Category Archives: Viva!

“I graduated last May with an accounting degree and moved to…

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“I graduated last May with an accounting degree and moved to the city. But four months had passed and I didn’t have a job yet. I’d probably sent out my resume to thirty different places. And I couldn’t afford to keep waiting for people to call me back. So I went to the strip with all the car dealerships, and started going door-to-door to see if they had any openings in accounting. I’ve always loved cars. I used to always read Consumer Reports with my dad. So I thought it would be a good fit. The lady at BMW was a bit standoffish. Then I went to Audi. They were great. Super welcoming. But they didn’t have any positions at the moment. Then I got to Jaguar/Land Rover– which was my first choice, so I was working up to it— and they sat me down right there for an interview. I was there all afternoon, then they said: ‘We like what we see. Can you start tomorrow?’ I ran outside and called my parents. My dad was so proud of me. I was so proud of myself.”

What I Learnt from Karaikal Ammaiyar and Her Closet of Adornments – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Vanity is at once discouraged and encouraged in women. Among the conflicting social messages we receive, we are told that to care too much about one’s appearance denotes shallowness of character or lack of intellectual gravitas, but that to not appear pleasing is to be lacking in social graces or emotional stability. There are women who seem to be smitten by trends; there are women who establish a more individualistic style; there are women who seem to have no clear taste; there are women who frankly seem to not have an aesthetic sense – and each of them is perceived and pegged in a different way. Our wardrobes speak volumes for us. In the long history of female silencing, the wardrobe was an instrument long before the pen, which did not find its way into the majority of our hands until rather recent centuries. Little tells us more about the power of this instrument than the moral and cultural policing of women’s attire. ‘Pleasing’ – denoting acceptable attention that puts other people at ease. In India, a sari in most contexts is ‘pleasing’. It speaks of the woman’s urge to please, to appear serious, shy, subordinate, unchallenging. So why then did I find myself lodging a complaint at a Chennai hotel a few years ago because the management had assumed I was soliciting, based entirely on the fact that I had been sitting alone in the lobby in a sari? I had been waiting for my friends for a night of partying. The sari in that context was not pleasing. It was subversive. The undertone was this: women who go clubbing don’t wear saris when they do because doing so would be to insult the garment and corrupt its inherent morality by bringing it into an immoral sphere. Their lifestyles were acceptable so long as they were compartmentalised. To not compartmentalise – to confuse the decorum of the sari with the abandon of the pub – was to be profoundly lacking in morality, i.e. a whore.

Source: What I Learnt from Karaikal Ammaiyar and Her Closet of Adornments – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Pinned to Feminista on Pinterest

Description: Long before Destiny’s Child made fashion and music collide, there was The Supremes. From all-sequin gowns to matching skirt suits (not to mention those incredible beehives) their impeccable matching style led the way for girl-groups and musicians the world over.
By Ned Hamson
Pinned to Feminista on Pinterest
Found on: http://bitly.com/1Tpv6Pz

AFRICA/EGYPT – Copt Organisation asks President al Sisi to grant an amnesty to Copt youths wrongly condemned for offending Islam

Cairo – Karim Kamal, founder of the Union General of Copts for the Motherland, has asked the President of Egypt Abdel Fattah al Sisi to intervene regarding the case of a group of Copt youths recently accused of verbally offending Islam and sentenced to five years in prison. Kamal urges Egypt’s Head of State to grant amnesty to the young men in question. But the request, made public in the Egyptian media, also expresses harsh criticism of the law on blasphemy and offence to religion, misused to persecute innocent people, while extremists and fomenters of religious hatred go unpunished.
The case in question in the appeal addressed to al Sisi involves four Copt students charged with offending the Islamic religion, by sharing in the Spring of 2015 a video-clip of a few seconds, recorded on a mobile phone, in which they mime the scene of the slitting of the throat of a Muslim in prayer, imitating the horrendous executions carried out by Jihadists of the self-proclaimed Islamic State . At the end of February the Egyptian court in Minya issued a heavy sentence to the young men: three will serve five years in prison, and the fourth, not yet eighteen years old, will be sent to a guarded residence for minor offenders. .

Yehuda Glick invades Al-Aqsa after court ban lifted, Tuesday morning

PNN/Jerusalem

Israeli right-winger Yehuda Glick, known as the head of the Temple Mount Faithful group, was escorted – together with other settlers – under Israeli armed protection into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, in Jerusalem, days after an Israeli court lifted an order barring him entry to the Islamic holy site.

A statement by Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage said that the rabbi and the settlers stormed the compound entering through Al-Magharbeh gate, provocatively toured the yard and performed their Talmudic rituals.

“When an extremist like Glick storms Al-Aqsa Mosque, this stirs up troubles and provokes Muslims. We hold the Israeli police responsible for that,” the director of the compound, Sheikh Omaal-Kiswani said.

"Yehuda and I Shall Ascend the Temple Mount Again"“Yehuda and I Shall Ascend the Temple Mount Again”

In a a short post on his Facebook page, Glick said:

“One year, four months and a few days ago, after an assassination attempt against me, while I was still in a life-threatening, critical condition, [my wife] Yafi said in an interview (which became the [Yedioth] magazine’s front page) ‘Yehuda and I Shall Ascend the Temple Mount Again.’ Today, with a heart filled with gratitude, we fulfilled it.”

Last week, a Jerusalem court acquitted Glick of assault charges and removed the ban against his going to the Temple Mount, where he works as “tour guide”.

The prosecution indicted him for pushing a Muslim woman on the ground at the Al-Aqsa compound, breaking her hand.

The case fell apart when the prosecution suspected that the 67-year-old Palestinian Ziva Badarna’s testimony was fake.

According to Haaretz, Glick was barred from entering the Al-Aqsa compound after a Jerusalem District Court Judge said that his presence there was “inflammatory,” particularly since he was accused of assaulting a woman during one of his visits there.

The judge commented that “there is a risk of violence breaking out if the defendent returns to the compound before the end of legal proceedings in his case.”

Yehuda and his wife Tuesday morning.Yehuda and his wife Tuesday morning.

Despite the court ban, Glick was escorted inside the compound by Israeli guards a handful of times last year.

In 2014 he survived an attempt on his life by a gunman in a drive-by shooting in Jerusalem.

He was seriously wounded in the incident. A Palestinian man suspected of being behind the shooting was killed in shootout with with Israeli police a day later.

Glick leads Israel’s extremist “Temple Mount” movement, which calls for building a Jewish temple where the iconic Al-Aqsa Mosque now stands.

The Dome of the Rock — located in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound — is the third holiest site in Islam.

At the same time, it is venerated as Judaism’s most holy place, as it sits where Jews believe the First and Second Temples once stood.