View from a drone of protests on December 14th at night


Protests today- December 15th



Opposition leader Vitali Klitschko (the WBC Heavyweight Champion)


His brother Wladimir Klitschko with his fiancé Hayden Panetierre
(He is also a heavyweight champion)


Priests at the barricades


Welding barricades


20 foot high barricades built after police withdrew



A protester expressing their displeasure with the police

http://reut.rs/1gA6dwF

These protests have veered around from brash to serious to rock concert. Rinse and repeat probably. They have been interesting and different from others that have occurred.

The police moved in earlier in the week and then pulled back. They have not been nearly as brutal as their counterparts in other countries.

McCain is over there now doing gawd knows what. It's against Russia so it has to be right. At least he's not meddling in the Middle East where he was oh so much help.

The EU talks have broken down. President Yanukovich doesn't appear to have a clue about what to o. He will be going to the Kremlin this week to get one from them apparently. I still don't know if he has the balls to break the protests.

I have no idea who is in charge or where this is going to end up. The Ukraine owes billions to Russia and depend on them for a lot of support. The protesters want more ties to the EU and a lot of freedom.

He was being treated at London's Wellington hospital after a long illness, his agent added. O'Toole's daughter Kate said the family was overwhelmed "by the outpouring of real love and affection being expressed towards him, and to us".

He received an honorary Oscar in 2003, having initially turned it down.

In a letter the actor asked the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to delay it until he was 80, saying he was "still in the game and might win the bugger outright". O'Toole's agent said he was "one of a kind in the very best sense and a giant in his field".

Prime Minister David Cameron said: "My thoughts are with Peter O'Toole's family and friends. His performance in my favourite film, Lawrence of Arabia, was stunning."

O'Toole began his acting career as an exciting young talent on the British stage and his Hamlet in 1955 at the Bristol Old Vic, was critically acclaimed.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-25393557

Fair winds and following seas to you Peter O'Toole.
You will be missed.

Edit to add:
His full name was Peter Seamus Lorcan O'Toole.
Here is a profile of O'Toole by Gay Talese-http://longform.org/stories/peter-o-toole-on-the-ould-sod

<snip>
Carroll was there to make serious points. She said she would ask Florida’s attorney general to begin an independent investigation of the case. Shielding her eyes from the sun at times, she said she believed that the Tallahassee Police Department’s inquiry was skewed to protect Winston, and that the state attorney’s office had followed suit. She called the police investigation shoddy and filled with errors, and charged that there were discrepancies between the accuser’s copies of her hospital records and the copies of those records provided to Carroll and reporters by the state.

“I don’t know who would’ve done this,” Carroll said, stopping just short of accusing the authorities of tampering with evidence.

She waved a thick stack of pages in the air. The evidence she received from the state comprised 248 pages, she said, but 152 of them were related to the victim, including her phone records, text messages and Twitter posts. Only 11 pages, give or take, bore Winston’s name, Carroll said.
<snip>
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/sports/ncaafootball/no-one-wins-in-florida-state-case.html

This wasn't an investigation of the rape or Winston. This was an investigation of the victim. Her claims should have been investigated. However, Winston and those around him should have gotten equal attention.

And you wonder why women don't report rape? This was an unfortunate message that was sent to all women.
2% of rape claims are false. The people who made them should be investigated. However, people act like most claims are made up.

She has left FSU. She not only did it because of receiving threats herself but because some fool cut the tires of the cars of her sorority sisters. I'm sure that vandalism was investigated with all deliberate speed too.

Good luck to anybody reporting a sexual assault there or in many places especially if a star athlete is involved.

BTW Winston was on teevee after winning the Heisman claiming he was proven to be innocent. Not so. The prosecutor said in his opinion he didn't have enough evidence to press charges. There is a big difference.

@cutemergency

Ha!

At the Atlantic today, I have a piece on NCAA regulations, hostess programs, and gang rape in college football. I’m supplementing that article here on Power Forward.

1: The Vanderbilt Football Rape Case

2. The Naval Academy Football Rape Cases

3. The Montana University and BYU Football Rape Cases

I’m sure that the following list is incomplete.

These are the cases that we know about. As I said in my piece:

One in five women on a given college campus will be raped, 85 percent of those women will know their attackers, and 90 percent of those rapes will go unreported.

And the problem of sexual assault on college campuses is dire. According to MSN News last month, “students at 29 universities…have brought legal action, accusing institutions of negligence in the handling of reports of sexual violence and violating Title IX, a 1972 law protecting students from discrimination driven by gender.”

According to Benedict and Keteyian in The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football:

Scarcely a year goes by without one or more college football programs being rocked by sexual assault charges. In 2012, players at five BCS schools were charged with sex crimes.
THE LIST:
<snip>
Read 'em and weep:
http://pwrfwd.net/2013/09/26/a-list-of-college-football-rape-cases/

I do mean weep. WTF is wrong with people?
And as pointed out, it's a problem at universities in general. Google and you will find schools such as UConn, Yale, Columbia and others with complaints against them now.

What if it were your daughter, sister, friend.....?

Earth_Pics

Sweet!

America's Global Military Footprint, Seen From Above
http://empire.is/

Enlarge each picture to get more detail and the location of the base.

Good grief!

Students at the University of Colorado are organizing in support of longtime sociology professor Patti Adler, who they say was asked to retire at the end of this semester for a lecture she taught on prostitution.

Many students who attended her "Deviance in U.S. Society" lecture Thursday afternoon said Adler told the 500-person class that she wouldn't be coming back after winter break. She said Thursday's class was the last she'd ever teach at CU, but it wasn't by choice.

Adler was traveling to Maui on Friday, according to her husband and University of Denver sociology professor Peter Adler.

CU officials said Patti Adler is still a tenured faculty member.

"Professor Adler is a tenured faculty member at CU-Boulder and, as long as she remains at the university, we expect that she'll teach along with her other duties," said CU spokesman Mark Miller.
<snip>
http://www.dailycamera.com/cu-news/ci_24721349/cu-boulder-students-tenured-professor-patti-adler-being

Has she given this lecture in other years?
Hmmmmm.......

@Globe_Pics

Mother Nature bats last.
That is one beautiful feline!

Roman Tritz’s memories of the past six decades are blurred by age and delusion. But one thing he remembers clearly is the fight he put up the day the orderlies came for him.

“They got the notion they were going to come to give me a lobotomy,” says Mr. Tritz, a World War II bomber pilot. “To hell with them.”

The orderlies at the veterans hospital pinned Mr. Tritz to the floor, he recalls. He fought so hard that eventually they gave up. But the orderlies came for him again on Wednesday, July 1, 1953, a few weeks before his 30th birthday.

This time, the doctors got their way.

The U.S. government lobotomized roughly 2,000 mentally ill veterans—and likely hundreds more—during and after World War II, according to a cache of forgotten memos, letters and government reports unearthed by The Wall Street Journal. Besieged by psychologically damaged troops returning from the battlefields of North Africa, Europe and the Pacific, the Veterans Administration performed the brain-altering operation on former servicemen it diagnosed as depressives, psychotics and schizophrenics, and occasionally on people identified as homosexuals.

The VA doctors considered themselves conservative in using lobotomy. Nevertheless, desperate for effective psychiatric treatments, they carried out the surgery at VA hospitals spanning the country, from Oregon to Massachusetts, Alabama to South Dakota.
<snip>
Much more: http://long.fm/18Lys6E

Never read about this before......