarchy, but from patriarchy to democracy. Feminism means real democracy. There’s no road map to get there. It hasn’t happened yet. Women and men of conscience have never had a chance thus far to make our revolution. The journey is both external and internal, political and personal. For me, the personal meant becoming a single woman, no longer silencing my voice, slowly becoming the subject of my own life. My friendships with women grew deeper and more fulfilling. I read books I’d read before, by Carol Gilligan, Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan, Gerda Lerner, bell hooks, and Jean Baker Miller, among others, but I understood them in a new way. In the process, I discovered that what I’d thought were just my issues were, in fact, shared by other women. I was not alone. The personal became political, and I became an embodied feminist. I had gone from believing that women’s issues were a distraction, mere ancillary problems to be addressed after everything else had been taken care of, to the realization that women are the issue, the core issue. We will fail to solve any problem — poverty, peace, sustainable development, environment, health — unless we look at it through a gender lens and make sure the solution will be good for women. It took me 30 years to get it, but it’s OK to be a late bloomer as long as you don’t miss the flower show.

Source: By Jane Fonda Written for Lenny: My Convoluted Journey to Feminism | Jane Fonda

New Myanmar government plans ethnic affairs ministry | News | DW.COM | 21.03.2016

“A ministry of ethnic affairs is of vital importance for the future of the union, which needs peace, development and sustainability,” Htin Kyaw told the nation in his first address since the National League for Democracy (NLD) won last year’s elections. Ethnic clashes in the country have displaced over 240,000 people in Myanmar’s northern Kachin state, where rebels are fighting the army. The western Rakhine state in Myanmar has also been riddled with violence against the Rohingya Muslims, which Myanmar considers as immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. On Monday, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, said thousands of Rohingyas, who had fled their homes after violence broke out in 2012, were going back. The agency’s regional spokeswoman, Vivian Tan, told Reuters news agency that the number of refugees in camps in Rakhine state had gone down to 120,000 from 145,000 in the last days.

Source: New Myanmar government plans ethnic affairs ministry | News | DW.COM | 21.03.2016

Egyptian Aak 2016- Week 11 ( March 14-20)

Nervana

Top Headlines

  • Italian prosecutor in Egypt to probe killing of Italian Student. Monday
  • Egypt president suggests his political enemies murdered Italian student. Wednesday
  • The 2011 NGO case is reopened against Hossam Bahgat, Gamal Eid and others. Thursday
  • Egypt cabinet reshuffle expected soon. Friday
  • 15 Egyptian policemen killed in Sinai attack claimed by ISIS. Saturday/ Sunday

 

Sinai ISIS

Funeral of two victims of Saturday’s IS attack in Sinai

Main Headlines

 Monday

 Tuesday

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Frida Kahlo, Fashion Icon — The Cut

 

Fifty years after Frida Kahlo died in her home in Mexico City, her most private rooms were finally opened to the public, revealing a trove of diaries, letters, and hundreds of clothes still perfumed by paint and cigarettes. When the items became available to the Frida Kahlo Museum in 2004, the brocade corsets and hand-embroidered silk skirts were rumored to grow heavy at night, as if her spirit had returned to wear them.Fashion was as much a part of Kahlo’s paintings as her daily life: She spent hours in front of the mirror getting dressed and loved shopping at department stores as much as the shops in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The book Frida Kahlo: Fashion As the Art of Being, out March 22 from Assouline, juxtaposes Kahlo’s clothing with the fashion and designers she has continued to influence for decades.While artists and magazine editors have reproduced her bold style countless times (some featuring linen skirts, thick eyebrows, and hair adorned in flowers), she has more recently influenced designers like Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy, Dolce & Gabbana, and Carolina Herrera. Her corsets inspired Madonna’s famed “cone” bustier, designed by Jean Paul Gaultier for her 1990 Blond Ambition tour. Click ahead for a glimpse at her influence over the years.

Source: Frida Kahlo, Fashion Icon — The Cut

Americas MexicoBlog: Nestora is Finally Free

Following her release, Salgado appeared at a press conference hosted by the Miguel Agustin Pro Human Rights Center in Mexico City. The newly-released prisoner urged freedom for other jailed CRAC members and “500 political prisoners,” criticized media manipulation and educational policies, backed the movement for the 43 Ayotzinapa students, and demanded respect for Mexico’s original peoples. “I only want to tell Mr. Pena Nieto to respect our peoples and our community police, because we have shown that we don’t defend delinquents,” Salgado said. “I ask for support for our indigenous peoples and respect for their rights, and that so much injustice not be permitted.” Nestora Salgado is expected to return to the United States for medical treatment.

Source: Americas MexicoBlog: Nestora is Finally Free

Syrian refugee who swam from Turkey to Greece sets sights on Rio Olympics – 

Ms Mardini is among 43 athletes chosen by the International Olympics Committee to potentially form a multinational team of refugees in Rio. But it has been a death-defying move from the Mediterranean to training in an Olympic-sized pool. In the summer of 2015, Ms Mardini and her sister Sarah, 20, climbed into a rubber dinghy in Turkey bound for the Greek island of Lesbos. Twenty people were packed onboard and “only three could swim,” she said. When the boat began taking water, Ms Mardini and her sister plunged into the sea. Each holding on to one side of the rubber boat, the sisters swam with just an arm each, tugging the vessel along. “It was awful in the beginning but we thought it would be a shame if we didn’t help the people who were onboard with us,” Ms Mardini recalled. We thought it would be a shame if we didn’t help the people who were onboard with us. Yusra Mardini, refugee After several hours they finally reached Greek shores at dawn. “Baba, we did it! We are in Greece!” they screamed down the phone to their father, Ezzat Mardini, 45, who was then a refugee in Jordan.

Source: Syrian refugee who swam from Turkey to Greece sets sights on Rio Olympics – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Saturday Open Thread | USPS has now restored direct mail to Cuba | 3CHICSPOLITICO

on March 20, President Obama will set foot on the island country that’s only 90 miles off the coast of Florida. The visit is a historic milestone after more than a year of progress from the day in December of 2014 when the President first announced he was abandoning a failed, Cold War-era approach to Cuba in favor of a new course to normalize relations. Since then, we’ve restored non-stop flights between our two countries. We’ve helped facilitate more people-to-people interaction and commercial enterprise. We’ve allowed U.S. dollars to be used in more financial transactions with Cuba. And today, we’re restoring direct mail for the first time in 50 years. The first flight carrying that first batch of U.S. direct mail to Cuba took off yesterday — a development that may please Ileana Yarza, a 76-year-old letter writer in Cuba who has been waiting for the President to visit for years. “I think there are not many Cubans so eager as I to meet you in person,” she wrote on February 18. “Not as an important American personality, but as a charming president whose open smile wins hearts.”

Source: Saturday Open Thread | USPS has now restored direct mail to Cuba | 3CHICSPOLITICO