#they mean to condemn the treatment of women in the Middle East

[philsmeatylegss]

Terfs realize there’s an insanely large difference between fascist governments and abusive people who use Islam as an excuse to violate and suppress women’s voices and regular Muslim people who just want to live a regular life challenge. Terfs realize Islam is a religion that highly emphasizes peace and the traditions Muslims do often help them connect with that feeling of peace challenge. Terfs realize most Muslim women want to cover up as it makes them more comfortable and saying they shouldn’t cover up is anti women challenge. Terfs realize that no one, including other Muslims, wants women to be oppressed and abused and believe women should have the choice as to if they want to cover up or not challenge. Terfs realize condemning Islam and equating it to abuse and oppression makes you xenophobic challenge. Terfs realize abused and oppressed Muslim women shouldn’t have their stories exploited to make a point challenge.

[obsidianstrawberrymilk]

A General Analysis of Wednesday

As much as it was hyped up, overall, this show was kinda... meh? Like, there were some parts that interested me and that I liked (mainly the relationships), but it lacked quite severely in other departments. Wednesday felt a bit like a show that wanted to say things, but wasn’t sure how to say them; or a show that wanted us to see things a certain way but didn’t provide enough development for it to happen. Specifically...

Wednesday’s weird representation: the Pilgrims and other bigots

One of the main plot points of Wednesday was the Pilgrims, and the whitewashing of history, something that I really did like their attempts to tackle, actually! Specifically, the show makes a fairly clear allegory towards the Salem Witch Trials when it shows the way the main antagonist, Joseph Crackstone (a Pilgrim leader) persecuted and murdered all the Outcasts in the settlement.

The settlers even burned the barn where the Outcasts were all chained in - and given how the most well-known form of executing ‘witches’ was burning them at the stake (despite how little this actually happened), it feels like a clear allegory to the Witch Trials that actually took place in the Pilgrim colonies, and primarily targeted unmarried or widowed women (aka women more ‘expendable’ or ‘outcasted’ from the society).

That said, the condemnations the show made of the Pilgrims themselves were, ironically, whitewashed. Namely, it fails to even mention the literal genocides and harm towards Native American peoples living in the East Coast prior to their arrival. The closest it comes is this:

Or this:

So yes, it does mention the Pilgrim’s treatment of Indigenous peoples a bit, but for a series that intends to focus on the way they were glorified without deserving it and on how all their atrocities were brushed under the rug, the fact that there were no Indigenous characters at all in the show, and that their treatment by the Pilgrims wasn’t touched on much, was disappointing.

In fact, for a show with some of the main issues lying in discrimination experienced by the characters, it barely talks about racism at all. Wednesday is a very white show, not for the casting of the characters (though there are issues with casting the Mayor of Pilgrimville and it’s staunch defender as a black man. Like... why the fuck would a black man willingly defend the Pilgrims??) but for that it doesn’t touch on the different experiences nonwhite and white characters would have. Like, it doesn’t have to be a main focus, but literally the closest we get is this scene:

Bianca and Lucas meet to ‘trade self-improvement tips’, and Lucas drops this line, which - yeah. For a lot of kids of color, our families (if that) can be our only full support systems - because to most of the outside world, just by the fact that our skin isn’t paper, it automatically means we’re trouble, that we’re to blame for anything that goes wrong, that we can do less, will do less, will amount to less than our white peers. For me personally, it led to abuse from my (white) teachers for most of my elementary and middle school life, and even in high school, there’s a noticeable difference in how teachers treat kids of color and white kids.

Still, that’s all we really see discussed of any racism at all in the show. And yeah - for a series that outright states the characters are ‘marginalized’, I think they’re obligated to discuss deeper than whatever fictional boundaries they’ve made, especially when they barely touch on the few characters of color there are to begin with.

I don’t really have an issue with Bianca’s casting, tbh. Maybe it’s just because I liked her character from the start, but I don’t think it’s casting people of color as antagonists that’s the issue. I think it’s that, even when they give them depth, they don’t touch on subjects like racism even when the show is about ‘marginalized’ people, which in the town of Jerico, a small, Pilgrim-worshipping town in the middle of Fuckville, would have an impact.

There’s a similar thing Wednesday does with queerness, though it’s more explicit about the queercoding than it is with the barely-there drop-ins about racism.

The show outright says Enid’s mom wants to send her to ‘conversion therapy’ to she can be a ‘normal’ (werewolf), and then it’s just... dropped? Enid in general is a very queer coded character, from her *friendship* with Wednesday which is more meaningful than any of Wednesday’s relationships with Tyler or Xavier, to her color scheme, to her plot of taking ‘longer to develop’ her wolf form and having her mom pressure her to be someone she isn’t so she can be ‘normal’. But then even after something like this, which strays about as close as they get can without outright starting Enid’s queer, they just ignore it. Enid tells her mom she’s not going and that���s the end of it.

The second the show actually has to deal with real-world representation or the marginalization that comes as a result of that, it falls short. It gives us fantasy-racism and crumbs and expects us to be happy, while declaring itself to be about ‘marginalized’ people and the whitewashing of history.

So overall, while I do appreciate the serious allegory for the Salem Witch Trials - something which is still not taken as seriously as it should be - I’m not happy with the way this show treated characters of color or queercoded characters.

Wednesday as an Addams Family adaptation: the Good, the Bad, and the Unnecessary.

If you look at Wednesday as an Addams family adaptation, imo, it falls even shorter than if you just look at it as it’s own show. Mind you, I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad show, but that this doesn’t feel much like the Addams Family.

Right from the start, the drama between Morticia and Wednesday feels... very contrived, and also unneeded. Like, Morticia never once even implies she wants Wednesday to be ‘another version of her’ so where does that tension come from?? It feels like Tim Burton just wanted to do his parent/child tension thing in the easiest way possible to relate to the target audience, but didn’t actually bother developing it??

Like, the only instance I could think of where Wednesday could get the idea was her being sent to Nevermore, which is more her fault for being expelled than anything. Like, when kids and parents have this tension, that parents project onto their children to be exactly like them, it’s usually because of a pattern of behavior where parents try and force their interests, decisions, and life on their kids, and don’t like them making their own decisions - especially if it’s things they wouldn’t do.

But Morticia never really seems like that with Wednesday. If they wanted to give them those issues, I feel like there were definitely ways they could have shown it better - maybe during the Parents’ Day episode or whatever, Morticia could have been making comments like “oh, you haven’t joined the fencing team yet? How will you make Captain if you don’t get enough experience?” or other things.

That said, I don’t think that tension needed to be there at all? They only really spent one episode on it at all, and then its resolved anyway. The majority of the plot can happen without Wednesday and Morticia disliking each other - Wednesday can have court-ordered therapy if you need her to have it, she can still dislike and try and run away from Nevermore (maybe bc she misses her family instead of just hating the school), etc. Like the only thing I could see changing is Wednesday would probably tell her mom about her visions earlier and get the rundown on them, but the plot could still progress the same, just because Goody Addams is a stubborn dead bitch this time.

I’ve seen some people say that in order to make a unique story with the Addamses, any drama added between them will feel contrived, and I sort of disagree? I don’t think there needed to be any tension between Wednesday and her parents in the show, yeah, but if you need drama, you can just have it come form outside sources - like, in the movies, the main issues were always between Gomez and Fester, or between the Addamses and the outside world.

Imo, the Garett Gates murder episode would be a really good way to show that. Instead of having Wednesday, who didn’t hesitate to attempt murder on her brother’s high school bullies (btw we stan her for that), be angry about her dad... also attempting murder, instead have the entire conflict be on attempting to get Gomez out of jail, and the whole story with Garett Gates can come out in the process. You can have all the Addames work together to show off a functioning and caring, if morbid in an Addams-typical manner, dynamic, we still get the information, and Wednesday feels more like the actual Addams family, instead of just My Immortal with a budget.

Plus, I feel like that dynamic could have offered a really neat contrast to most of Wednesday’s classmates. Like, Enid’s mother sucks (her dad seems nice, if passive), Xavier’s dad cares more about PR than his son, Tyler’s mom is gone and his dad is absent at best, Lucas’s dad is straight up dead now, and Bianca’s mom has married the leader of the cult they’re now trying to bring Bianca back into. Eugene is the only other one with a good family support system. Having Wednesday have a unique and trusting relationship with her parents could provide a juxtaposition between dynamics, which is really how the Addams family is meant to function - as a loving, trusting family opposed to (previously) all the suburban false unhappy families around them bathed in pastels and (now) all the preppy, shitty parenting we see going on even among other Outcasts, despite that they’re (the Addamses) meant to be the ‘freaks’.

Anyway, I think there were ways to make Wednesday work without destroying the original dynamic and function of the Addams family, but clear Tim Burton doesn’t. As an Addams family adaptation, I’d say 5/10 - it got their general weirdness okay, but they weren’t as violent or morbid as they were before (it was like they were trying to play it safe, somehow?? By not having them be as casual about murder and torture??? When that’s literally how they’re meant to be - loving but terrifying like that??), and they made way too much contrived drama between Wednesday and her parents.

An easy example of this type of sanitization was Pugsley - in the movies and shows before this, he was often just as sadistic as Wednesday (like his hobby of stealing road signs to cause car accidents) - yet here, he just seemed like the typical, boring, bullied fat kid. Why? Was it because they weren’t as willing to have him be a jerk because he’s a fat kid and not a thin teenage white girl?

Thing, though, was unquestionably the best character. Loved him. Uncle Fester was pretty cool as well. No major issues with them, though I’d have been interested to see this Fester and Gomez’s dynamic. Also, the actor for Gomez and Jenna Ortega were both fantastic in their roles.

Wednesday’s Wednesday, and other characters

Wednesday as a character, I found a lot less likable than I had in previous Addams family movies or shows, but there’s not actually much of an issue with this. Previously, we like Wednesday because the main targets of her revenge or violence are people like bullies - Wednesday seems to give them her comeuppance, and it’s funny when we see her dark, no-nonsense demeanor against the fake ones from people like Amanda from Addams Family Values.

The difference is that here, we see Wednesday acting suspiciously and cruelly to people who haven’t done much to deserve it, based on her first judgements of them - which works in the movies because she’s usually right. However, in Wednesday, we almost see that turned on its head because almost all the judgements shake makes are wrong.

Xavier is the one who winds up being correct when he warns her against Rowan and Tyler, Bianca and Lucas help her, Tyler and Thornhill are Hyde and Master, and people she thought were vulnerable, like Rowan, who Wednesday from the movies would also be defending, end up trying to kill her.

The only people she’s right about are Enid and Eugene, because Eugene reminds of her Pugsley, and I guess she just warms up to Enid easier.

I didn’t dislike this when I thought about it more, though it means her treatment of certain characters - namely Xavier - makes it harder to like her. I’m hoping this is addressed a bit more in S2, because it’s clear they’re presenting it as an actual character flaw that has consequences, unlike how they did in the previous Addams Family movies and shows.

Actually, this isn’t the only instance of Wednesday jumping to conclusions about things quickly. As well as how she judges people in the movies and animated show, in Addams Family Values she comes to the conclusion that her parents love the new baby (Pubert... ugh...) more than they do her. So this is actually a flaw Wednesday has had, just now it’s actually being presented as one.

It’s kind of interesting to see, though, where these judgements come from - because Wednesday’s a really biased person. She has a dislike of Nevermore from the get-go that she’s able to get past to befriend Eugene and Enid, because they feel familiar (Eugene - Pugsley, Enid - Morticia, to a degree she also sees some of her own insecurities in her), but that immediately gives her a dislike of Bianca and Xavier. Of course, this also has to do with how they’re introduced - Bianca as ‘the closest Nevermore has to royalty’, which is a position Wednesday is likely familiar with the Amandas of the world having, and... I’m genuinely not sure why she dislikes Xavier so much, tbh. Is it because she doesn’t like being vulnerable and weak, and Xavier had to save her in one of those moments? Does she just not like his obvious crush on her?

She ends the season in a friendly rivalry of sorts with Bianca, and maybe-friends with Xavier, so it seems like she’s starting to learn to reconsider her judgements of people, but I’d honestly have liked it if at least Xavier continued to be a bit wary of her - like, she nearly ruined his life and only ever suspected him as a serial murderer, and even condoned his being assaulted and his art destroyed. It would be understandable, and play into the fact that Wednesday’s actions do have consequences for her allies as well, if that was the lesson they were trying to impart. Idk.

My final hope for S2 is they just get rid of Ajax and replace any lines or roles he might have had with Yoko Tanaka, so we can finally get an actual confession between clearly lesbian-coded Enid and Wednesday. This boy has all the personality of a wet paper towel and I want him GONE.

Final Thoughts, I guess

Wednesday is a mid tier show and doesn’t feel like the Addams family, more like a My Immortal-ified Monster High attempt, but I did like it and will keep watching for Bianca, Lucas, Enid and Xavier. Both Xavier and Tyler actually become interesting when you separate them from Wednesday. You can really tell this was directed by Tim “My aesthetic isn’t for nonwhite people�� Burton.

[researchinhealthcare]

MEA Smoking Cessation & Nicotine De-Addiction Market Emerging Players May Yields New Opportunities 2021-2027

MEA Smoking Cessation & Nicotine De-Addiction Market Overview :

The smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction market in the Middle East and Africa is growing rapidly. Factors such as the increasing desire of addicts to quit smoking and an increasing number of ‘quit smoking’ movements led by the social and health organizations support the growth of the market. Moreover, the increasing or prohibitive costs of tobacco products due to high taxes leveraged and social stigma imposed on tobacco users escalates the market on the larger and widened platform.

Acknowledging the kind of gains the market perceives currently, Market Research Future (MRFR) in its recently published study report asserts that the Middle East and Africa smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction market will reach over USD 2108.38 MN, by 2022 registering a significant CAGR of 12.5%. from 2018 to 2022.

In the Middle East, especially in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, women and young people have picked up the habit of smoking hookah, a traditional smoking tool known as shishah or nargilah in the Arab world which have given the industry inroads to the two demographic groups that traditionally consume less tobacco.

On the other hand, government initiatives are becoming super successful means to quell the urge among smokers in the MEA region. Through these initiatives, the governments have been taking bold steps towards reducing causalities due to tobacco addiction. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also joined forces with Muslim fundamentalists who condemn smoking as evil.  These movements have gone further by encouraging religious leaders previously not active anti-smokers to take up the cause.

Resultantly, the Tobacco industry has prudently stepped back from religious arguments, and it seems that its hold over Arab smokers is cracking, finally. However, the industry still retains much of its ability to hawk products in Middle Eastern and North African markets.

The inclusion of Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) in the mainstream de-addiction movement is a progressive move which is having a far-reaching impact on the physical and economic health of these regions. Although NRT (both as gum and a patch format) has been enlisted by the WHO as an Essential Medicine to quit smoking, yet NRT had not been adopted as the first form of treatment.

Get Sample Report Analysis @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2737

Middle East and Africa Smoking Cessation & Nicotine De-Addiction Market –  Segments :

For ease of understanding, the Middle East and Africa Smoking Cessation & Nicotine De-Addiction Market has been segmented into four key dynamics:

By Treatment                     : Pharmacological and Therapies among others.

By Product Type                : Drugs, Inhalers, Patches, and Sprays & Gums among others.

By Distribution Channel  : Pharmacies, Online, and De-addiction Centers among others.

By Region                            : GCC countries and African countries

MEA Smoking Cessation and Nicotine De-Addiction Market –   Regional Analysis :

Continuing with its dominance, the UAE market for smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction is estimated to surge, witnessing high consumption of de-addiction products. UAE is expected to create a more significant revenue pocket in the Middle East and Africa market.

The Middle East is a big market for tobacco and its products and accounts for significantly higher smoking rates in the world, but there is growing interest in quitting and an expanding market for de-addiction programs. Middle Eastern and North African governments seem to be vulnerable to the influence of Tobacco.

However, they are proving that this influence they can wield to jarring. They leverage their positions to take up various movements that can help elite to become community pillars to advocate for their interests. Resultant, smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction products have consistently defended its ample footprint in the Middle Eastern region.

Moreover, the recent decision of the Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology (ESMA) to allow the sale of vaping devices is expected to help de-addiction. The major reason behind the move is the growing popularity of the unregulated products available online.

Additional factors such as high disposal income, the presence of plentiful smokers, influence the growth of the regional market, positively. Also, factors such as the continual R&D efforts transpired in the field to bring novelties in the de-addiction products and high per capita income support the growth of the regional market.

The Egypt smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction products market closely follows the UAE market, accounting for the second-largest market in the MEA region.  Whereas, Algeria and South Africa followed by Ethiopia are emerging as the fastest growing markets in Africa. However, the large unmet medical needs make the rest of Africa market the most prominent one.

MEA Smoking Cessation & Nicotine De-Addiction Market – Competitive Analysis :                  

The smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction market in the Middle East and Africa appears to be highly competitive with the presence of well-established players having regional as well as global presence. These market players compete against each other on the basis of quality, price, reputation, service, and distribution. Mergers & acquisitions, brand reinforcement, and innovations remain the key strategies adopted by the leading players of the market. The market will witness fierce competition due to the expected product & service extensions and product innovations.

MEA Smoking Cessation & Nicotine De-Addiction Market Major Players:

Key players leading the MEA smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction market include VMR Products LLC, Pfizer Inc, Johnson & Johnson, Cipla Inc., Novartis International AG, GlaxoSmithKline plc., Nicotek LLC., and Lorillard, Inc. among others.

Complete Report is Available @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/checkout?currency=one_user-USD&report_id=2737

[girlactionfigure]

Beautiful Inside and Out

She refused to take down the post.

Sarah Idan is a young Iraqi woman who represented her country in the 2017 Miss Universe competition. At a photoshoot related to the competition, fellow contestant Adar Gandelsman smiled shyly at Sarah. Sarah went over to say hello, and discovered that Adar was competing as Miss Israel. Adar was hesitant about revealing her nationality, fearing that Sarah would reject her, but instead, Sarah was warm and friendly. She suggested the two beauty queens take a selfie together, to show that just because their countries were at war, it didn’t mean they needed to be at war with each other.

After posting the selfie with the caption, “Peace and love from Miss Iraq and Miss Israel,” Sarah continued with several other pageant-related activities, then went to sleep without checking her phone. When she woke up, she had 40 messages and 50 missed calls. The Miss Iraq organization insisted she take down the picture immediately, and she was threatened with the loss of her crown and removal from the Miss Universe pageant. She insisted that her intentions were good, and she wasn’t supporting the Israeli government, just trying to show that the people of Iraq want peace. She posted this message of tolerance in Arabic, but the fallout was immediate.

Arab social media exploded with anger, with many people cursing Sarah, calling her a “Zionist shill” and worse, but she refused to take down the post.

Eventually, her entire family was forced to flee the country due to death threats. Sarah said, “People in Iraq recognized my family, they immediately knew who they were. And they were getting death threats. My mom was freaking out. I told her ‘Mom, just get out. Get out. I told her I’m sorry and asked if she wants me to leave the competition. I was ready to drop out right then.”

The whole experience was a wake-up call for Sarah about antisemitism in the Arab world. In an interview with David Suissa of the Jewish Journal, Sarah said, “It was crazy. I was so anxious at that time, but I knew what I was doing was right. I felt like I was on trial. I did not know there was antisemitism in the Middle East. I did not realize it was this strong in Arab countries. I began to hear all these stories about how the Jews were persecuted in Iraq and Iran and Egypt… I started reading a lot about the subject because if you want to make any statement – whether it’s on TV or an interview, a conference or something – I did not want to look like an idiot. The first act I took trying to make peace, I went to Israel with the American Jewish Committee.”

Sarah’s June 2018 visit to Israel “was a shock. The people who came to get my bags and the manager of the hotel, they were Arabs. They were Muslims. And I thought, What’s going on? I thought it was just going to be Jewish people. When I was in Haifa, it was during [the end of Ramadan] Eid [al-Fitr, breaking of the fast]. I noticed everyone greeted each other in both Arabic and Hebrew, and I thought that was wonderful. I see all these families – women wearing hijabs with their kids – walking together with Jews on the street. That’s something we never saw or heard about.”

Sarah went to visit her friend Adar Gandelsman in Jerusalem and was received warmly by the large community of Iraqi Jews there. Sarah said, “It actually felt weird – the people look like my people… Everything seems familiar to me.”

“I don’t think Iraq and Israel are enemies. I think maybe the governments are enemies with each other, but there are a lot of Iraqi people who don’t have a problem with Israel or with the Jewish people. There are a lot of Iraqi people on my side, and I believe they are happy I am here.”

Today, Sarah is focused on her new organization, Humanity Forward. She said, “We’re trying to rebuild relations between the Muslims and the Jews, Arabs and Israelis. First thing, we’re starting channels on YouTube and talking about politics and religion and history in Arabic. I want people to hear what they don’t hear on TV. They need to see what I saw.”

She also works with Save A Child’s Heart, an Israeli organization that brings children who need heart surgeries that cannot be performed in Iraq to Israel for treatment.

On June 26, 2019, Sarah gave a brave speech at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, and criticized media bias against Israel, and state-sponsored antisemitism in the Muslim world. She asked, “Why did the Iraqi government fail to condemn the threats, or allow my freedom of speech? The issue between Arabs and Jews goes beyond policy disagreements. It’s deeply rooted in the belief systems taught in Muslim countries, which are antisemitic… I’d like to remind Arab countries that today you share more common interests with Israel than the terrorist militias. Negotiating peace for both states isn’t betraying the Arab cause, but a vital step to end conflict and suffering for all.” On July 9, 2019, Sarah learned that Iraq planned to strip her citizenship because of her UN speech.

Sarah is a musician and songwriter who graduated from the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles, where she currently lives. She plays piano, guitar and harmonica, and sings in English, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese and French. Sarah has performed numerous times on Egyptian television.

For courageously building bridges between Arabs and Jews, at great cost to herself and her family, we honor Sarah Idan as this week’s Thursday Hero.

Image: The controversial selfie, Adar Gandelsman (Miss Israel) on left; Sarah Idan (Miss Iraq) on right.

Accidental Talmudist

[sapanas]

MEA Smoking Cessation & Nicotine De-Addiction Market – Industry Challenges, Key Vendors, Drivers, Trends, Overview, Segmentation, Application, Technology And Analysis Report Forecast To 2027

MEA Smoking Cessation & Nicotine De-Addiction Market Overview

The smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction market in the Middle East and Africa is growing rapidly. Factors such as the increasing desire of addicts to quit smoking and an increasing number of ‘quit smoking’ movements led by the social and health organizations support the growth of the market. Moreover, the increasing or prohibitive costs of tobacco products due to high taxes leveraged and social stigma imposed on tobacco users escalates the market on the larger and widened platform.

Acknowledging the kind of gains the market perceives currently, Market Research Future (MRFR) in its recently published study report asserts that the Middle East and Africa smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction market will reach over USD 2108.38 MN, by 2022 registering a significant CAGR of 12.5%. from 2018 to 2022.

In the Middle East, especially in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, women and young people have picked up the habit of smoking hookah, a traditional smoking tool known as shishah or nargilah in the Arab world which have given the industry inroads to the two demographic groups that traditionally consume less tobacco.

On the other hand, government initiatives are becoming super successful means to quell the urge among smokers in the MEA region. Through these initiatives, the governments have been taking bold steps towards reducing causalities due to tobacco addiction. The World Health Organization (WHO) has also joined forces with Muslim fundamentalists who condemn smoking as evil.  These movements have gone further by encouraging religious leaders previously not active anti-smokers to take up the cause.

Resultantly, the Tobacco industry has prudently stepped back from religious arguments, and it seems that its hold over Arab smokers is cracking, finally. However, the industry still retains much of its ability to hawk products in Middle Eastern and North African markets.

The inclusion of Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) in the mainstream de-addiction movement is a progressive move which is having a far-reaching impact on the physical and economic health of these regions. Although NRT (both as gum and a patch format) has been enlisted by the WHO as an Essential Medicine to quit smoking, yet NRT had not been adopted as the first form of treatment.

Get customized Sample with complete Toc, Inclusive of COVID-19 Industry Analysis @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/2737

Middle East and Africa Smoking Cessation & Nicotine De-Addiction Market –   Segments

For ease of understanding, the Middle East and Africa Smoking Cessation & Nicotine De-Addiction Market has been segmented into four key dynamics:

By Treatment                     : Pharmacological and Therapies among others.

By Product Type                : Drugs, Inhalers, Patches, and Sprays & Gums among others.

By Distribution Channel  : Pharmacies, Online, and De-addiction Centers among others.

By Region                            : GCC countries and African countries

MEA Smoking Cessation and Nicotine De-Addiction Market –   Regional Analysis

Continuing with its dominance, the UAE market for smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction is estimated to surge, witnessing high consumption of de-addiction products. UAE is expected to create a more significant revenue pocket in the Middle East and Africa market.

The Middle East is a big market for tobacco and its products and accounts for significantly higher smoking rates in the world, but there is growing interest in quitting and an expanding market for de-addiction programs. Middle Eastern and North African governments seem to be vulnerable to the influence of Tobacco.

However, they are proving that this influence they can wield to jarring. They leverage their positions to take up various movements that can help elite to become community pillars to advocate for their interests. Resultant, smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction products have consistently defended its ample footprint in the Middle Eastern region.

Moreover, the recent decision of the Emirates Authority for Standardization and Metrology (ESMA) to allow the sale of vaping devices is expected to help de-addiction. The major reason behind the move is the growing popularity of the unregulated products available online.

Additional factors such as high disposal income, the presence of plentiful smokers, influence the growth of the regional market, positively. Also, factors such as the continual R&D efforts transpired in the field to bring novelties in the de-addiction products and high per capita income support the growth of the regional market.

The Egypt smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction products market closely follows the UAE market, accounting for the second-largest market in the MEA region.  Whereas, Algeria and South Africa followed by Ethiopia are emerging as the fastest growing markets in Africa. However, the large unmet medical needs make the rest of Africa market the most prominent one.

MEA Smoking Cessation & Nicotine De-Addiction Market – Competitive Analysis                    

The smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction market in the Middle East and Africa appears to be highly competitive with the presence of well-established players having regional as well as global presence. These market players compete against each other on the basis of quality, price, reputation, service, and distribution. Mergers & acquisitions, brand reinforcement, and innovations remain the key strategies adopted by the leading players of the market. The market will witness fierce competition due to the expected product & service extensions and product innovations.

MEA Smoking Cessation & Nicotine De-Addiction Market Major Players:

Key players leading the MEA smoking cessation and nicotine de-addiction market include VMR Products LLC, Pfizer Inc, Johnson & Johnson, Cipla Inc., Novartis International AG, GlaxoSmithKline plc., Nicotek LLC., and Lorillard, Inc. among others.

Get Premium Research Report, Inclusive of COVID-19 Impact Analysis, Find more information @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/mea-smoking-cessation-nicotine-de-addiction-market-2737

Industry Advancements/Related News

March 08, 2019 – The Government of India (GoI) introduced Nirmal, a nicotine replacement gum under its Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP), strengthening its commitment to fight tobacco addiction in the country.

Launched on the occasion of Janaushadh Diwas (Generic Medicine day), promotion of Nirmal is a bold step by the GOI to achieve the objectives as per India’s National Health Policy 2017. Starting from March 08th, 2019, Nirmal would be available across the country in the Pradhan Mantri Janaushadhi Kendras (PM Generic Medicine Centers).

[humorepoch9-blog]

What Your Sons and Daughters Will Learn at University

Universities in the 20th century were dedicated to the advancement of knowledge. Scholarship and research were pursued, and diverse opinions were exchanged and argued in the “marketplace of ideas.”

This is no longer the case. Particularly in the social sciences, humanities, education, social work, and law, a single political ideology has replaced scholarship and research, because the ideology presents fixed answers to all questions. And, although the most important thing in universities today is the diversity of race, gender, sexual practice, ethnicity, economic class, and physical and mental capability, there is no longer diversity of opinion. Only those committed to the ideology are admitted to academic staff or administration.

Universities have been transformed by the near-universal adoption of three interrelated theories: postmodernism, postcolonialism, and social justice. These theories and their implications will be explored here.

There Is No Truth; Nothing Is Good or Bad

Postmodernism: In the past, academics were trained to seek truth. Today, academics deny that there is such a thing as objective Truth. Instead, they argue that no one can be objective, that everyone is inevitably subjective, and consequently everyone has their own truth. The correct point of view, they urge, is relativism. This means not only that truth is relative to the subjectivity of each individual, but also that ethics and morality are relative to the individual and the culture, so there is no such thing as Good and Evil, or even Right and Wrong. So too with the ways of knowing; your children will learn that there is no objective basis for preferring chemistry over alchemy, astronomy over astrology, or medical doctors over witch doctors. They will learn that facts do not exist; only interpretations do.

All Cultures Are Equally Good; Diversity Is Our Strength

Our social understanding has also been transformed by postmodern relativism. Because moral and ethical principles are deemed to be no more than the collective subjectivity of our culture, it is now regarded as inappropriate to judge the principles and actions of other cultures. This doctrine is called “cultural relativism.” For example, while racism is held to be the highest sin in the West, and slavery the greatest of our historical sins, your children will learn that we are not allowed to criticize contemporary racism and slavery in Africa, the Middle East, and the equivalents in South Asia.

The political manifestation of cultural relativism is multiculturalism, an incoherent concept that projects the integration of multiple incompatible cultures. Diversity is lauded as a virtue in itself.  Imagine a country with fifty different languages, each derived from a different culture. That would not be a society, but a tower of babble. How would it work if there were multiple codes of law requiring and forbidding contrary behaviors: driving on the left and driving on the right; monogamy and polygamy; male dominance and gender equality; arranged marriage and individual choice? Your children will learn that our culture is nothing special and that other cultures are awesome.

The West Is Evil; The Rest Are Virtuous

Postcolonialism, the dominant theory in the social sciences today, is inspired by the Marxist-Leninist theory of imperialism, in which the conflict between the capitalist and proletariat classes is allegedly exported to the exploitation of colonized countries. By this means, the theory goes, oppression and poverty take place in colonies instead of in relation to the metropolitan working class. Postcolonialism posits that all of the problems in societies around the world today are the result of the relatively short Western imperial dominance and colonization. For example, British imperialism is blamed for what are in fact indigenous cultures, such as the South Asian caste system and the African tribal system. So too, problems of backwardness and corruption in countries once, decades ago, colonies continue to be blamed on past Western imperialism. The West is thus the continuing focus on anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist sentiment. Your children will learn that our society is evil, and the cause of all the evil in the wider world.

Only the West Was Imperialist and Colonialist

This ahistorical approach of postcolonialism ignores the hundreds of empires and their colonies throughout history, as well as ignoring contemporary empires, such as the Arab Muslim Empire that conquered all of the central Middle East, North Africa, southern Europe, Persia, Central Asia, and northern India, and occupied them minimally for hundreds of years, but 1400 years in the central Middle East and North Africa, and occupy them today. China, once the Communists took power, invaded Inner Mongolia to the north, Chinese Turkestan to the west, and Tibet to the south. Once in control, the government flooded these colonies with Han Chinese, in effect ethnically cleansing them. Postcolonialists have nothing to say about any of this; they wish to condemn exclusively the West. Your children will learn to reject history and comparisons with other societies, lest the claimed unique sins of the West be challenged.

Western Imperialism Was a Racist Project

Postcolonialists like to stress the racial dimension of Western imperialism: as an illustration of racism. But postmodernists are not interested in Arab slave raiding in “black” Africa, or Ottoman slaving among the whites in the Balkans, or the North Africans slave raiding of whites in Europe, from Ireland through Italy and beyond. Your children will learn that only whites are racist.

Israeli Colonialists Are White Supremacists

A remarkable example of this line of thinking is the characterization of Israel as a settler colonialist, white supremacist, apartheid society Allegedly white Israelis are oppressing Palestinian people of color. The (non-postmodern) facts make this a difficult argument to sustain. As is well established by all evidence, Jewish tribes and kingdoms occupied Judea and Samaria for a thousand years before the Romans invaded and fought war after imperial war against the indigenous Jews, and then enslaved or exiled most of them, renaming the land “Palestine.” Then, five centuries later, the Arabs from Arabia invaded and conquered Palestine, going on to conquer half of the world. The Jews returned to “Palestine” after 1400 years; most were refugees or stateless, so not colonists from a metropolis. Almost half of Israelis are Jewish Arabs thrown out of Arab countries, not to mention the Ethiopian and Indian Jews. Furthermore, Arab Muslims and Christians make up 21% of Israeli citizens. So to characterize multicolored Israelis as “whites” oppressing “Palestinian people of color’ is an imaginary distinction.

Canadian? You Have No Right to Stolen Native Land

If indigenous Jews are deemed to have no claim to their ancient homeland, then Euro-Canadians, Asian Canadians, African Canadians, and Latin Canadians are colonialist settlers without even an excuse. You have stolen Native land. The only moral course, according to postcolonialism, is to give everything back. At the very least, in order for “decolonization” to be implemented, the First Nations must be ranked above the interloping settlers, must be given special preference in all benefits, the law must make special exceptions for them. First nations must receive ongoing grants, pay no taxes, be given special reserved places in universities and government offices, and they have a veto over any public policy and be ceremonially bowed to at every public event.

As we are guided by postcolonialism rather than by human rights, we can disregard the human right of equal treatment before the law. That is just a rule of foreign settlers anyway. And the cities and industries and institutions built by the settlers, so the decolonialization story goes, really should belong to the natives, even though they lived in simple settlements or were nomads, depending upon simple shelters, with limited hunting or cultivating subsistence economies. There was no civil peace among the many Native bands and tribes, with raiding, enslavement, torture, and slaughter common.

White Men Are Evil; Women of Color Are Virtuous

Social justice theory teaches that the world is divided between oppressors and victims. Some categories of people are oppressors and other are victims: males are oppressors, and females are victims; whites are oppressors, and people of color are victims; heterosexuals are oppressors, and gays, lesbians, bisexual, etc. are victims; Christians and Jews are oppressors, and Muslims are victims. Your sons will learn that they are stigmatized by their toxic masculinity.

Individuals Are Not Important; Only Category Membership Is

Social justice theory has taken university life by storm. It is the result of the relentless working of Marxist theory, adopted by youngsters during the American cultural revolution of the 1960s, then brought to universities as many of those youngsters became college professors. Marxism as an academic theory was explicitly followed by some in the 1970s and 1980s, but it did not sweep everything else away, because the idea economic class conflict was not popular in the prosperous general North American population. The cultural Marxist innovation that brought social justice theory to dominance was the extension of class conflict from economics to gender, race, sexual practice, ethnicity, religion, and other mass categories. We see this in sociology, which is no longer defined as the study of society but has for decades been defined as the study of inequality. For social justice theory, equality is not the equality of opportunity that is the partner of merit, but rather equality of result, which ensures the members of each category at equality of representation irrespective of merit. Your sons will learn that they should “step aside” to give more space and power to females. Your daughters, if white, will learn that they must defer to members of racial minorities.

Justice Is Equal Representation According to Percentages of the Population

As there is allegedly structural discrimination against all members of victim categories, in order for equality of result to prevail, representation according to percentages of populations must be mandated in all organizations, in all books assigned or references cited, in all awards and benefits. Ideas such as merit and excellence are dismissed as white-male supremacist dog whistles; they are to be replaced by “diversity” of gender, race, sexual preference, ethnicity, economic class, religion, and so on. (Note that “diversity” does not include “diversity of opinion”; for only social justice ideology is acceptable. Any criticism or opposition is regarded as “hate speech.”) Academic committees now twist themselves into pretzels trying to explain that “diversity is excellence.”

Members of Oppressor Categories Must Be Suppressed

Of course, the requirement of representation according to population applies only one way: to members of victim classes. If whites, men, heterosexuals, Christians, etc. are underrepresented, that is fine; the fewer the better. For example, females now make up 60% of university graduates, although in the general age cohort males are 51%. There is no social justice clamoring for males to be fully represented.  Members of disfavored oppressor categories are disparaged. The classics of Western civilization should be ignored because they are the work, almost exclusively, of “dead white men.” Only works of females, people of color and non-Western authors should be considered virtuous. So too in political history. The American Constitution should be discarded because its writers were slaveholders.

Victims of The World Unite!

“intersectionality” is an idea invented by a feminist law professor. It argues that some individuals fall into several victim categories, for example, black, female lesbians have three points in the victim stakes, as opposed to male members of the First Nations who receive only one point. Further, on the action front, members of each victim category are urged to unite and ally with members of other victim categories, because sharing the victim designation is the most important status in the world. This leads to some anomalies. Black victims of racism are urged to unite with Arab victims of colonialism, even though Arabs have been and still are holders of black slaves.

Female victims of sexism are urged to support Palestinian victims of “white” colonialism, even though Palestinian women have always been and continue to be subordinated to men, and are subjected to a wide range of abuse. Your children will learn that to be accepted, they must assume victim status or become champions of victims, and ally with other victims.

Being Educated Is About Being on The Right Side

As Karl Marx said, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.” The objective of a university education today is to ensure that students chose “the right side” in changing the world. The idea that it probably makes sense to try to understand the world before attempting to change it, is rejected as outmoded, modernist empiricism and realism, now superseded by postmodernism and social justice. If there is no Truth, and whatever one feels or believes is one’s truth, then trying to gain an objective understanding of the world is futile. Anyway, Marxist social justice offers all the answers anyone needs, so no inquiry or serious research is required. Be confident that at university your children will learn “the right side” to be on, if little else.

Source: https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2018/09/04/what-your-sons-and-daughters-will-learn-at-university/

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Week 5 Readings

The Shock Doctrine

The readings in “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein discuss the link between power structures, disaster capitalism and the effectiveness of shocking events as a means to push forward neo-liberal agendas. I found these readings very effective at portraying a message that is truly hidden in plain sight. During times of strife and angst, we as humans tend to let our “guard” down and we let our emotions greatly affect our actions. For example, during the September 11 attacks, the United States was paralyzed with fear and highly supportive of the aggressive policies of President George W. Bush. The American people not only supported the “war on terror” but they also let the government become more involved in practices of espionage and loss of privacy. 

The appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of state during the Bush administration brought forth a new era of military prowess that was “far more profitable than ever before” (Klein,2007). Rumsfeld who had extensive experience in multiple multi-million dollar companies used his position of power to practice numerous strategies in order to “transform” the military apparatus. His plan: reduce the amount of bureaucracy and number of military troops. This might sound like a bold plan to demilitarize the U.S. military but...no, no. As Klein states “ he wanted less spent on staff  and far more public money transferred directly into the coffers of private companies”(286). It is clear in this example that multiple administrations of the United States have benefited from the usage of fear in order to capitalize on making money. The concept of cutting down the number of soldiers is usually demonized except in this situation when it is done for profit.

Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots

In this reading I focused on the repercussions of demonizing certain people as “evil” or ”monsters”. At the height of the “War on Terror” the United States attempted to frame the conflict using a “Good vs Evil” narrative that ended up having very hurtful consequences. Attempting to appeal to the American people as the “saviors” the U.S. government opted to use some very colonial stereotypes and mentalities. For example, the “White men saving brown women from brown men” message (127). The very first lady Laura Bush gave a 2 minute speech where she condemned the treatment of women abroad (specifically referring to the middle east) and tried to expand the war against terrorism to include becoming a “savior” for the oppressed women abroad.

The government basically stole the message of feminists and other women’s rights groups abroad in order to justify an invasion. The Taliban and Al Qaeda were portrayed as the monsters who constantly mistreat women and had to be stopped at all costs. However, here it is where it is necessary to realize that the United States never really had the well-being of women abroad as their focus. The constant moral attacks and demonizing of Muslim men was used as a weapon to strip these people of their humanity and incite hate. Unfortunately, we can see the outcome of these messages portrayed when we see Muslim men discriminated for being “oppressive” and “hateful” when in reality it is only but a small minority of men who treated women this way. The message that the United States portrays to the world has long-lasting consequences and it is truly saddening that we must demonize large groups in order to justify entering a conflict.

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Michelle and Melania’s Shared Hell: The Role of First Lady

Rob Carr/GettyFirst ladies are such minutely scrutinized figures that no president’s mate has proved immune to criticism during her time in the White House. From the clothes they wear, to the causes they champion, to the way they interact with their husbands or the citizenry—some people always find fault in the actions they take. Whether she is too demure or too bold, too active or too absent, too fashionable or too dowdy, it seems that no matron of the East Wing has yet been able to personify the ideal American everywoman.The long practice of judging the president’s wife began when Martha Washington joined George after he assumed office. Washington received a mix of praise and condemnation upon her arrival in New York. Some reporters applauded her travel attire and noted that her clothing was manufactured in the United States, but others chided her expensive outfit and argued that her well-appointed coach was too reminiscent of the royal broughams in England. From the very beginning, the president’s spouse was considered a public icon whose every action was open to potential derision by the press and the people. The difficult nature of the position was so evident that, months before becoming the second woman to assume the role, Abigail Adams expressed reservations about being able to meet the expectations already placed on the consort of the U.S. president.Melania Gazed at Justin Trudeau in the Perfect Red Dress. The Rest of Her G7 Fashion Was Pure One Percent.All first ladies are ridiculed while residing in the White House. Some complaints are based on the personality of the individual, others stem from the amorphous expectations related to the role, and still others are a product of partisan gamesmanship. Attributes that are revered in some spouses are jeered in others, and no first lady’s actions are so impeccable that she does not experience at least some degree of scorn. When a first lady engages in behavior that so clearly violates established norms that her reputation is adversely impacted, she might become entangled in a full-fledged scandal. The improprieties might be factual, such as Mary Todd Lincoln’s misappropriation of federal funds and extortion of government appointees, or they could be based on rumor, as was Dolley Madison’s purported affair with Thomas Jefferson. The alleged wrongdoing might involve the violation of federal law, like Florence Harding serving whiskey in the White House during Prohibition, or it could be a breach of social convention, as when Eleanor Roosevelt invited hundreds of African-American guests to the White House—an action that today would be considered a positive break with established norms, but one that many found scandalous at the time.One of the charges most frequently leveled against first ladies is overstepping the unclear boundaries of the role. Perhaps the most serious example is the supposed misdeeds of Edith Wilson. After her husband, Woodrow, had a stroke, she became the gatekeeper to the president and assumed many of his duties, instead of allowing the vice president to take over. Her actions were questioned at the time, but she nevertheless persisted for approximately 17 months. Reporters and scholars later dubbed her the “first female president” as a way of applauding her efforts, and criticizing her unconstitutional assumption of power. Less overt but still controversial examples of first ladies ostensibly extending their political reach beyond the presumed limits of their position include Rosalynn Carter attending presidential cabinet meetings and testifying before a U.S. Senate committee in support of mental health legislation, Nancy Reagan controlling her husband’s schedule based on her consultations with an astrologer, and Hillary Clinton’s leadership of a failed health care reform effort during her first year in the White House.Michelle Obama and Melania Trump, like all other first ladies, each endured a large amount of criticism. The press, the public, and particularly the opposition appeared to look for almost any excuse to publicly harangue the women performing what is arguably the most difficult unpaid job in American politics. Both Obama and Trump encountered backlash about their fashion choices, their purportedly expensive tastes, their political involvement (or lack thereof), and numerous other topics. One of the greatest difficulties for women was the highly partisan nature of the political environment during the eras in which they served. Many pundits took aim at Obama and Trump as a means of attacking their husbands and as a way to connect with left- or right-wing audience members. A second major challenge was the expanded media environment. The pervasiveness of social media meant that Obama and Trump encountered a new cacophony of critics. In addition, the expectation that the women should engage with the public through social media meant they were also evaluated based upon new types of communicative behaviors.In spite of the new media context, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump were assessed in ways that mimicked how past White House matrons were judged. They were accused of not behaving in a manner appropriate to the role by being unladylike or, more specifically, un-first-ladylike. They were also negatively gauged based on their perceived ability and desire to fulfill the obligations of the position. While most appraisals of the two were common critiques, Melania Trump did find herself occasionally embroiled in scandals, some of her own making and others instigated by her husband.* * *Failing to Meet the Standards for a First Lady* * *Even though there are no clearly delineated standards of conduct for the spouse of a president, pretty much all the women who have filled the role have at one point been accused of acting in a manner unbefitting the position. Such claims are usually based on the long-held idea that the president’s mate must serve as a role model for American women and embody the generally vague criteria for being a “good woman.” This is clearly an impossible ideal. Still, complaints that a first lady is not behaving appropriately are among the most common for any president’s wife.Objections regarding a presidential consort’s enactment of femininity often illustrate inconsistencies in the ways the women are appraised. Rosalynn Carter was faulted for being too thrifty and modest when she wore the same gown to Jimmy’s presidential inaugural ball that she had donned when he was elected governor of Georgia, yet just four years later the press reprimanded Nancy Reagan for being indulgent and ostentatious because her brand-new inaugural gown was too expensive. Laura Bush was both applauded and rebuked for choosing not to wear a headscarf in the Middle East—positive assessments called it a display of women’s empowerment, and negative ones an insult to the host nation. She was later widely admonished for briefly putting on a headscarf she was given as a gift.First ladies have also been rebuked for their decisions regarding the causes they champion. Despite the fact that first ladies tend to choose issues that fall well within the range of what are traditionally considered “feminine” concerns, their advocacy is still sometimes deemed problematic. Barbara Bush was commended for making literacy her signature cause, but when Laura Bush continued Barbara’s work, critics argued that the former librarian lacked the independence and creativity to develop her own initiatives. In addition, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks brought Laura Bush’s attention to the plight of women in the Middle East, her decision to make international women’s rights a major part of her advocacy agenda resulted in a great deal of censure. She was not berated for caring about the status and treatment of women, but scolded for seeming to overlook the inequities and injustices American women faced as she focused her attention on females abroad.Michelle Obama and Melania Trump were each accused of not living up to the standards set for the first lady of the United States. Throughout her time in the White House, Obama endured recrimination regarding her perceived inability to be a “proper” first lady in everything from her choice of shoes to her character. Many of the concerns mirrored those about earlier first ladies, but others were clearly much more personal and often decidedly race-based. In the first two years of her first ladyship, Trump also faced a great deal of criticism. She was similarly chided for her fashion choices, and denunciations of her personality were based on her apparent lack of a distinct, individual identity. Even though Trump was not subject to the same racially charged assessments as Obama, her physical attributes were sometimes the subject of negative attention. Although the types of criticism the two women encountered were categorically identical, the applications of the indefinite criteria for the role resulted in distinct complaints about each woman. The critiques about Obama and Trump provide telling examples of the inconsistent ways in which these first ladies were judged.It is not surprising that Michelle Obama and Melania Trump were frequently evaluated based on their appearance and were occasionally found wanting. Viewed as fashion icons, they each earned a large amount of positive attention due to the clothing they wore and the ways they carried themselves in public. However, along with the affirmations of their choices came disparaging assessments. Some writers rebuked Obama because of the diverse nature of her wardrobe. Compliments for her choices notwithstanding, many analysts found fault with the first lady because she failed to embrace a standardized dress code like many of her predecessors had. Pointing to Rosalynn Carter’s A-line skirts and tucked-in blouses, Hillary Clinton’s business suits, and Laura Bush’s structured skirt suits, several pundits were bemused by Obama’s mix of sundresses, slacks and cardigan sweater combos, and casual jeans and sneakers. Most journalists declared that the varied looks suited the first lady and aligned with her “everymom” persona, but a persistent group of primarily conservative reporters insisted that her attire was too distracting and that Obama was too vain to serve as a proper role model to young girls and women.When Trump’s public activity at the White House increased after her months-long stay in New York, the press immediately began assessing what many argued was her typical first lady uniform of a pencil skirt paired with a structured jacket or blouse and belt. Although she won praise from pundits who commented on the flattering lines and the seriousness of her appearance (a jab at Obama’s ostensibly less businesslike mien), the press also censured Trump for her return to seemingly more predictable sartorial selections. Reporters deemed Trump’s look uninventive, particularly for a former fashion model who had been touted as a cutting-edge “fashionista.” These conflicting assessments of Obama and Trump indicate that when it comes to establishing a personal sense of style, the first lady can never win over all observers, no matter her approach.In addition to evaluating how ladylike the president’s wife looks, the press and public are habitually preoccupied with the cost of her wardrobe. Obama and Trump were each harangued for wearing expensive clothing—and also condemned for choosing more affordable garb. When it came to the pricey items, pundits either proclaimed that the outfits distanced the first ladies from the women they were expected to represent or that as role models the women set too high a benchmark for average Americans to meet. Melania Trump wearing a $51,000 Dolce & Gabbana jacket to a G-7 summit in Italy is one obvious example of high-priced clothing inciting criticism. Choosing an accessory worth more money than many Americans earn in a year gained the first lady contempt from both the U.S. and international press. Similarly, Michelle Obama raised eyebrows in 2014 when she donned a gown valued at $12,000 for a state dinner at a time when her husband was talking about income inequality. The gown was event-appropriate, but the context drove critics to rebuff Obama’s choice.Complaints regarding the cost of the first lady’s attire are routinely grounded in the common misperception that clothing worn by the president’s wife is bought with taxpayer funds. The historical roots of stories about taxes being used to pay for the first lady’s clothes can be traced at least as far back as Mary Todd Lincoln who did, in fact, use federal monies approved for the running and remodeling of the White House to purchase her expensive wardrobe. Past indiscretions notwithstanding, modern U.S. first ladies do not receive any government subsidy to support their purchase of personal garments. Instead, they buy their own apparel or accept items as gifts. Jacqueline Kennedy’s renowned wardrobe famously cost more per year to maintain than JFK earned as president. Kennedy enjoyed considerable financial support from her father-in-law, who did not want her appearance to be a political liability for John. Luckily, for women who cannot personally afford expensive gowns for events such as state dinners, designers frequently donate dresses and other outfits as gifts to the U.S. government. Such items become part of the National Archives, along with other presents government dignitaries receive.Trump’s seemingly expensive tastes were continually highlighted throughout her first couple of years in the White House; for example, the cost of her clothing was often compared with that of Obama’s wardrobe. With multiple news articles highlighting the price difference between outfits each woman wore during similar events, e.g., Trump’s $53,000 G-7 summit dress, coat, and shoes versus Obama’s $474 G-20 summit skirt and sweater, clear distinctions were made between the women. Based on the reported numbers, Trump spent between two and five times as much as Obama on any given ensemble (the economic summit garment was an extreme outlier). As she was the wife of a supposed billionaire, it makes sense that Trump might have worn pricier clothing, but that did not mitigate claims that her flaunting of wealth made her less representative of and less relatable to American women than a first lady is expected to be.Even though Obama and Trump were sometimes faulted for wearing lavish clothing, they were also occasionally pilloried for selecting more modestly priced items. Obama was known to wear off-the-rack pieces, and many commentators touted her decision to sport affordable garb as a nod to her upbringing and her connection to middle-class America. Still, her frugal choices were not always positively received. The press and the public slammed Obama for failing to meet the norms of propriety set for the first lady when she was photographed wearing shorts and sneakers while deplaning Air Force One for a family vacation. Although she was heading for a hike in the Grand Canyon, politicos harangued Obama for appearing too casual, too comfortable, and too “common” for her position. A few years later, Obama listed the moment as her biggest fashion faux pas. Acknowledging the higher standards the president’s wife is held to, she explained that she made the misstep because in that moment she was thinking like a mom heading on vacation with her family instead of like the first lady of the United States.Melania Trump earned herself a bit of praise for an affordable outfit she wore in the late summer of 2017. Donning a $300 casual pink ensemble from J Crew on a return trip to the White House from Camp David, Trump was applauded for the elegant-but-simple look. A little over nine months later, she found herself embroiled in controversy when she selected a different inexpensive piece of clothing to travel in. The $39 “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” jacket she wore during a trip to tour detention centers for immigrant children separated from their families sparked widespread outrage. Several critics argued the message reflected Trump’s attitude about her standing as the first lady, and many journalists and politicos wondered whether she was really suited for the job. In addition to the curiosity and criticism sparked by their clothing choices, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump were also routinely judged regarding aspects of their physical selves. These assessments were often not fair, reasonable, or kind. Obama endured objections based on her physical stature and her race, whereas Trump was censured for her seemingly indifferent countenance.As the first African-American first lady, Michelle Obama encountered a unique set of criticisms. Members of the mainstream press made remarks about her dark skin, height, and other attributes that allegedly prevented her from embodying the kind of femininity expected from a president’s mate. Even though many discussions about her body were complimentary, including several articles highlighting how throngs of American women longed to have toned arms similar to Obama’s, there were other conversations that depicted her physique as disturbingly unladylike. Reporters used words like “towering,” “colossal,” and “intimidating” to describe her almost-six-foot frame. They pointed out that her sleeveless sheath dresses accentuated her arms and de-emphasized her broad shoulders, that her decision to wear high-heeled shoes was unusual for a woman of her height, that her choice of color palette suited her dark skin tone, and that her sartorial style was an attempt to make her body seem more petite. Each such observation spotlighted the supposedly less feminine elements of her appearance.Other outlandish complaints against Obama directly questioned her standing as a woman. Rumors that Michelle Obama had been born a man began during the 2008 campaign and persisted throughout her time in the White House. Later, conservative talk show hosts told viewers not only that Obama was not a woman but that she had committed murder in order to hide this fact from the public. Although these diatribes were patently absurd, thousands of people believed them, and stories about Obama’s sexuality became pervasive during her husband’s second term in office. Some conservative editorial cartoonists began including subtle “bulges” or suggestive shadowing in her crotch area when drawing Michelle Obama, and several pundits began echoing these unfounded assertions when discussing the first lady. In addition to having her womanhood challenged, Obama also encountered criticism that denied her basic humanity. On multiple occasions, she was deemed unsuited to be first lady and equated with a primate. A West Virginia mayor called Obama an “ape in heels.” A schoolteacher in Georgia used social media to decry the first lady as a “poor gorilla” in need of a makeover. A public official in the state of Washington claimed that “Gorilla Face Michelle” was only attractive to the “monkey man Barack.” Each person either resigned or was fired over his or her racist remarks, but the widespread nature of the sentiment indicated that a segment of the population viewed the first lady as subhuman. Although many past first ladies were harshly criticized (such as Hillary Clinton being called a “feminazi,” an incarnation of Lady Macbeth, and a “man-hating fear-inspiring witch”), even the most derogatory portrayals generally depicted them as people. No other first lady had to withstand such vitriolic and dehumanizing attacks as Michelle Obama.Melania Trump certainly was not as aggressively critiqued. However, during her first two years in the White House, she too was accused of not appropriately meeting the standards of the first ladyship based on her physical attributes, particularly her facial expressions. Starting during the presidential campaign but taking on new life the day her husband assumed the presidency, critical observations about Trump’s countenance abounded.Pictures of Trump at a breakfast event the morning of the inauguration showed her with expressions that reporters identified as uninterested, distant, and upset. The assorted looks led to speculation regarding her assumed lack of interest in her new position and in her husband. Later that day, as images from the swearing-in ceremony emerged, reporters paid particular attention to Melania Trump’s shifting demeanor during interactions with her husband. Her facial responsiveness earned her pity as well as condemnation. When it was thought that her husband had publicly scolded her, reporters and social media users alike conveyed concern for the new first lady and questioned the nature of the Trumps’ marriage. Later, when Donald was delivering his national address, Melania was photographed with a vacant look on her face. At that point, commentators (particularly conservative ones) decried Trump’s behavior and reproved her for not gazing supportively and lovingly at her husband as he outlined his vision for the country.The various assessments of Melania Trump’s facial expressions continued throughout her first couple of years in the White House. During her first trip to Europe, reporters said Trump looked depressed, seemed aloof, appeared bored, and gave the impression that she was deeply unhappy. As she prepared to host her first state dinner, Trump sported what many described as an insincere and overly practiced smile. When she was introduced to the president of Russia, Trump’s so-called “look of terror” after shaking his hand provided material for a number of critical news stories and humorous late-night talk show monologues.Several journalists tried to decode Trump’s different looks and what some referred to as her “usual pose” (a downturned chin and very slightly opened mouth). They interpreted her expressions as strategically contrived attempts to hide her disdain for her situation or as habitual mannerisms ingrained when she was a model. These evaluations clearly implied that somehow her countenance was problematic and un-first-ladylike. Stories about her unenthusiastic expressions frequently included comparisons with her predecessors, who had presented “permanent smiles” during public events. Such references insinuated that Melania Trump’s nonverbal displays violated the supportive and deferential ideals expected of a presidential helpmate. In reality, past White House matrons were generally much less fawning than the romanticized versions recalled by those assessing the incumbent’s spouse.A large portion of the American population seemed to like Michelle Obama and appreciate her outgoing personality. Her willingness to be self-deprecating and her ability to adapt to various situations won her many fans. She earned favorability ratings as high as 72 percent and maintained an average positive score of 65 percent throughout her time in the White House. She received lower ratings than both Barbara and Laura Bush but was better liked as first lady than Nancy Reagan or Hillary Clinton. In spite of her popularity, Obama was occasionally censured for her demeanor. Conservative pundits declared that she was too talkative and too often sought the spotlight at the expense of her husband. They said her frequent TV appearances indicated that she was more interested in being a celebrity than in being an effective role model for America’s female citizens. Such commentators argued that the first lady lacked the demure nature required of someone in the position and contrasted her with Laura Bush in order to highlight Obama’s supposed dispositional shortcomings. Columnists quibbled about Michelle’s tendency to joke about Barack, describing her gibes as inappropriate acts of aggression.Some of the more biting judgments about Michelle Obama’s character came from public figures holding extremely conservative viewpoints. Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh lambasted Obama as undisciplined, greedy, and power-hungry. He called her “Moochelle” to underscore his allegation that she selfishly indulged herself at the taxpayers’ expense. Many Republicans promulgated the idea that Obama was exceptionally pampered and ultimately unconcerned with average Americans’ economic suffering by equating the first lady with Marie Antoinette. The contrived parallel accentuated Obama’s supposed avarice and depicted her as out-of-touch with the electorate. Other GOP members chided Obama as hypocritical, contending that she did not adhere to the guidelines for being healthy that she supposedly tried to force others to follow.The complaints regarding Melania Trump’s disposition came largely from liberal analysts who ridiculed the first lady for not showing enough character. Pundits and politicos maintained that Trump was not adequately fulfilling the duties of the first lady because she was too much of a cipher and not enough of her own person. The extreme deference she generally showed her husband and her unwillingness to share her own opinions encouraged others to dismiss her as two-dimensional and flat. Liberal journalists objected that Trump was a negative role model for young women and girls because she appeared to value women’s superficial features rather than their substantive skills and abilities. Some columnists even maintained that Trump’s first ladyship could set the woman’s movement back several decades. What most members of the press failed to note was that Trump did assert herself in important ways. For example, she refused to be pressured by custom or convention when she insisted on remaining in New York for the first few months of her husband’s presidency. Journalists framed the move as an overindulged woman getting her way, but it was a show of strength because she refused to bend to tradition and instead prioritized the needs of her son.Melania Trump’s presumed lack of independence turned her rare displays of even the least bit of gumption into major news. On several occasions throughout her first two years in the White House, Trump refused to take her husband’s offered hand. Each public instance caught on video spawned several mainstream news stories and spread quickly across social media sites. Her rejection of Donald was at times portrayed as Melania standing up to her purportedly overbearing husband. Critics, however, considered the rebuff an inappropriate act of petulance and admonished the first lady for creating a distraction and embarrassing her husband. This particular protest was lodged when Melania swatted away Donald’s hand as they arrived in Saudi Arabia on their first presidential trip to the Middle East.Michelle Obama and Melania Trump each endured numerous derogatory statements about their ladylike qualities. Obama was deemed too tall, too black, and too aggressive, whereas Trump was too passive, too superficial, and too aloof. The fundamental unfairness of many of the claims regarding the feminine attributes enacted by Obama and Trump is apparent in the inconsistencies of the appraisals. Obama was reprimanded for baring her arms, but when Trump went sleeveless, no one complained. Trump was lambasted for being too quiescent, whereas Obama’s activity earned her reproach. Obama’s wardrobe was said to contain too many off-the-rack pieces, and Trump’s was deemed to have too few.* * *Overstepping and Underperforming* * *One particularly unfair charge leveled against a first lady has to do with how well she executes the duties of the position. Grievances about her job performance are usually grounded in how willingly and competently she participates in the various assumed, but not explicitly stated, responsibilities of the president’s spouse, such as serving as the national hostess, championing appropriate causes, and being the compassionate face of the government. There are no formal guidelines for the job itself, but that does not prevent the press and public from judging the women who occupy the East Wing based on unstated and equivocal measures of effectiveness.Objections about how first ladies approach the role tend to take two opposing perspectives. The women are either charged with overstepping the invisible boundaries of their position, or are faulted for underperforming in their capacity as the national matriarch. Very few women of the past have managed to find an acceptable balance between the demand to be an enthusiastic public servant and the need to appear unassertive. Women who have failed to achieve the right blend of activity and deference have been rebuked for their behaviors. Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, and Hillary Clinton were all berated for being too ambitious; Carter and Clinton were said to be too involved in policy development, whereas Reagan was accused of meddling in the running of her husband’s administration. On the other end of the spectrum are the women who have been reprimanded for not adequately fulfilling expectations for someone in the role. Far fewer women tend to be denounced for not being aggressive enough than for being overly so, yet because modern first ladies are expected to be more active than their earlier counterparts, presidential consorts must guard against charges of inactivity. Not since Mamie Eisenhower has a first lady been able to refrain from engaging in some sort of public social advocacy without facing harsh criticism.Michelle Obama and Melania Trump took different approaches to fulfilling their responsibilities as first lady. Obama was decidedly more active and outgoing from the start, and Trump was more sedate and reserved. Within the first few months of their times in the White House, Obama was admonished by pundits and politicos for reaching beyond the limits of the position, and Trump was lambasted for not doing enough. In truth, the inability of either woman to adequately navigate the unstated expectations of the position is not surprising because unclear responsibilities are difficult for anyone to effectively discharge. Equally unsurprising is the fact that a deep partisan divide undergirded many of the criticisms of Obama and Trump.There were a series of grievances related to Obama’s job performance as first lady. Some revolved around her alleged prodigality. For example, her lavish first state dinner was said by critics to indicate her purported willingness to overspend federal funds. Other complaints focused on what some commentators referred to as her apparent preoccupation with fame. These types of reproach accused Obama of using the White House to cultivate friendships with prominent actors and musicians in hopes of solidifying her own status as a celebrity. Such protests were relatively minor in scope and had little impact on her overall public persona. However, the admonishment she suffered regarding her assertive social advocacy was much more sustained and created problems.Michelle Obama’s primary initiative was the Let’s Move! campaign that intended to help encourage kids to lead healthier lives. The effort to promote better eating and exercise habits was relatively well received by the public at large. It was a kid-friendly endeavor that fit squarely within the parameters of Obama’s established “everymom” persona. Once the program moved beyond encouragement and role modeling to include supporting legislation, however, Obama encountered significant pushback. Critics claimed she was exceeding the boundaries of her position by interfering with governmental decisions. Even though she did not testify before any congressional committees as Rosalynn Carter had done or head a commission as Hillary Clinton did, conservative pundits said Michelle Obama’s public support for a rider to a bill funding school lunches was an overreach for the first lady. The objection assumed that she should refrain from remarking on government actions because she was married to the president. Obama’s use of her rhetorical power was apparently offensive to those who believed the president’s mate should serve as a model of female deference.The Let’s Move! campaign was not the only bit of advocacy for which Michelle Obama received criticism. Her use of the first lady pulpit was also a point of contention when she helped develop Let Girls Learn, an initiative designed to increase girls’ access to education around the world. Some conservative columnists labeled the program sexist because it did not include males, and others protested that its global focus was troublesome because it diverted attention and energy away from American needs. Essentially, critiques about Obama’s Let Girls Learn framed the president’s wife as setting the wrong priorities and attending to problems that were outside her purview. This grousing about Obama and her project was clearly a result of partisan gameplay because many of the same people rebuking Obama for Let Girls Learn had previously applauded Laura Bush for her work drawing attention to the plight of women in the Middle East. The selective use of the “overstepping” charge is another clear indication that the first lady of the United States is not a clearly defined position, nor is it as apolitical as some people might believe.During her first two years in the White House, Melania Trump was certainly not accused of over-reach. In fact, most criticisms of Trump fell on the other end of the spectrum; she was often faulted for inadequately performing the duties of the president’s wife. Quibbling about Trump’s purported ineffectiveness as first lady began before her husband took the oath of office. When she announced that her move to Washington, DC, would be delayed, she immediately opened herself up to objections about her ability to serve as an effective presidential consort. When she trimmed the Office of the First Lady staff to what some called a skeleton crew, critics again argued that she was not planning to fulfill the duties of the job. Although Trump did host several White House events, held meetings with her staff, engaged in charitable works, visited schools and hospitals, i.e., did the things widely expected of any first lady, while she was technically residing in New York, she was still accused of not doing enough. After she moved into the White House full-time, the perceptions of her inadequate activity persisted. Part of the reason was the delayed announcement of her advocacy campaign.Unlike many first ladies who establish their signature initiatives or causes before or shortly after entering the White House, Melania Trump waited more than a year to unveil her program; it was not until May 2018 that she presented Be Best to the nation. The announcement had been expected months earlier, and two scheduled press conferences regarding the initiative had been postponed. Critics, particularly liberal commentators, maintained the delay was an indication of Trump’s lack of interest in both her position as first lady and in helping others. Such charges were reinforced when Be Best was revealed as a campaign to draw attention to already existing efforts by others rather than as a novel initiative in its own right. Trump was said to lack the creativity and entrepreneurialism expected of a modern first lady. Ironically, being creative and entrepreneurial were characteristics that drew criticism for several of her predecessors, including Michelle Obama.Melania Trump’s performance as first lady became an issue again when she seemed to vanish for several weeks in the spring of 2018. In May, she underwent what was described as a minor medical procedure for a kidney problem. After her brief hospitalization, Trump made no public appearances nor did she do any public outreach for about three weeks. There were no photos of her, no social media posts from her, and no public interactions of any discernable sort by her during that time. People on mainstream and social media began counting the days since she had last been seen. Jokesters hung missing-person posters bearing Trump’s photo and description around New York and DC. Columnists underscored the unusual nature of such inactivity on an almost-daily basis. The episode reignited concerns about Trump’s dedication to serving as the White House matriarch. In addition, reporters wondered if she was hiding in order to avoid fallout from the bungled Be Best launch. The so-called disappearance also brought back questions regarding the Trump marriage because Melania’s apparent sequestering happened just as new information was released regarding an alleged affair her husband had with a porn star shortly after Melania had given birth to the couple’s son.Rumors swirled about Melania Trump’s absence that ranged from speculation she’d had plastic surgery to assertions she was working on divorce papers to tales about Donald having killed her in order to avoid paying a divorce settlement. Aside from the careless gossip, more considered and critical assessments of the situation declared the absence, no matter the cause, unacceptable. Pundits argued that Trump’s failure to make herself available even for a simple photograph or two created a social and political distraction that could be construed as a dereliction of her duties as the first lady. This perspective underscored the idea that somehow, although the person is unelected and unpaid, the first lady is not entitled to any privacy once she moves into the nation’s most famous residence.Like Melania Trump, Michelle Obama also endured complaints that she underperformed as the first lady of the United States. Such claims came from two very different groups. First, there were the conservative politicos who revived critiques that had emerged during the 2008 campaign that Obama was not patriotic enough to be an effective first lady. They contended that, as the president’s wife, Michelle Obama failed to show enough gratitude and concern for her nation. These grievances took many forms. In 2011, GOP operatives began circulating eventually debunked stories of Obama grumbling about having to attend a 9/11 memorial event. The first lady was said to have whispered, “All this for a damned flag” while at the commemoration. These allegations were soundly refuted, but right-wing pundits routinely repeated them as part of a sustained effort to paint Obama as an ineffective first lady. When Obama launched her Let Girls Learn campaign as a global effort, critics used the international focus as an indicator that Obama did not care enough about her own country. Some reactionary commentators accused her of not engaging in adequate and appropriate action as the first lady because she was more concerned about poor girls in Africa than homeless American military veterans. These recriminations overlooked Obama’s extensive work supporting U.S. military members and their families, underscoring their deep partisan roots.The second group that charged Obama with being less than effective as first lady was a bit more unexpected. Some liberal feminists argued that Obama did not fulfill the responsibilities of her position because she did not provide adequate role modeling for American women, particularly young girls, due to her adoption of the “mom-in-chief” persona. They objected to her decision to downplay her academic and professional successes in favor of accentuating her work as a mother and supportive spouse. Conceding that the move might have been necessary in order to quell some of the race-based challenges Obama faced, these critics still proclaimed the move unacceptable because the first lady was not showing young girls that they could aspire to be something other than wives and mothers. To be clear, they were not opposed to pointing out the value of being a wife or mother, but they were troubled by the fact that those elements of Obama’s life were highlighted at the expense of providing a more encompassing picture of her multifaceted and accomplished background. They protested that Obama was presenting a rather narrow view of womanhood and a stunted perspective on femininity. These same observers made similar assertions about Trump, maintaining that she was not simply neglecting her duties in this regard, but that she was actively disempowering future generations of women by teaching them that female submissiveness results in wealth and fame.As high-profile women, both Michelle Obama and Melania Trump endured complaints about the management of ambiguous duties as first lady. All of their decisions were bound to be problematic to some segment of the diverse population evaluating their every move. Critiques about them made it clear that if a president’s wife tries to retain some privacy and stay out of the public eye, she is harangued. However, if she tries to use her attention-getting position to help others, she opens herself up to charges of not doing enough, helping the wrong people, or being too ambitious. When it comes to fulfilling the functions of such an undefined role, no woman is safe from accusations of either overstepping or underperforming as the first lady of the United States.* * *Managing Scandals* * *First ladies often find themselves in the midst of a scenario where criticisms lead to more substantial, more sustained, and more widespread disparagements of their behaviors or the conduct of those around them. In these cases, the wives of presidents might labor to negotiate a full-fledged scandal. Many past White House matrons have created their own difficult situations. The financial improprieties Mary Todd Lincoln committed typify the self-created ordeal. Others include Florence Harding meddling in her husband’s appointee process and Nancy Reagan refusing to return borrowed clothes, failing to properly register sartorial gifts, and ignoring other protocols regarding her expensive wardrobe.In addition to being called out for their own bad acts, some first ladies have suffered through public accusations of misdeeds by the president. Jacqueline Kennedy and Hillary Clinton endured rumors of sexual misconduct by their husbands. Nancy Reagan dealt with fallout over her husband’s Iran Contra affair and assertions regarding Ronald’s dementia during his last years in the White House. Perhaps one of the most well-known modern scandals was Watergate. Pat Nixon had largely been kept in the dark by her husband and learned about the problem by reading the newspaper. In the end, she had to withstand the disgrace of leaving the White House after her husband was forced to resign because of his wrongdoing.Even though there were plenty of criticisms leveled at Michelle Obama during her eight years presiding over the East Wing, she was never directly accused of any impropriety that rose to the level of a scandal. Compared to the four administrations before Barack Obama took office, there were relatively few major controversies in the Obama White House and none that reflected poorly on Michelle Obama. She never had to defend her husband against allegations of sexual or financial misconduct, was not charged with violating the law, and did not break with the accepted social mores of the era. Other members of the Obama White House were questioned about their role in troubling events like the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi and purportedly problematic decision-making by IRS officials, but aside from some debunked race- and partisan-based efforts to discredit Michelle Obama, the first lady was never entangled in a scandal of her own making. She only became tangentially involved with one of someone else’s creation when Melania Trump delivered a speech to the Republican National Convention (RNC) in the summer of 2016 that contained parts of a 2008 address by Obama. Melania Trump, on the other hand, found herself managing accusations of inappropriate behavior from the start of the 2016 campaign and throughout her time in the East Wing.Melania Trump confronted a variety of improper actions during her first several months as first lady, some by her but most by her husband. During the campaign, she was directly accused of misconduct when nude photos of her circulated around the Internet and stories about her work as an illegal immigrant in the United States emerged. Later, she was charged with lacking an effective moral compass when she delivered an RNC speech she said she had written herself that contained passages that matched Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention (DNC) address. Trump’s speech raised serious concerns because the episode included initial lies about authorship, clear instances of plagiarism, and an attempted cover-up complete with efforts to shift blame and avoid taking responsibility for the bad behavior.In addition to her own wrongdoing, throughout the 2016 campaign Trump also endured accusations of immoral behavior by her husband. Although there were several charges of misdeeds by Donald, Melania Trump was most directly connected to two sex-related scandals because the usually reticent woman chose to defend her husband. In one case, when an Access Hollywood tape of Donald was released in which he used vulgar language about women and bragged about engaging in sexually harassing activities, Melania dismissed his banter as “locker room talk” in a series of interviews. Her denial that his attitudes were troubling embroiled Trump in controversy as critics argued she was condoning the mistreatment of women. These assertions were amplified when her husband was later directly accused of sexually assaulting several women. When those allegations broke, Melania Trump dismissed the purported victims as liars. Trump’s defense of her husband became an issue because it contravened her professed desire to be an advocate for women. In addition, her support for her husband was similar to the defense Hillary Clinton mounted on behalf of Bill Clinton in the ’90s, a stance that Donald Trump used to frame Hillary Clinton as a fraudulent feminist who harmed women. Melania Trump’s actions in light of the condemnation of Clinton opened the campaign and the future first lady to further accusations of hypocrisy.The scandals Melania Trump weathered during the presidential campaign were a precursor to the multiple controversies she had to negotiate throughout her time in the White House. Within the first two years of her husband’s presidency, Trump again was condemned for plagiarism and again found herself defending her husband against accusations of sexual misconduct. In addition, some key political actions by her husband and members of his administration created additional problems for the first lady.The second time members of the press maintained that Melania Trump stole significant portions of work from Michelle Obama occurred when she unveiled her Be Best initiative. One of the documents released as part of her effort to help parents teach kids to navigate social media was identical to one disseminated by the Obama administration. Michelle Obama had not created the document, as many journalists and commentators erroneously declared, and Melania Trump never professed to have written it or to have commissioned its writing, but the public was quick to berate Trump for once more stealing from Obama. This contrived conflict was problematic for Trump because her earlier behaviors made the charge of plagiarism eminently believable to her critics, even though in this case the charge was unwarranted.The sex scandals that plagued Donald Trump during the latter part of his presidential campaign continued and expanded during his presidency. As he was fighting lawsuits brought by his putative sexual assault victims, new information came to light regarding a payoff one of his attorneys made to a porn star in order to hide a consensual sexual affair Donald had with her. It was revealed that, one month prior to the election, Trump’s lawyer gave the woman known as Stormy Daniels $130,000 to sign a nondisclosure agreement so she would not share details of the tryst she’d had with Donald Trump. Although the fling had happened years earlier, the payment was intended to avoid adding fuel to the media firestorm surrounding Trump’s Access Hollywood tape and sexual assault accusations. When the story about the Daniels-Trump affair and cover-up finally did break, it was a prominent part of the news for the first several weeks of Donald Trump’s administration. A full year after the revelations about the payment surfaced, the affair remained in the national spotlight.Melania Trump was drawn into the scandal when it was revealed that the liaison took place shortly after the first lady had given birth to her and Donald’s son, Barron. Reporters clamored for a response from Mrs. Trump but none was forthcoming. Unlike her proactive defense of Donald’s vulgar taped conversation, Melania was largely silent about the Daniels affair. The first statement by the Office of the First Lady regarding the scandal was released more than a year into the ongoing coverage. The comment was not about Melania Trump’s feelings or thoughts and contained no defense of or possible explanation for the affair or payoff. Instead, it was a simple post on Twitter from the first lady’s spokeswoman asking reporters to leave the couple’s minor son out of the news. After that brief remark, nothing more was heard from the first lady or her staff regarding the ongoing drama for several weeks.Trump was once more dragged into the situation in June 2018 when another of Donald Trump’s lawyers, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, insisted that the first lady accepted her husband’s version of events and was supportive of the president. Instead of quietly letting the statement pass, Melania Trump’s spokeswoman contested the claim. The first lady’s representative did not make any statements about Trump’s perspectives but simply retorted that Trump had not revealed her feelings to Giuliani. Though the comment did not clarify Trump’s position regarding her husband’s infidelity, many members of the media assumed the denial of Giuliani’s assertions, coupled with Trump’s refusal to explicitly support her husband, implied that the first lady did not condone Donald’s behavior.In May 2018, the Trump administration reinterpreted a federal law regarding illegal immigrants to justify the separation of children from their parents when caught entering the United States without proper documentation. Within a few weeks, more than 2,000 minor children had been placed in makeshift detention centers in Arizona and Texas. The kids had no contact with their parents, and there were many accusations that their rights had been violated in a variety of ways and that their safety had been compromised in the facilities. By the middle of June, the situation had raised such concern that numerous social and governmental leaders spoke out against the practice of family separations and the United Nations condemned the policy as inhumane. The past first ladies, each of whom had championed social platforms that centered on children and families, became vocal critics denouncing the U.S. government’s actions. Rosalynn Carter called it “disgraceful and a shame to our country.” Laura Bush wrote an op-ed in which she compared the separations to the U.S. internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II—what she called “one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.” Hillary Clinton dubbed the situation a “humanitarian crisis,” and Michelle Obama publicly supported Bush’s statement, adding, “Sometimes truth transcends party.”The widespread negative coverage of the Trump administration’s actions drew a great deal of attention, and Melania Trump was quickly called out for not having made any public remarks and presumably no private efforts to intervene. As the past first ladies spoke up, journalists pointed out the lack of a statement from the sitting first lady, who was both a self-professed advocate for children and a former illegal immigrant herself. Within 24 hours of the consistent and forceful messaging from her predecessors, Trump’s spokeswoman declared, “Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families.” The comment was hailed by some as Melania Trump taking a brave stance against her husband and mocked by others as a hollow, impotent utterance that took no clear position on the specific actions by the president. Two days later, as protests continued to expand and President Trump decided to ostensibly soften the policy’s implementation, journalists and pundits credited the first lady with privately pressing the issue and encouraging Donald’s change of heart.The separations did not actually stop after her alleged intervention, nor were children effectively reunited with their families in large numbers for weeks afterward, but the press still maintained that Melania Trump helped resolve the situation and mitigate the scandal. Building on the positive press, Trump decided to visit a shelter in Texas where some of the children were being housed. Unfortunately, her choice of attire dominated coverage of the visit after she donned the now-infamous green “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” coat for the trip. The piece of clothing called into question her sincerity and raised concerns that her apparent efforts on behalf of the children were nothing more than a publicity ploy. When many children had still not been reunited with their families weeks later, some liberal analysts suggested the message on the jacket had been more revealing than anyone at the time wanted to believe.Melania Trump had to navigate several small-to-moderate and a few large-scale scandals during her time as a presidential candidate’s wife, as the spouse of the president-elect, and as the first lady of the United States. Her general method for managing such matters was to remain silent, but when that was not an option, she usually sent her staff members to speak on her behalf. It is not possible to gauge whether her use of a spokesperson was intended to avoid problems based on her fluent but not flawless English, or if it was perhaps a means of retaining some personal plausible deniability. Whatever the motive, Trump’s distanced and reticent approach did decrease the chances for the muck of scandal to directly soil the position of first lady.* * *All women who serve as the first lady of the United States must contend with disapproval of one sort or another. Because there is no formal job description for the position, evaluations of a first lady’s performance take myriad forms, and criteria for assessing her effectiveness shift often. Thus, critiques are unavoidable, and all a president’s spouse can really control is her own response to the various compliments and insults she experiences. Michelle Obama and Melania Trump both received a lot of objections about numerous aspects of their first ladyships. From clothing to personality, from skin color to facial expressions, from undue assertiveness to frustrating silence and submissiveness, virtually every facet of these women’s beings garnered negative attention from mainstream or social media at some point.Michelle Obama and Melania Trump approached the criticisms against them in a way many past first ladies had in that they generally ignored the chatter. This strategy worked for Trump, who had cultivated a persona that left no one surprised by her silence. Even when serious subjects like family separations at the border forced the first lady to make a statement, Trump usually sent brief remarks through her spokesperson instead of addressing the press or the public directly. Michelle Obama also regularly ignored disparaging statements about her. Yet, because she often made herself accessible to the media, Obama was frequently questioned about the grievances lodged against her. When directly confronted, she sometimes sidestepped the query by changing the subject, dismissing the comments as people having different opinions, or laughing off the affront with some self-deprecating gibe. On rare occasions, Obama did grapple with criticisms head on and used them as teachable moments in order to help kids learn about bullying, to open a dialogue about race relations in the United States, or to demonstrate the struggles women face in their fight for equality. However, these responses usually occurred within very specific contexts and were not the norm. By routinely ignoring the majority of the attempts to discredit them, both Michelle Obama and Melania Trump defused the attacks and prevented most from gaining more traction and attention.The opprobrium that the two most recent first ladies endured is interesting for a number of reasons beyond the simple stir of gossip. The varied and inconsistent nature of the complaints about Michelle Obama and Melania Trump are good indicators of the continued uncertainty Americans have regarding women’s role in society and politics. Like many of the presidents’ spouses before them, these women were asked to do the impracticable by representing an ideal of American womanhood that meets the presumptions of all citizens. It is impossible for any first lady to embody the quintessential American woman because there is no consensus as to what that should be.Whenever a first lady demonstrates the complex nature of modern womanhood by being something other than a supportive wife and doting mother (or grandmother), she encounters protests from those who prefer a narrow interpretation of femininity. In addition, if she fully embraces the conventional roles of wife and mother, she opens herself to censure for not representing independent, empowered women. What’s more, because customary and outdated assumptions about women’s roles habitually undergird the assessments of presidential spouses, women like Obama and Trump are continually evaluated based on a limited understanding of the position. It is difficult for any real woman to escape criticism when she is expected to embody a caricature of multiple, dated versions of American femininity.The fault-finding directed against Michelle Obama and Melania Trump reveals just how politicized the purportedly apolitical position of the first lady of the United States really is. Customarily, the party holding the White House asserts that the first ladyship is or should be a position free from the partisan jockeying of Washington, D.C. because it is not a position spouses seek through their own election but one they are forced into by virtue of their marriage to the president. Still, it is clear that members of both dominant political parties drag presidential consorts into the political fray, whether they are willing or not. The haranguing Michelle Obama and Melania Trump each endured illustrates just how much first ladies are used in the political gamesmanship of the modern era. Because presidential helpmates are now essentially pushed into public service through social advocacy, they are always tied to an issue or cause that can become divisive. Obama’s seemingly party-neutral effort to encourage children to lead healthier lives somehow became objectionable. Trump’s attempt to simply draw attention to the good works of other organizations likewise resulted in recrimination.As Obama’s eight and Trump’s first two years as the first lady indicate, a contemporary presidential spouse cannot avoid censure by remaining out of the public eye—in fact, she might earn more disapproval for her absence—and she can be attacked for any activity she takes part in. The public and political nature of being the president’s mate makes it impossible to please all of the people any of the time. To negotiate life in the White House, the first lady must grow the proverbial thick skin and learn to live with criticism as she forges her own path and makes her own decisions about her level of engagement. Maneuvering through public life as first lady includes negotiating how active to be during the president’s almost inevitable pursuit of a second term in office.An excerpt from MELANIA AND MICHELLE: First Ladies in a New Era, by Tammy R. Vigil, © 2019, Tammy R. Vigil. Reprinted with permission of Red Lightning Books. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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Rob Carr/GettyFirst ladies are such minutely scrutinized figures that no president’s mate has proved immune to criticism during her time in the White House. From the clothes they wear, to the causes they champion, to the way they interact with their husbands or the citizenry—some people always find fault in the actions they take. Whether she is too demure or too bold, too active or too absent, too fashionable or too dowdy, it seems that no matron of the East Wing has yet been able to personify the ideal American everywoman.The long practice of judging the president’s wife began when Martha Washington joined George after he assumed office. Washington received a mix of praise and condemnation upon her arrival in New York. Some reporters applauded her travel attire and noted that her clothing was manufactured in the United States, but others chided her expensive outfit and argued that her well-appointed coach was too reminiscent of the royal broughams in England. From the very beginning, the president’s spouse was considered a public icon whose every action was open to potential derision by the press and the people. The difficult nature of the position was so evident that, months before becoming the second woman to assume the role, Abigail Adams expressed reservations about being able to meet the expectations already placed on the consort of the U.S. president.Melania Gazed at Justin Trudeau in the Perfect Red Dress. The Rest of Her G7 Fashion Was Pure One Percent.All first ladies are ridiculed while residing in the White House. Some complaints are based on the personality of the individual, others stem from the amorphous expectations related to the role, and still others are a product of partisan gamesmanship. Attributes that are revered in some spouses are jeered in others, and no first lady’s actions are so impeccable that she does not experience at least some degree of scorn. When a first lady engages in behavior that so clearly violates established norms that her reputation is adversely impacted, she might become entangled in a full-fledged scandal. The improprieties might be factual, such as Mary Todd Lincoln’s misappropriation of federal funds and extortion of government appointees, or they could be based on rumor, as was Dolley Madison’s purported affair with Thomas Jefferson. The alleged wrongdoing might involve the violation of federal law, like Florence Harding serving whiskey in the White House during Prohibition, or it could be a breach of social convention, as when Eleanor Roosevelt invited hundreds of African-American guests to the White House—an action that today would be considered a positive break with established norms, but one that many found scandalous at the time.One of the charges most frequently leveled against first ladies is overstepping the unclear boundaries of the role. Perhaps the most serious example is the supposed misdeeds of Edith Wilson. After her husband, Woodrow, had a stroke, she became the gatekeeper to the president and assumed many of his duties, instead of allowing the vice president to take over. Her actions were questioned at the time, but she nevertheless persisted for approximately 17 months. Reporters and scholars later dubbed her the “first female president” as a way of applauding her efforts, and criticizing her unconstitutional assumption of power. Less overt but still controversial examples of first ladies ostensibly extending their political reach beyond the presumed limits of their position include Rosalynn Carter attending presidential cabinet meetings and testifying before a U.S. Senate committee in support of mental health legislation, Nancy Reagan controlling her husband’s schedule based on her consultations with an astrologer, and Hillary Clinton’s leadership of a failed health care reform effort during her first year in the White House.Michelle Obama and Melania Trump, like all other first ladies, each endured a large amount of criticism. The press, the public, and particularly the opposition appeared to look for almost any excuse to publicly harangue the women performing what is arguably the most difficult unpaid job in American politics. Both Obama and Trump encountered backlash about their fashion choices, their purportedly expensive tastes, their political involvement (or lack thereof), and numerous other topics. One of the greatest difficulties for women was the highly partisan nature of the political environment during the eras in which they served. Many pundits took aim at Obama and Trump as a means of attacking their husbands and as a way to connect with left- or right-wing audience members. A second major challenge was the expanded media environment. The pervasiveness of social media meant that Obama and Trump encountered a new cacophony of critics. In addition, the expectation that the women should engage with the public through social media meant they were also evaluated based upon new types of communicative behaviors.In spite of the new media context, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump were assessed in ways that mimicked how past White House matrons were judged. They were accused of not behaving in a manner appropriate to the role by being unladylike or, more specifically, un-first-ladylike. They were also negatively gauged based on their perceived ability and desire to fulfill the obligations of the position. While most appraisals of the two were common critiques, Melania Trump did find herself occasionally embroiled in scandals, some of her own making and others instigated by her husband.* * *Failing to Meet the Standards for a First Lady* * *Even though there are no clearly delineated standards of conduct for the spouse of a president, pretty much all the women who have filled the role have at one point been accused of acting in a manner unbefitting the position. Such claims are usually based on the long-held idea that the president’s mate must serve as a role model for American women and embody the generally vague criteria for being a “good woman.” This is clearly an impossible ideal. Still, complaints that a first lady is not behaving appropriately are among the most common for any president’s wife.Objections regarding a presidential consort’s enactment of femininity often illustrate inconsistencies in the ways the women are appraised. Rosalynn Carter was faulted for being too thrifty and modest when she wore the same gown to Jimmy’s presidential inaugural ball that she had donned when he was elected governor of Georgia, yet just four years later the press reprimanded Nancy Reagan for being indulgent and ostentatious because her brand-new inaugural gown was too expensive. Laura Bush was both applauded and rebuked for choosing not to wear a headscarf in the Middle East—positive assessments called it a display of women’s empowerment, and negative ones an insult to the host nation. She was later widely admonished for briefly putting on a headscarf she was given as a gift.First ladies have also been rebuked for their decisions regarding the causes they champion. Despite the fact that first ladies tend to choose issues that fall well within the range of what are traditionally considered “feminine” concerns, their advocacy is still sometimes deemed problematic. Barbara Bush was commended for making literacy her signature cause, but when Laura Bush continued Barbara’s work, critics argued that the former librarian lacked the independence and creativity to develop her own initiatives. In addition, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks brought Laura Bush’s attention to the plight of women in the Middle East, her decision to make international women’s rights a major part of her advocacy agenda resulted in a great deal of censure. She was not berated for caring about the status and treatment of women, but scolded for seeming to overlook the inequities and injustices American women faced as she focused her attention on females abroad.Michelle Obama and Melania Trump were each accused of not living up to the standards set for the first lady of the United States. Throughout her time in the White House, Obama endured recrimination regarding her perceived inability to be a “proper” first lady in everything from her choice of shoes to her character. Many of the concerns mirrored those about earlier first ladies, but others were clearly much more personal and often decidedly race-based. In the first two years of her first ladyship, Trump also faced a great deal of criticism. She was similarly chided for her fashion choices, and denunciations of her personality were based on her apparent lack of a distinct, individual identity. Even though Trump was not subject to the same racially charged assessments as Obama, her physical attributes were sometimes the subject of negative attention. Although the types of criticism the two women encountered were categorically identical, the applications of the indefinite criteria for the role resulted in distinct complaints about each woman. The critiques about Obama and Trump provide telling examples of the inconsistent ways in which these first ladies were judged.It is not surprising that Michelle Obama and Melania Trump were frequently evaluated based on their appearance and were occasionally found wanting. Viewed as fashion icons, they each earned a large amount of positive attention due to the clothing they wore and the ways they carried themselves in public. However, along with the affirmations of their choices came disparaging assessments. Some writers rebuked Obama because of the diverse nature of her wardrobe. Compliments for her choices notwithstanding, many analysts found fault with the first lady because she failed to embrace a standardized dress code like many of her predecessors had. Pointing to Rosalynn Carter’s A-line skirts and tucked-in blouses, Hillary Clinton’s business suits, and Laura Bush’s structured skirt suits, several pundits were bemused by Obama’s mix of sundresses, slacks and cardigan sweater combos, and casual jeans and sneakers. Most journalists declared that the varied looks suited the first lady and aligned with her “everymom” persona, but a persistent group of primarily conservative reporters insisted that her attire was too distracting and that Obama was too vain to serve as a proper role model to young girls and women.When Trump’s public activity at the White House increased after her months-long stay in New York, the press immediately began assessing what many argued was her typical first lady uniform of a pencil skirt paired with a structured jacket or blouse and belt. Although she won praise from pundits who commented on the flattering lines and the seriousness of her appearance (a jab at Obama’s ostensibly less businesslike mien), the press also censured Trump for her return to seemingly more predictable sartorial selections. Reporters deemed Trump’s look uninventive, particularly for a former fashion model who had been touted as a cutting-edge “fashionista.” These conflicting assessments of Obama and Trump indicate that when it comes to establishing a personal sense of style, the first lady can never win over all observers, no matter her approach.In addition to evaluating how ladylike the president’s wife looks, the press and public are habitually preoccupied with the cost of her wardrobe. Obama and Trump were each harangued for wearing expensive clothing—and also condemned for choosing more affordable garb. When it came to the pricey items, pundits either proclaimed that the outfits distanced the first ladies from the women they were expected to represent or that as role models the women set too high a benchmark for average Americans to meet. Melania Trump wearing a $51,000 Dolce & Gabbana jacket to a G-7 summit in Italy is one obvious example of high-priced clothing inciting criticism. Choosing an accessory worth more money than many Americans earn in a year gained the first lady contempt from both the U.S. and international press. Similarly, Michelle Obama raised eyebrows in 2014 when she donned a gown valued at $12,000 for a state dinner at a time when her husband was talking about income inequality. The gown was event-appropriate, but the context drove critics to rebuff Obama’s choice.Complaints regarding the cost of the first lady’s attire are routinely grounded in the common misperception that clothing worn by the president’s wife is bought with taxpayer funds. The historical roots of stories about taxes being used to pay for the first lady’s clothes can be traced at least as far back as Mary Todd Lincoln who did, in fact, use federal monies approved for the running and remodeling of the White House to purchase her expensive wardrobe. Past indiscretions notwithstanding, modern U.S. first ladies do not receive any government subsidy to support their purchase of personal garments. Instead, they buy their own apparel or accept items as gifts. Jacqueline Kennedy’s renowned wardrobe famously cost more per year to maintain than JFK earned as president. Kennedy enjoyed considerable financial support from her father-in-law, who did not want her appearance to be a political liability for John. Luckily, for women who cannot personally afford expensive gowns for events such as state dinners, designers frequently donate dresses and other outfits as gifts to the U.S. government. Such items become part of the National Archives, along with other presents government dignitaries receive.Trump’s seemingly expensive tastes were continually highlighted throughout her first couple of years in the White House; for example, the cost of her clothing was often compared with that of Obama’s wardrobe. With multiple news articles highlighting the price difference between outfits each woman wore during similar events, e.g., Trump’s $53,000 G-7 summit dress, coat, and shoes versus Obama’s $474 G-20 summit skirt and sweater, clear distinctions were made between the women. Based on the reported numbers, Trump spent between two and five times as much as Obama on any given ensemble (the economic summit garment was an extreme outlier). As she was the wife of a supposed billionaire, it makes sense that Trump might have worn pricier clothing, but that did not mitigate claims that her flaunting of wealth made her less representative of and less relatable to American women than a first lady is expected to be.Even though Obama and Trump were sometimes faulted for wearing lavish clothing, they were also occasionally pilloried for selecting more modestly priced items. Obama was known to wear off-the-rack pieces, and many commentators touted her decision to sport affordable garb as a nod to her upbringing and her connection to middle-class America. Still, her frugal choices were not always positively received. The press and the public slammed Obama for failing to meet the norms of propriety set for the first lady when she was photographed wearing shorts and sneakers while deplaning Air Force One for a family vacation. Although she was heading for a hike in the Grand Canyon, politicos harangued Obama for appearing too casual, too comfortable, and too “common” for her position. A few years later, Obama listed the moment as her biggest fashion faux pas. Acknowledging the higher standards the president’s wife is held to, she explained that she made the misstep because in that moment she was thinking like a mom heading on vacation with her family instead of like the first lady of the United States.Melania Trump earned herself a bit of praise for an affordable outfit she wore in the late summer of 2017. Donning a $300 casual pink ensemble from J Crew on a return trip to the White House from Camp David, Trump was applauded for the elegant-but-simple look. A little over nine months later, she found herself embroiled in controversy when she selected a different inexpensive piece of clothing to travel in. The $39 “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” jacket she wore during a trip to tour detention centers for immigrant children separated from their families sparked widespread outrage. Several critics argued the message reflected Trump’s attitude about her standing as the first lady, and many journalists and politicos wondered whether she was really suited for the job. In addition to the curiosity and criticism sparked by their clothing choices, Michelle Obama and Melania Trump were also routinely judged regarding aspects of their physical selves. These assessments were often not fair, reasonable, or kind. Obama endured objections based on her physical stature and her race, whereas Trump was censured for her seemingly indifferent countenance.As the first African-American first lady, Michelle Obama encountered a unique set of criticisms. Members of the mainstream press made remarks about her dark skin, height, and other attributes that allegedly prevented her from embodying the kind of femininity expected from a president’s mate. Even though many discussions about her body were complimentary, including several articles highlighting how throngs of American women longed to have toned arms similar to Obama’s, there were other conversations that depicted her physique as disturbingly unladylike. Reporters used words like “towering,” “colossal,” and “intimidating” to describe her almost-six-foot frame. They pointed out that her sleeveless sheath dresses accentuated her arms and de-emphasized her broad shoulders, that her decision to wear high-heeled shoes was unusual for a woman of her height, that her choice of color palette suited her dark skin tone, and that her sartorial style was an attempt to make her body seem more petite. Each such observation spotlighted the supposedly less feminine elements of her appearance.Other outlandish complaints against Obama directly questioned her standing as a woman. Rumors that Michelle Obama had been born a man began during the 2008 campaign and persisted throughout her time in the White House. Later, conservative talk show hosts told viewers not only that Obama was not a woman but that she had committed murder in order to hide this fact from the public. Although these diatribes were patently absurd, thousands of people believed them, and stories about Obama’s sexuality became pervasive during her husband’s second term in office. Some conservative editorial cartoonists began including subtle “bulges” or suggestive shadowing in her crotch area when drawing Michelle Obama, and several pundits began echoing these unfounded assertions when discussing the first lady. In addition to having her womanhood challenged, Obama also encountered criticism that denied her basic humanity. On multiple occasions, she was deemed unsuited to be first lady and equated with a primate. A West Virginia mayor called Obama an “ape in heels.” A schoolteacher in Georgia used social media to decry the first lady as a “poor gorilla” in need of a makeover. A public official in the state of Washington claimed that “Gorilla Face Michelle” was only attractive to the “monkey man Barack.” Each person either resigned or was fired over his or her racist remarks, but the widespread nature of the sentiment indicated that a segment of the population viewed the first lady as subhuman. Although many past first ladies were harshly criticized (such as Hillary Clinton being called a “feminazi,” an incarnation of Lady Macbeth, and a “man-hating fear-inspiring witch”), even the most derogatory portrayals generally depicted them as people. No other first lady had to withstand such vitriolic and dehumanizing attacks as Michelle Obama.Melania Trump certainly was not as aggressively critiqued. However, during her first two years in the White House, she too was accused of not appropriately meeting the standards of the first ladyship based on her physical attributes, particularly her facial expressions. Starting during the presidential campaign but taking on new life the day her husband assumed the presidency, critical observations about Trump’s countenance abounded.Pictures of Trump at a breakfast event the morning of the inauguration showed her with expressions that reporters identified as uninterested, distant, and upset. The assorted looks led to speculation regarding her assumed lack of interest in her new position and in her husband. Later that day, as images from the swearing-in ceremony emerged, reporters paid particular attention to Melania Trump’s shifting demeanor during interactions with her husband. Her facial responsiveness earned her pity as well as condemnation. When it was thought that her husband had publicly scolded her, reporters and social media users alike conveyed concern for the new first lady and questioned the nature of the Trumps’ marriage. Later, when Donald was delivering his national address, Melania was photographed with a vacant look on her face. At that point, commentators (particularly conservative ones) decried Trump’s behavior and reproved her for not gazing supportively and lovingly at her husband as he outlined his vision for the country.The various assessments of Melania Trump’s facial expressions continued throughout her first couple of years in the White House. During her first trip to Europe, reporters said Trump looked depressed, seemed aloof, appeared bored, and gave the impression that she was deeply unhappy. As she prepared to host her first state dinner, Trump sported what many described as an insincere and overly practiced smile. When she was introduced to the president of Russia, Trump’s so-called “look of terror” after shaking his hand provided material for a number of critical news stories and humorous late-night talk show monologues.Several journalists tried to decode Trump’s different looks and what some referred to as her “usual pose” (a downturned chin and very slightly opened mouth). They interpreted her expressions as strategically contrived attempts to hide her disdain for her situation or as habitual mannerisms ingrained when she was a model. These evaluations clearly implied that somehow her countenance was problematic and un-first-ladylike. Stories about her unenthusiastic expressions frequently included comparisons with her predecessors, who had presented “permanent smiles” during public events. Such references insinuated that Melania Trump’s nonverbal displays violated the supportive and deferential ideals expected of a presidential helpmate. In reality, past White House matrons were generally much less fawning than the romanticized versions recalled by those assessing the incumbent’s spouse.A large portion of the American population seemed to like Michelle Obama and appreciate her outgoing personality. Her willingness to be self-deprecating and her ability to adapt to various situations won her many fans. She earned favorability ratings as high as 72 percent and maintained an average positive score of 65 percent throughout her time in the White House. She received lower ratings than both Barbara and Laura Bush but was better liked as first lady than Nancy Reagan or Hillary Clinton. In spite of her popularity, Obama was occasionally censured for her demeanor. Conservative pundits declared that she was too talkative and too often sought the spotlight at the expense of her husband. They said her frequent TV appearances indicated that she was more interested in being a celebrity than in being an effective role model for America’s female citizens. Such commentators argued that the first lady lacked the demure nature required of someone in the position and contrasted her with Laura Bush in order to highlight Obama’s supposed dispositional shortcomings. Columnists quibbled about Michelle’s tendency to joke about Barack, describing her gibes as inappropriate acts of aggression.Some of the more biting judgments about Michelle Obama’s character came from public figures holding extremely conservative viewpoints. Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh lambasted Obama as undisciplined, greedy, and power-hungry. He called her “Moochelle” to underscore his allegation that she selfishly indulged herself at the taxpayers’ expense. Many Republicans promulgated the idea that Obama was exceptionally pampered and ultimately unconcerned with average Americans’ economic suffering by equating the first lady with Marie Antoinette. The contrived parallel accentuated Obama’s supposed avarice and depicted her as out-of-touch with the electorate. Other GOP members chided Obama as hypocritical, contending that she did not adhere to the guidelines for being healthy that she supposedly tried to force others to follow.The complaints regarding Melania Trump’s disposition came largely from liberal analysts who ridiculed the first lady for not showing enough character. Pundits and politicos maintained that Trump was not adequately fulfilling the duties of the first lady because she was too much of a cipher and not enough of her own person. The extreme deference she generally showed her husband and her unwillingness to share her own opinions encouraged others to dismiss her as two-dimensional and flat. Liberal journalists objected that Trump was a negative role model for young women and girls because she appeared to value women’s superficial features rather than their substantive skills and abilities. Some columnists even maintained that Trump’s first ladyship could set the woman’s movement back several decades. What most members of the press failed to note was that Trump did assert herself in important ways. For example, she refused to be pressured by custom or convention when she insisted on remaining in New York for the first few months of her husband’s presidency. Journalists framed the move as an overindulged woman getting her way, but it was a show of strength because she refused to bend to tradition and instead prioritized the needs of her son.Melania Trump’s presumed lack of independence turned her rare displays of even the least bit of gumption into major news. On several occasions throughout her first two years in the White House, Trump refused to take her husband’s offered hand. Each public instance caught on video spawned several mainstream news stories and spread quickly across social media sites. Her rejection of Donald was at times portrayed as Melania standing up to her purportedly overbearing husband. Critics, however, considered the rebuff an inappropriate act of petulance and admonished the first lady for creating a distraction and embarrassing her husband. This particular protest was lodged when Melania swatted away Donald’s hand as they arrived in Saudi Arabia on their first presidential trip to the Middle East.Michelle Obama and Melania Trump each endured numerous derogatory statements about their ladylike qualities. Obama was deemed too tall, too black, and too aggressive, whereas Trump was too passive, too superficial, and too aloof. The fundamental unfairness of many of the claims regarding the feminine attributes enacted by Obama and Trump is apparent in the inconsistencies of the appraisals. Obama was reprimanded for baring her arms, but when Trump went sleeveless, no one complained. Trump was lambasted for being too quiescent, whereas Obama’s activity earned her reproach. Obama’s wardrobe was said to contain too many off-the-rack pieces, and Trump’s was deemed to have too few.* * *Overstepping and Underperforming* * *One particularly unfair charge leveled against a first lady has to do with how well she executes the duties of the position. Grievances about her job performance are usually grounded in how willingly and competently she participates in the various assumed, but not explicitly stated, responsibilities of the president’s spouse, such as serving as the national hostess, championing appropriate causes, and being the compassionate face of the government. There are no formal guidelines for the job itself, but that does not prevent the press and public from judging the women who occupy the East Wing based on unstated and equivocal measures of effectiveness.Objections about how first ladies approach the role tend to take two opposing perspectives. The women are either charged with overstepping the invisible boundaries of their position, or are faulted for underperforming in their capacity as the national matriarch. Very few women of the past have managed to find an acceptable balance between the demand to be an enthusiastic public servant and the need to appear unassertive. Women who have failed to achieve the right blend of activity and deference have been rebuked for their behaviors. Rosalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, and Hillary Clinton were all berated for being too ambitious; Carter and Clinton were said to be too involved in policy development, whereas Reagan was accused of meddling in the running of her husband’s administration. On the other end of the spectrum are the women who have been reprimanded for not adequately fulfilling expectations for someone in the role. Far fewer women tend to be denounced for not being aggressive enough than for being overly so, yet because modern first ladies are expected to be more active than their earlier counterparts, presidential consorts must guard against charges of inactivity. Not since Mamie Eisenhower has a first lady been able to refrain from engaging in some sort of public social advocacy without facing harsh criticism.Michelle Obama and Melania Trump took different approaches to fulfilling their responsibilities as first lady. Obama was decidedly more active and outgoing from the start, and Trump was more sedate and reserved. Within the first few months of their times in the White House, Obama was admonished by pundits and politicos for reaching beyond the limits of the position, and Trump was lambasted for not doing enough. In truth, the inability of either woman to adequately navigate the unstated expectations of the position is not surprising because unclear responsibilities are difficult for anyone to effectively discharge. Equally unsurprising is the fact that a deep partisan divide undergirded many of the criticisms of Obama and Trump.There were a series of grievances related to Obama’s job performance as first lady. Some revolved around her alleged prodigality. For example, her lavish first state dinner was said by critics to indicate her purported willingness to overspend federal funds. Other complaints focused on what some commentators referred to as her apparent preoccupation with fame. These types of reproach accused Obama of using the White House to cultivate friendships with prominent actors and musicians in hopes of solidifying her own status as a celebrity. Such protests were relatively minor in scope and had little impact on her overall public persona. However, the admonishment she suffered regarding her assertive social advocacy was much more sustained and created problems.Michelle Obama’s primary initiative was the Let’s Move! campaign that intended to help encourage kids to lead healthier lives. The effort to promote better eating and exercise habits was relatively well received by the public at large. It was a kid-friendly endeavor that fit squarely within the parameters of Obama’s established “everymom” persona. Once the program moved beyond encouragement and role modeling to include supporting legislation, however, Obama encountered significant pushback. Critics claimed she was exceeding the boundaries of her position by interfering with governmental decisions. Even though she did not testify before any congressional committees as Rosalynn Carter had done or head a commission as Hillary Clinton did, conservative pundits said Michelle Obama’s public support for a rider to a bill funding school lunches was an overreach for the first lady. The objection assumed that she should refrain from remarking on government actions because she was married to the president. Obama’s use of her rhetorical power was apparently offensive to those who believed the president’s mate should serve as a model of female deference.The Let’s Move! campaign was not the only bit of advocacy for which Michelle Obama received criticism. Her use of the first lady pulpit was also a point of contention when she helped develop Let Girls Learn, an initiative designed to increase girls’ access to education around the world. Some conservative columnists labeled the program sexist because it did not include males, and others protested that its global focus was troublesome because it diverted attention and energy away from American needs. Essentially, critiques about Obama’s Let Girls Learn framed the president’s wife as setting the wrong priorities and attending to problems that were outside her purview. This grousing about Obama and her project was clearly a result of partisan gameplay because many of the same people rebuking Obama for Let Girls Learn had previously applauded Laura Bush for her work drawing attention to the plight of women in the Middle East. The selective use of the “overstepping” charge is another clear indication that the first lady of the United States is not a clearly defined position, nor is it as apolitical as some people might believe.During her first two years in the White House, Melania Trump was certainly not accused of over-reach. In fact, most criticisms of Trump fell on the other end of the spectrum; she was often faulted for inadequately performing the duties of the president’s wife. Quibbling about Trump’s purported ineffectiveness as first lady began before her husband took the oath of office. When she announced that her move to Washington, DC, would be delayed, she immediately opened herself up to objections about her ability to serve as an effective presidential consort. When she trimmed the Office of the First Lady staff to what some called a skeleton crew, critics again argued that she was not planning to fulfill the duties of the job. Although Trump did host several White House events, held meetings with her staff, engaged in charitable works, visited schools and hospitals, i.e., did the things widely expected of any first lady, while she was technically residing in New York, she was still accused of not doing enough. After she moved into the White House full-time, the perceptions of her inadequate activity persisted. Part of the reason was the delayed announcement of her advocacy campaign.Unlike many first ladies who establish their signature initiatives or causes before or shortly after entering the White House, Melania Trump waited more than a year to unveil her program; it was not until May 2018 that she presented Be Best to the nation. The announcement had been expected months earlier, and two scheduled press conferences regarding the initiative had been postponed. Critics, particularly liberal commentators, maintained the delay was an indication of Trump’s lack of interest in both her position as first lady and in helping others. Such charges were reinforced when Be Best was revealed as a campaign to draw attention to already existing efforts by others rather than as a novel initiative in its own right. Trump was said to lack the creativity and entrepreneurialism expected of a modern first lady. Ironically, being creative and entrepreneurial were characteristics that drew criticism for several of her predecessors, including Michelle Obama.Melania Trump’s performance as first lady became an issue again when she seemed to vanish for several weeks in the spring of 2018. In May, she underwent what was described as a minor medical procedure for a kidney problem. After her brief hospitalization, Trump made no public appearances nor did she do any public outreach for about three weeks. There were no photos of her, no social media posts from her, and no public interactions of any discernable sort by her during that time. People on mainstream and social media began counting the days since she had last been seen. Jokesters hung missing-person posters bearing Trump’s photo and description around New York and DC. Columnists underscored the unusual nature of such inactivity on an almost-daily basis. The episode reignited concerns about Trump’s dedication to serving as the White House matriarch. In addition, reporters wondered if she was hiding in order to avoid fallout from the bungled Be Best launch. The so-called disappearance also brought back questions regarding the Trump marriage because Melania’s apparent sequestering happened just as new information was released regarding an alleged affair her husband had with a porn star shortly after Melania had given birth to the couple’s son.Rumors swirled about Melania Trump’s absence that ranged from speculation she’d had plastic surgery to assertions she was working on divorce papers to tales about Donald having killed her in order to avoid paying a divorce settlement. Aside from the careless gossip, more considered and critical assessments of the situation declared the absence, no matter the cause, unacceptable. Pundits argued that Trump’s failure to make herself available even for a simple photograph or two created a social and political distraction that could be construed as a dereliction of her duties as the first lady. This perspective underscored the idea that somehow, although the person is unelected and unpaid, the first lady is not entitled to any privacy once she moves into the nation’s most famous residence.Like Melania Trump, Michelle Obama also endured complaints that she underperformed as the first lady of the United States. Such claims came from two very different groups. First, there were the conservative politicos who revived critiques that had emerged during the 2008 campaign that Obama was not patriotic enough to be an effective first lady. They contended that, as the president’s wife, Michelle Obama failed to show enough gratitude and concern for her nation. These grievances took many forms. In 2011, GOP operatives began circulating eventually debunked stories of Obama grumbling about having to attend a 9/11 memorial event. The first lady was said to have whispered, “All this for a damned flag” while at the commemoration. These allegations were soundly refuted, but right-wing pundits routinely repeated them as part of a sustained effort to paint Obama as an ineffective first lady. When Obama launched her Let Girls Learn campaign as a global effort, critics used the international focus as an indicator that Obama did not care enough about her own country. Some reactionary commentators accused her of not engaging in adequate and appropriate action as the first lady because she was more concerned about poor girls in Africa than homeless American military veterans. These recriminations overlooked Obama’s extensive work supporting U.S. military members and their families, underscoring their deep partisan roots.The second group that charged Obama with being less than effective as first lady was a bit more unexpected. Some liberal feminists argued that Obama did not fulfill the responsibilities of her position because she did not provide adequate role modeling for American women, particularly young girls, due to her adoption of the “mom-in-chief” persona. They objected to her decision to downplay her academic and professional successes in favor of accentuating her work as a mother and supportive spouse. Conceding that the move might have been necessary in order to quell some of the race-based challenges Obama faced, these critics still proclaimed the move unacceptable because the first lady was not showing young girls that they could aspire to be something other than wives and mothers. To be clear, they were not opposed to pointing out the value of being a wife or mother, but they were troubled by the fact that those elements of Obama’s life were highlighted at the expense of providing a more encompassing picture of her multifaceted and accomplished background. They protested that Obama was presenting a rather narrow view of womanhood and a stunted perspective on femininity. These same observers made similar assertions about Trump, maintaining that she was not simply neglecting her duties in this regard, but that she was actively disempowering future generations of women by teaching them that female submissiveness results in wealth and fame.As high-profile women, both Michelle Obama and Melania Trump endured complaints about the management of ambiguous duties as first lady. All of their decisions were bound to be problematic to some segment of the diverse population evaluating their every move. Critiques about them made it clear that if a president’s wife tries to retain some privacy and stay out of the public eye, she is harangued. However, if she tries to use her attention-getting position to help others, she opens herself up to charges of not doing enough, helping the wrong people, or being too ambitious. When it comes to fulfilling the functions of such an undefined role, no woman is safe from accusations of either overstepping or underperforming as the first lady of the United States.* * *Managing Scandals* * *First ladies often find themselves in the midst of a scenario where criticisms lead to more substantial, more sustained, and more widespread disparagements of their behaviors or the conduct of those around them. In these cases, the wives of presidents might labor to negotiate a full-fledged scandal. Many past White House matrons have created their own difficult situations. The financial improprieties Mary Todd Lincoln committed typify the self-created ordeal. Others include Florence Harding meddling in her husband’s appointee process and Nancy Reagan refusing to return borrowed clothes, failing to properly register sartorial gifts, and ignoring other protocols regarding her expensive wardrobe.In addition to being called out for their own bad acts, some first ladies have suffered through public accusations of misdeeds by the president. Jacqueline Kennedy and Hillary Clinton endured rumors of sexual misconduct by their husbands. Nancy Reagan dealt with fallout over her husband’s Iran Contra affair and assertions regarding Ronald’s dementia during his last years in the White House. Perhaps one of the most well-known modern scandals was Watergate. Pat Nixon had largely been kept in the dark by her husband and learned about the problem by reading the newspaper. In the end, she had to withstand the disgrace of leaving the White House after her husband was forced to resign because of his wrongdoing.Even though there were plenty of criticisms leveled at Michelle Obama during her eight years presiding over the East Wing, she was never directly accused of any impropriety that rose to the level of a scandal. Compared to the four administrations before Barack Obama took office, there were relatively few major controversies in the Obama White House and none that reflected poorly on Michelle Obama. She never had to defend her husband against allegations of sexual or financial misconduct, was not charged with violating the law, and did not break with the accepted social mores of the era. Other members of the Obama White House were questioned about their role in troubling events like the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi and purportedly problematic decision-making by IRS officials, but aside from some debunked race- and partisan-based efforts to discredit Michelle Obama, the first lady was never entangled in a scandal of her own making. She only became tangentially involved with one of someone else’s creation when Melania Trump delivered a speech to the Republican National Convention (RNC) in the summer of 2016 that contained parts of a 2008 address by Obama. Melania Trump, on the other hand, found herself managing accusations of inappropriate behavior from the start of the 2016 campaign and throughout her time in the East Wing.Melania Trump confronted a variety of improper actions during her first several months as first lady, some by her but most by her husband. During the campaign, she was directly accused of misconduct when nude photos of her circulated around the Internet and stories about her work as an illegal immigrant in the United States emerged. Later, she was charged with lacking an effective moral compass when she delivered an RNC speech she said she had written herself that contained passages that matched Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic National Convention (DNC) address. Trump’s speech raised serious concerns because the episode included initial lies about authorship, clear instances of plagiarism, and an attempted cover-up complete with efforts to shift blame and avoid taking responsibility for the bad behavior.In addition to her own wrongdoing, throughout the 2016 campaign Trump also endured accusations of immoral behavior by her husband. Although there were several charges of misdeeds by Donald, Melania Trump was most directly connected to two sex-related scandals because the usually reticent woman chose to defend her husband. In one case, when an Access Hollywood tape of Donald was released in which he used vulgar language about women and bragged about engaging in sexually harassing activities, Melania dismissed his banter as “locker room talk” in a series of interviews. Her denial that his attitudes were troubling embroiled Trump in controversy as critics argued she was condoning the mistreatment of women. These assertions were amplified when her husband was later directly accused of sexually assaulting several women. When those allegations broke, Melania Trump dismissed the purported victims as liars. Trump’s defense of her husband became an issue because it contravened her professed desire to be an advocate for women. In addition, her support for her husband was similar to the defense Hillary Clinton mounted on behalf of Bill Clinton in the ’90s, a stance that Donald Trump used to frame Hillary Clinton as a fraudulent feminist who harmed women. Melania Trump’s actions in light of the condemnation of Clinton opened the campaign and the future first lady to further accusations of hypocrisy.The scandals Melania Trump weathered during the presidential campaign were a precursor to the multiple controversies she had to negotiate throughout her time in the White House. Within the first two years of her husband’s presidency, Trump again was condemned for plagiarism and again found herself defending her husband against accusations of sexual misconduct. In addition, some key political actions by her husband and members of his administration created additional problems for the first lady.The second time members of the press maintained that Melania Trump stole significant portions of work from Michelle Obama occurred when she unveiled her Be Best initiative. One of the documents released as part of her effort to help parents teach kids to navigate social media was identical to one disseminated by the Obama administration. Michelle Obama had not created the document, as many journalists and commentators erroneously declared, and Melania Trump never professed to have written it or to have commissioned its writing, but the public was quick to berate Trump for once more stealing from Obama. This contrived conflict was problematic for Trump because her earlier behaviors made the charge of plagiarism eminently believable to her critics, even though in this case the charge was unwarranted.The sex scandals that plagued Donald Trump during the latter part of his presidential campaign continued and expanded during his presidency. As he was fighting lawsuits brought by his putative sexual assault victims, new information came to light regarding a payoff one of his attorneys made to a porn star in order to hide a consensual sexual affair Donald had with her. It was revealed that, one month prior to the election, Trump’s lawyer gave the woman known as Stormy Daniels $130,000 to sign a nondisclosure agreement so she would not share details of the tryst she’d had with Donald Trump. Although the fling had happened years earlier, the payment was intended to avoid adding fuel to the media firestorm surrounding Trump’s Access Hollywood tape and sexual assault accusations. When the story about the Daniels-Trump affair and cover-up finally did break, it was a prominent part of the news for the first several weeks of Donald Trump’s administration. A full year after the revelations about the payment surfaced, the affair remained in the national spotlight.Melania Trump was drawn into the scandal when it was revealed that the liaison took place shortly after the first lady had given birth to her and Donald’s son, Barron. Reporters clamored for a response from Mrs. Trump but none was forthcoming. Unlike her proactive defense of Donald’s vulgar taped conversation, Melania was largely silent about the Daniels affair. The first statement by the Office of the First Lady regarding the scandal was released more than a year into the ongoing coverage. The comment was not about Melania Trump’s feelings or thoughts and contained no defense of or possible explanation for the affair or payoff. Instead, it was a simple post on Twitter from the first lady’s spokeswoman asking reporters to leave the couple’s minor son out of the news. After that brief remark, nothing more was heard from the first lady or her staff regarding the ongoing drama for several weeks.Trump was once more dragged into the situation in June 2018 when another of Donald Trump’s lawyers, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, insisted that the first lady accepted her husband’s version of events and was supportive of the president. Instead of quietly letting the statement pass, Melania Trump’s spokeswoman contested the claim. The first lady’s representative did not make any statements about Trump’s perspectives but simply retorted that Trump had not revealed her feelings to Giuliani. Though the comment did not clarify Trump’s position regarding her husband’s infidelity, many members of the media assumed the denial of Giuliani’s assertions, coupled with Trump’s refusal to explicitly support her husband, implied that the first lady did not condone Donald’s behavior.In May 2018, the Trump administration reinterpreted a federal law regarding illegal immigrants to justify the separation of children from their parents when caught entering the United States without proper documentation. Within a few weeks, more than 2,000 minor children had been placed in makeshift detention centers in Arizona and Texas. The kids had no contact with their parents, and there were many accusations that their rights had been violated in a variety of ways and that their safety had been compromised in the facilities. By the middle of June, the situation had raised such concern that numerous social and governmental leaders spoke out against the practice of family separations and the United Nations condemned the policy as inhumane. The past first ladies, each of whom had championed social platforms that centered on children and families, became vocal critics denouncing the U.S. government’s actions. Rosalynn Carter called it “disgraceful and a shame to our country.” Laura Bush wrote an op-ed in which she compared the separations to the U.S. internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II—what she called “one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.” Hillary Clinton dubbed the situation a “humanitarian crisis,” and Michelle Obama publicly supported Bush’s statement, adding, “Sometimes truth transcends party.”The widespread negative coverage of the Trump administration’s actions drew a great deal of attention, and Melania Trump was quickly called out for not having made any public remarks and presumably no private efforts to intervene. As the past first ladies spoke up, journalists pointed out the lack of a statement from the sitting first lady, who was both a self-professed advocate for children and a former illegal immigrant herself. Within 24 hours of the consistent and forceful messaging from her predecessors, Trump’s spokeswoman declared, “Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families.” The comment was hailed by some as Melania Trump taking a brave stance against her husband and mocked by others as a hollow, impotent utterance that took no clear position on the specific actions by the president. Two days later, as protests continued to expand and President Trump decided to ostensibly soften the policy’s implementation, journalists and pundits credited the first lady with privately pressing the issue and encouraging Donald’s change of heart.The separations did not actually stop after her alleged intervention, nor were children effectively reunited with their families in large numbers for weeks afterward, but the press still maintained that Melania Trump helped resolve the situation and mitigate the scandal. Building on the positive press, Trump decided to visit a shelter in Texas where some of the children were being housed. Unfortunately, her choice of attire dominated coverage of the visit after she donned the now-infamous green “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?” coat for the trip. The piece of clothing called into question her sincerity and raised concerns that her apparent efforts on behalf of the children were nothing more than a publicity ploy. When many children had still not been reunited with their families weeks later, some liberal analysts suggested the message on the jacket had been more revealing than anyone at the time wanted to believe.Melania Trump had to navigate several small-to-moderate and a few large-scale scandals during her time as a presidential candidate’s wife, as the spouse of the president-elect, and as the first lady of the United States. Her general method for managing such matters was to remain silent, but when that was not an option, she usually sent her staff members to speak on her behalf. It is not possible to gauge whether her use of a spokesperson was intended to avoid problems based on her fluent but not flawless English, or if it was perhaps a means of retaining some personal plausible deniability. Whatever the motive, Trump’s distanced and reticent approach did decrease the chances for the muck of scandal to directly soil the position of first lady.* * *All women who serve as the first lady of the United States must contend with disapproval of one sort or another. Because there is no formal job description for the position, evaluations of a first lady’s performance take myriad forms, and criteria for assessing her effectiveness shift often. Thus, critiques are unavoidable, and all a president’s spouse can really control is her own response to the various compliments and insults she experiences. Michelle Obama and Melania Trump both received a lot of objections about numerous aspects of their first ladyships. From clothing to personality, from skin color to facial expressions, from undue assertiveness to frustrating silence and submissiveness, virtually every facet of these women’s beings garnered negative attention from mainstream or social media at some point.Michelle Obama and Melania Trump approached the criticisms against them in a way many past first ladies had in that they generally ignored the chatter. This strategy worked for Trump, who had cultivated a persona that left no one surprised by her silence. Even when serious subjects like family separations at the border forced the first lady to make a statement, Trump usually sent brief remarks through her spokesperson instead of addressing the press or the public directly. Michelle Obama also regularly ignored disparaging statements about her. Yet, because she often made herself accessible to the media, Obama was frequently questioned about the grievances lodged against her. When directly confronted, she sometimes sidestepped the query by changing the subject, dismissing the comments as people having different opinions, or laughing off the affront with some self-deprecating gibe. On rare occasions, Obama did grapple with criticisms head on and used them as teachable moments in order to help kids learn about bullying, to open a dialogue about race relations in the United States, or to demonstrate the struggles women face in their fight for equality. However, these responses usually occurred within very specific contexts and were not the norm. By routinely ignoring the majority of the attempts to discredit them, both Michelle Obama and Melania Trump defused the attacks and prevented most from gaining more traction and attention.The opprobrium that the two most recent first ladies endured is interesting for a number of reasons beyond the simple stir of gossip. The varied and inconsistent nature of the complaints about Michelle Obama and Melania Trump are good indicators of the continued uncertainty Americans have regarding women’s role in society and politics. Like many of the presidents’ spouses before them, these women were asked to do the impracticable by representing an ideal of American womanhood that meets the presumptions of all citizens. It is impossible for any first lady to embody the quintessential American woman because there is no consensus as to what that should be.Whenever a first lady demonstrates the complex nature of modern womanhood by being something other than a supportive wife and doting mother (or grandmother), she encounters protests from those who prefer a narrow interpretation of femininity. In addition, if she fully embraces the conventional roles of wife and mother, she opens herself to censure for not representing independent, empowered women. What’s more, because customary and outdated assumptions about women’s roles habitually undergird the assessments of presidential spouses, women like Obama and Trump are continually evaluated based on a limited understanding of the position. It is difficult for any real woman to escape criticism when she is expected to embody a caricature of multiple, dated versions of American femininity.The fault-finding directed against Michelle Obama and Melania Trump reveals just how politicized the purportedly apolitical position of the first lady of the United States really is. Customarily, the party holding the White House asserts that the first ladyship is or should be a position free from the partisan jockeying of Washington, D.C. because it is not a position spouses seek through their own election but one they are forced into by virtue of their marriage to the president. Still, it is clear that members of both dominant political parties drag presidential consorts into the political fray, whether they are willing or not. The haranguing Michelle Obama and Melania Trump each endured illustrates just how much first ladies are used in the political gamesmanship of the modern era. Because presidential helpmates are now essentially pushed into public service through social advocacy, they are always tied to an issue or cause that can become divisive. Obama’s seemingly party-neutral effort to encourage children to lead healthier lives somehow became objectionable. Trump’s attempt to simply draw attention to the good works of other organizations likewise resulted in recrimination.As Obama’s eight and Trump’s first two years as the first lady indicate, a contemporary presidential spouse cannot avoid censure by remaining out of the public eye—in fact, she might earn more disapproval for her absence—and she can be attacked for any activity she takes part in. The public and political nature of being the president’s mate makes it impossible to please all of the people any of the time. To negotiate life in the White House, the first lady must grow the proverbial thick skin and learn to live with criticism as she forges her own path and makes her own decisions about her level of engagement. Maneuvering through public life as first lady includes negotiating how active to be during the president’s almost inevitable pursuit of a second term in office.An excerpt from MELANIA AND MICHELLE: First Ladies in a New Era, by Tammy R. Vigil, © 2019, Tammy R. Vigil. Reprinted with permission of Red Lightning Books. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

September 08, 2019 at 10:07AM via IFTTT

[iamthedirtywastedyouth]

The Quran explained by my beautiful Muslim friend for those that need a better understanding :)

First of all want to clear a misunderstanding. There is only ONE holy book in Islam which Muslims all around the world consider divine word and that is Quran. Hadees/Hadith books are historical references written by historians about life of prophet Muhammad, a century after his death and there are a lot of wrong references and fabrication in the Hadees books which media and Islamophobs cherry-pick all the time to spread false propaganda.

Women In Quran:

Freedom:

Islam gives every kind of freedom to woman. She is free to acquire education, get a job, do business or exhibit her creative potential. Her faith is also not subservient to man. Contrary to popular belief, Islam gives the freedom of religion to everyone!

From Quran

“There is no compulsion in religion” [al-Baqarah 2:256]

Islam not only gives woman a right to do job/business/trade but also ensures that her money is only hers to use

From Quran

“For men are portions of what they earn and for women is a portion of what they earn”. (Al-Nisa-4:32)

The most important and sacred thing in Islam is to get education. Islam urges men and women to get higher education and to educate themselves their whole lives. In Fact the first verse of Quran which was revealed to prophet Muhmmad was:

Read in the name of your Lord who created. He created man from a clot. Read, and your Lord is the Most Honorable who taught with the pen. (al Alaq 96:4)

Men and women can have mutual contacts on purpose at their residences and public places. They can talk and exchange views. There is no restriction upon their civilized social interaction; they may even have a party together:

From Quran

“It shall be equally lawful whether you eat together or apart. When you enter other’s houses, salute one another with salutation from Allah, blessed and kind. (Al-Nur-24:61)”

The Quran has mentioned it with full clarity that women are free to marry the men of their choice and no one is allowed to interfere. This right is meant for all the women, unmarried, divorced and widows.

From Quran

“If a man has divorced his wife and she has reached the end of her waiting period (three menstrual cycles), do not prevent her from remarrying the husband of her choice if they have come to an honorable agreement. This is enjoined on every one of you who believes in Allah and the Last Day; it is more honorable for you and the chaster. Allah knows, but you do not.” (Al-Baqarah-2:232)

“And those of you who die and leave wives behind, such wives should keep in waiting for four months and ten days after their husband’s death. When they have reached the end of their waiting period, it shall be no offence for you to let them do whatever they choose for themselves provided that it is lawful.” (Al-Baqarah-2-234)

From Hadees

Once a girl complained in front of the Prophet Muhammad that her father had forced her to marry against her will. The Holy Prophet told her that she was free to accept or reject the decision of her father. (Reference: Abu Dawud, Nisai, Ibne Majah, Masnad Imam Ahmad through Ibni Abass.)

Equality:

Men and women are created equal. They both have the right to find their perfect mate as well

From Quran

“It was He who created you (men and women) from a single being. And similarly He created his mate, so that every one might find comfort in his or her mate.” (Al-A’raf-7:189)

Condemnation of Violence:

Islam strongly condemns violence against anyone

From Quran

Killing one human is killing all of humanity (al Maida 5:32)

Also, it’s completely false that Islam approves a man hitting his wife or daughter.

Special Rights/Treatment:

Women enjoy preferral treatment in Islam

From Quran

“It is more pious that you should forgo your rights in favor of women. Do not forget to show kindness to each other. Allah observes your actions”. (Al-Baqara-2:237)

Some Misconceptions:

It is not mandatory for woman to cover her face or head. Men and women BOTH have been advised to dress modestly according to the culture of the country they are living in. The verses about covering women from Quran which Islamophobs quote are completely taken out of context. Those verses were meant for the family of prophet Muhammad especially the women in his family as his enemies were trying to scandalises the women of his family and there were even threats of rape etc. so there was a temporary restriction on wives and women in family of prophet Muhammad to cover themselves (so they could be identified that they belong to family of prophet Muhammad) and to stay at home. Those verses were not meant for common women:

From Quran

“Prophet, enjoin your wives, your daughters, and the wives of the true believers to draw their shawls around them. That is more proper, so that they may be recognized and not molested.” (Al-Ahzab-33:59)

“Wives of the Prophet, you are not like other women”. (Al-Ahzab-33:32)

“Convey the revelations of Allah and the words of wisdom which are recited in your houses.” (Al-Ahzab-33:33)

“Stay in your homes”. (Al-Ahzab-33:33)

As it can be clearly seen that these verses were only meant for wives of prophet Muhammad as a temporary solution to avoid a scandal.

The Muslim women (mostly Arabs) who cover their face or head is because they want to. It is not enforced by Islam or anyone

Islam did not “introduce” or “allow” polygamy. It does not even endorse polygamy. It was a cultural thing deep rooted in Arab (Middle East) today. Islam just did not prohibit it because it was a cultural thing and Islam DOES NOT interfere in culture. Quran only provides guidelines to lead a pious life. Even today, polygamy is despised in all Muslim countries and culture except Arab/Middle East because polygamy is their culture. It’s not an “Islamic” thing.

Prophet Muhammad DID not marry a 6 year old child. First of all, this incident is not even mentioned in Quran. It is mentioned in Hadees and this is a complete falsehood.

In Arabic, the numbers are written by joining two word for example sixteen is written as “sittat asha’r”.

“asha’r” mean ten and “sittat” means six, so ten+six = sixteen. Earlier historians noted the age of wife (Ayesha) of prophet Muhammad as “sittat asha’r” (sixteen), but a later historian mistakenly dropped the “asha’r” and it was written as “sittat” means six.

Prophet Muhammad married Ayesha when she was sixteen and they consummate the marriage when she was nineteen

There is no mention of 72 virgins to be awarded to men in afterlife in Quran. This is complete falsehood.

Modern Interpretation

Now in modern world majority of the Muslims and Muslim countries interpret the verses of Quran in the same manner as I have discussed above except three countries and I will tell you what exactly in going in those countries:

Saudi Arabia: Saudi Arabia is a very important country for Muslims as Islam’s holiest site Makkah is present there. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia is controlled by a monarch and his family. The family is called al-Saud and they follow very orthodox, unpopular and extremist interpretation of Islam which is what they call Wahabism. That family is responsible for stupid laws for example women can’t drive, forcing women to cover themselves etc. But you will be surprised to know there is no criticism of Saudi Arabia in media. Do you know why? Because it’s an ally of USA. USA the champion of democracy does not care about the monarchy in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia provides million tons of oil to USA and controls oil monopoly for USA in Middle East. It’s one extremist family that is bringing bad name to whole Muslim population in Saudi Arabia. You ask any Muslim in the world about al-Saud family and he/she would have nothing positive to say about the family yet they are never mentioned in media. In fact 11 out 13 hijackers of 9/11 planes were Saudis and last but not the least Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi but hey who cares as long as they are shitting huge barrels of oil?

Iran: Iran once again follow a very extremist and unpopular interpretation of Shia Islam. Iran is controlled by a supreme leader called “Ayotullah”. In Iran women are forced to cover themselves and cannot participate in sports etc. but again it is not representative of the Muslims living there. It is representation of one supreme leader

Afghanistan: Destruction, war torn, economically destroyed and controlled by Taliban which by the way were US allies till 1989. USA used Taliban against Soviet Union. USA funded that extremist faction. USA gave them money and guns which made them so powerful that they started controlling the whole government

Apart from this, no Muslim country forces women to do anything. Yes, around 30-40% of Muslim women cover their heads with scarf but this is just a cultural thing and no one forces them to do so. The biggest complaint of media is that why Muslim women cover themselves or they assume someone in the family forces them to do so. They never focus on their literacy rate, how much they achieve in life, how sophisticated they are etc.

Media very conveniently covers the crimes in Middle East by ISIS or Saudia or Iran or Taliban which hardly makes 10% of Muslim population but on purpose forgets the rest of 90% Muslims. Media tends to focus on Middle East but only 20% of world’s Muslim population is in Middle East.

Apart from this there are isolated incidents which can happen in any country. I will provide a video here which will explain how the CNN anchors tried to paint female genital mutilation as a Muslim problem but in fact it is a Central African problem

Muslim Women in Modern World

Pakistan, a muslim majority country has democratically elected a female head of state, Benazir Bhutto two times.

Bangladesh, a muslim majority country has democratically elected two women as head of states in past (Wajida Zia and Haseena Wajid)

6 out of top 15 countries with highest female literacy rates are Muslims

http://world.bymap.org/LiteracyRatesFemales.html

[whittlebaggett8]

Jaish-e-Mohammed: Under the Hood | The Diplomat

Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan are engaged in showboating all over again, each and every side increasing the temperature to make the other blink. India hoped that escalating tensions would force Pakistan to punish militant groups primarily based in its territory. The strain has worked to some degree as Islamabad ordered arrest of 44 Jaish-e-Mohammed associates (JeM, meaning “Army of Mohammed”), the group India has accused of carrying out an assault in Indian-administered Kashmir on February 14. The suicide attack took area in Pulwama, just south of state cash Srinagar, killing much more than 40 Indian paramilitary troopers.

Masood Azhar, who is the leader of JeM and writes a standard column beneath the pen title Saadi in his organization’s weekly journal Al-Qalam (“The Pen”) did not appear to be to choose India’s upping the ante — demonstrated by a strike on February 26 towards 1 of the JeM madrassas — seriously. He claimed in the issue of February 28:

India’s mind is not operating. They are making an attempt to threaten us. But are their threats generating us terrified? Undoubtedly not. In reality, their threats inspire us. Their threats do the similar trick as public appreciation does for a poet reciting his poetry.

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The file that India has provided to Pakistan implicating Masood Azhar and his business in functions of terror in Indian-administered Kashmir is based on these kinds of pronouncements. In the past 10 a long time, India has attempted four occasions to get the UN to declare Azhar as a terrorist, an work checkmated by China on Pakistan’s insistence. A senior journalist Muhammad Ziauddin not long ago tweeted: “Is Masood Azhar of JeM dearer to the point out of Pakistan than Pakistan itself?”

Azhar is deeply plugged into the Pakistan military’s intelligence setup, or at minimum individuals sections of it with which he shares an appreciation of the need for the Islamic globe to have a robust middle to deliver defense to Muslims all about the entire world. Azhar is for the Deobandi jihadis what Lt. Common Hameed Gul (former head of Pakistan’s Inter-Expert services Intelligence or ISI who was portion of the Afghan jihad of the 1980s) was for the ISI – an inspirational determine who is very well connected in the jihadi globe and resolutely thinks in Ghazwa-e-Hind (the struggle for a definitive conquest of India) and the ultimate campaign in opposition to all non-Muslims. The relationship concerning selected segments of the intelligence agencies and the JeM is based on a prevalent worth process and not merely a tactical require for each other.

An Education and learning in Jihad

The son of a major university trainer, Allahbaksh Sabir Alavi, Azhar was impressed to jihad by his older brother Ibraheem Azhar, who fought in Afghanistan for the duration of the 1980s. It was he who took Azhar in 1988 to Afghanistan. Unlike his more mature brother, Masood Azhar was hardly ever a fighter but an ideologue and an inspirational orator. Ahead of his trip to India, where by he obtained arrested in 1994, Azhar had traveled to various nations which includes the U.K. inspiring youth to jihad. Even though in jail in India, he started off tn compose on the matter of jihad.

Though Azhar has penned more than two dozen publications, his seminal function is Fatah-ul-Jawad, a book printed in two volumes of 2,000 internet pages every. The guide offers jihad in accordance to his interpretation of the Quran. Pakistani scholar Tariq Rahman, in his lately released book Interpretations of Jihad in South Asia, has summarized Azhar’s views on fighting a holy war, which emphasised the require to battle all colonial gamers and ideas which include the United States and capitalism. The JeM chief is of the check out that individuals do not will need acceptance from the condition to interact in jihad.

Caught In between The us and the Taliban

Azhar was under no circumstances concerned in takfir (condemning other Muslims as non-Muslim and as a result liable to be killed), nor got into a confrontation with the condition. This is irrespective of the popular idea that JeM had hostile relations with the Pakistani point out all through the mid-2000s due to his involvement in the December 2003 terrorist assault on the then-president and army main of Pakistan, Basic Pervez Musharraf.

In interviews with me for my analysis on JeM, senior associates of the Federal Investigation Company (FIA) and the Punjab province’s Counter-Terrorism Section (CTD) claimed that Azhar experienced delivered handlers for Musharraf’s attacker. Having said that, Azhar did not get concerned in the afterwards confrontation involving the clerics of Islamabad’s Lal Masjid (Crimson Mosque) and Musharraf.

A single way of looking at this seeming estrangement is from the lens of the bigger upset inside of the armed forces in the wake of an American assault on Afghanistan soon after 9/11. The Pakistani army’s several years of engagement with the Afghan jihad, continuing as they did even immediately after withdrawal of the Soviet troops, experienced created the military increasingly dependent upon different militant groups to attain its inner and external targets. One-way links between the all-impressive Inter-Services Intelligence and the militants grew ever stronger. A lot of militant teams and leaders had been resentful of the overtures designed by Musharraf to the United States and India in the type of crackdown upon jihadi teams. Like lots of other jihadi leaders, Masood Azhar was place below detention in late 2001 under the Maintenance of Community Order (MPO).

By the starting of the 2000s, the relations in between segments of the military services and jihadis were being much more than two many years aged. This partnership defined why senior armed forces commanders like Lt. Normal Mahmoud, who was head of the ISI at the time of 9/11, had been divided involving serving to the United States and saving the Taliban. Musharraf himself wrote in his e book In the Line of Fire that Mahmoud performed a double match. He encouraged Musharraf to agree to the U.S. desire of aligning with them in preventing terrorism in Afghanistan, and at the very same time helped Taliban chief Mullah Omar to protected himself towards an American attack. Unsurprisingly, Osama bin Laden was at some point observed Pakistan’s cantonment town of Abbottabad.

Heroic Return to Pakistan

Masood Azhar traveled to Srinagar in 1994. Arrested by Indian law enforcement, he put in five decades in jail. Indian investigators claim he informed them, “You individuals will not be in a position to maintain me in custody for extensive. You never know how essential I am for Pakistan and the ISI. You are underestimating my reputation. The ISI would guarantee that I am again in Pakistan.”

Some customers of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), a Deobandi jihadi network that Azhar and his brothers were being a part of, hijacked an Indian airliner IC-814 en route from Kathmandu to New Delhi in December 1999. They had the airplane diverted to Kandahar, the place they successfully negotiated the launch of three adult males incarcerated in Indian jails: Omar Saeed Sheikh, Mushtaq Zargar, and Masood Azhar. The HuM is also the business that skilled Maulana Asim Umer, the present head of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).

On his return from India in December 1999, Azhar received a hero’s welcome from jihadi teams and intelligence agencies. In just one of his columns in Al-Qalam he when wrote that the IC-814 hijack had avenged Pakistan’s defeat in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war that liberated East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh. He cashed upon his reputation to announce his business in March 2000. Curiously, I have noticed dying certificates for martyrdom issued by the JeM in 1999, indicating that the group existed in some premature sort even right before 2000.

Pals Like Osama bin Laden

Azhar elevated the original money from inspiring businessmen and other men and women. But a larger resource of resources was Osama bin Laden. JeM users, who remember bin Laden fondly, declare that he served the JeM acquire some of HuM’s infrastructure like madrassas, mosques, and teaching camps. The Balakot madrassa, which India promises to have bombed on February 26, was a person of the property the JeM purchased from the HuM. It was at this seminary that Azhar put in most of his time following the crackdown by the Pervez Musharraf federal government on jihadi businesses soon after 9/11.

The inbound links involving al-Qaeda and the JeM are even further, likely by the shut relationship that Masood Azhar has experienced with al-Qaeda associates like Omar Saeed Sheikh and Rashid Rauf. Sheikh, a British-Pakistani, was transformed to extremism by Azhar in the course of the latter’s visits to the U.K. in the early 1990s. He was arrested in India in 1994 for his involvement in kidnapping foreign travelers in Indian-administered Kashmir. On his return from India, Sheikh remained near to both Azhar and associates of Pakistan’s intelligence businesses. He was one particular of the several who attended to Azhar in the course of the latter’s gallbladder surgical treatment carried out in a private clinic in Bahawalpur in 2002. Rashid Rauf, a further British-Pakistani and member of al-Qaeda, is viewed as the mastermind for the 2005 London bombings. He was married to one particular of Azhar’s 6 sisters.

Nothing at all But Jihad

Azhar built his organization to be focused primarily on jihad. For instance, he ensured that, in contrast to the HuM, sectarian divide did not get in its way. That is not to say it is tolerant of Shias. Jaish’s angle displays a state-like pragmatism. It is only in the very last a single 12 months that JeM publications have become vital of Iran, or develop into vocal from the Ahmadiyya.

Even with building a welfare wing, the Al-Rahmat Belief, the JeM did not follow Lashkar-e-Taiba’s path in establishing social and welfare work as an critical secondary exercise.

When questioned why the JeM did not preach to rid culture of medication and prostitution, a near aide of Azhar replied that the Jaish did not want to get distracted from its main function of freeing the Muslim planet from the clutches of non-Muslims. He also outlined an incident when, throughout a personal discussion, Masood Azhar confronted an army basic versus the latter’s recommendation that the military services was imagining of disengaging from supporting militant organizations.

The JeM’s jihad will not conclude right until the total world converts to Islam. It has targeted on developing between its associates a further knowing of an Islamic war, which is why its preliminary training periods focus on proselytizing about jihad. In contrast to the earlier when jihadi groups randomly picked up individuals and despatched them for army training, Jaish has improvised on the approach. Candidates have to go by way of demanding ideological instruction before they are picked for navy coaching and then beat.

According to a JeM member, the outfit spends around a million Pakistani rupees, which is equal to $10,000 to develop a person totally properly trained and honed jihadi. They create 15-20 of them every calendar year. JeM recruits from govt educational institutions as nicely.

Legislation Unto Alone

The JeM’s affect in Bahawalpur has remained unchallenged. A 2007 report by the Particular Branch of the Bahawalpur law enforcement indicates that the patronage of intelligence agencies will make it hard for law enforcement to just take any action from the militant outfit.

Junior law enforcement officials have often cribbed about their seniors turning meek in the course of conferences with Jaish jihadis. Maybe the only time that the regional police ever acted towards the JeM was in 2001. On January 25, 2001, the Bahawalpur police arrested some Jaish users for hijacking a private transporter’s bus and manhandling his adult males. A law enforcement circumstance was filed (report No. 35/2001) underneath Segment 395 (punishment for dacoity) of the Pakistan Penal Code was registered. As a outcome, 29 JeM adult males were arrested. The Jaish reacted by barricading the nearby law enforcement station with a hundred adult men, some of whom were being armed, and broken general public house. Azhar made a speech warning the govt not to divert the consideration of his men from the jihad in Kashmir, otherwise “rivers of blood will flow” inside of Pakistan by itself.

The threat labored as the ISI intervened and defused the predicament by asking the police officer to launch the arrested Jaish men. To add insult to the law enforcement force’s personal injury, the law enforcement officer who experienced registered the situation was transferred to yet another metropolis following three months.

On the scarce celebration when Azhar was arrested in December 2001 he was not addressed like an ordinary prisoner. This was shortly after the India Parliament assault. In March 2002 he was shifted from Mianwali jail to Bahawalpur and even specified a regular stipend of 10,000 rupees. His sympathizers in intelligence safeguarded him all over again in 2004 from arrest by the Punjab CTD.

Many thanks to the patronage of intelligence companies, successive governments ended up unable to contain the JeM. In the words of the former Punjab Residence Minister Rana Sanaullah, “We can not touch these corporations due to the fact these are controlled from somewhere else.”

Azhar’s backlinks throughout the jihad and intelligence spectrum make it tricky for any person to acquire a decisive action versus him. There is potentially also the perception that the tension will pass. The United States requirements Pakistan far way too substantially at this phase to force the latter to make a clean break from its jihadis.

Ayesha Siddiqa is a PhD prospect and study associate in War Studies at the Faculty of Oriental and African Research, College of London.

The post Jaish-e-Mohammed: Under the Hood | The Diplomat appeared first on Defence Online.

from WordPress https://defenceonline.com/2019/03/14/jaish-e-mohammed-under-the-hood-the-diplomat/

[thesydneyfeminists]

Women in and of Historical Fiction: A Review of Sharon Kay Penman’s “A King’s Ransom” and “Here be Dragons”

Historical fiction faces a good deal of pushback in multiple different circles. There are those people who insist historical fiction is among the “lesser” genres, not on the same “intellectual level” as literary fiction and the canon classics. There are also those people who claim historical fiction is a defilement of “true” history, that the very categories “historical” and “fiction” are at odds with one another. At the same time, the genre has faced increasing popularity over the last decade. One has only to look at the top trending films and TV shows to realize historical fiction means something to and in the Western imagination. As one blogger reports, reading about the past “shaped my ability to empathize with cultures and people … reading historical fiction has colored my decisions and changed my actions” (https://lithub.com/historical-fiction-is-more-important-than-ever-10-writers-weigh-in/). How people consume history, and what kind of history they consume, can alter their perceptions of their own present.

Image Description: A row of old, ornately-bound book spines in different shades of red, brown and black. Some date from the 16th and 17th centuries.

Source: https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/history/best-historical-fiction-audiobooks

Like the author above, reading historical fiction has considerably changed my life. I grew up reading historical novels about the American Civil War, notably Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone with the Wind” and Jeff Shaara’s “Gods and Generals.” Although my taste in books has changed drastically since then, I still believe historical fiction holds great potential for learning and, even more so, unlearning. However, making historical fiction accessible to everyone is an important next step for the genre. Women authors have been present in the field for decades - Toni Morrison is a modern American classic who writes novels deeply steeped in history. Still, as professor of English literature Diana Wallace writes, “Literature is a very powerful thing … so it’s really important that the literature we make available to students includes books by women as well as men, and equally that different races, classes, nationalities and sexualities are represented” (https://www.southwales.ac.uk/courses/ma-english-by-research/40/what-can-womens-historical-fiction-teach-us/). The shift away from historical fiction written by, about and for white men is a critical part of feminist movements.

Image description: A blurred photo of Sydney harbor, including the top of the opera house and left side of bridge. The quote “History tells us what people do; historical fiction helps us image how they felt” by Guy Vanderhaeghe in a blueish circle over the sky and a banner that reads #HistoricalFictionWeek. 

Source: https://www.writing.ie/guest-blogs/historical-fiction-week-on-goodreads/

 I began to formulate the basic premise of this article after finishing Sharon Kay Penman’s “A King’s Ransom.” This massive and stunning novel spans the later years of King Richard the Lionheart’s reign, after his return from the Crusades. After a few week’s break, I’ve just completed a second book of Penman’s titled “Here Be Dragons.” This story focuses on King John and the Welsh Prince Llywelyn ap Iorwerth. Both books are compelling, and I flew through the 800 or so pages of each. Penman is a skilled author and a painstakingly detailed researcher. The worlds she paints in her novels are somehow both easily accessible to people reading in the 21st century and still attached to their historical origins. They bridge the spatial and emotional distances between the past and present and allow readers to draw connections to their own lived experiences. Although both the books mentioned above revolve around history’s more traditional heroes, Penman’s female characters truly captured my heart.

In her novels, Penman breathes life into a multitude of complex and three-dimensional historical women. “A King’s Ransom” inspired me to learn more about the infamous queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, a monumental woman who quite literally changed the course of English history. “Here be Dragons” instilled in me a love of Princess Joan of Wales, wife to Llewelyn the Great and daughter of King John, who wielded great political power over two warring nations. As Greer Macallister suggests, “The very act of centering a novel on a woman’s story, of giving her the same respect and attention men’s stories have traditionally received, can be feminist. The women of the distant past may only appear in sepia-toned photographs today, but when they lived, they lived in full color” (https://themillions.com/2017/07/how-can-historical-fiction-be-feminist.html). In Penman’s novels, women of the medieval period are painted in brilliant color. She exposes the complicated and often conflicting decisions women were forced to make. In doing so, she asks readers to reflect on the similarities and differences of our own lives.  

Image Description: Tomb engraving of Joan, Lady of Wales. Stone carving depicts a woman’s face and palms held up to her chest. The details are blurred with age. 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan,_Lady_of_Wales

Image Description: Tomb effigy of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Stone statue depicts a woman lying on her back on a table draped in red cloth, reading a book. She is wearing a crown, white veil and blue dress distressed by age. 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine

I won’t pretend Penman’s novels are beyond reproach. The sex scenes between King John (in his 30s) and his child-bride Isabelle (12 at the time of their marriage) were, to me, overdone. I understand the author’s desire to be “historically accurate.” At the same time, I believe there are ways to convey the customs of the time without glorifying them. Penman’s treatment of Isabelle and a few of the other child-brides caused me to squirm at several points, especially her emphasis on Isabelle’s sexual appeal to men three or four times her age. These descriptions bordered on casual acceptance of fetishization of youth, if not now, then in a time when it was considered “standard.” True, readers have access to the thoughts and feelings of these young girls in a way typically blocked from more conventional historical documents. Still, Penman’s description of Isabelle and John’s relationship is bound to make many feminists uncomfortable.

Additionally, Penman’s novels unashamedly center European history. This fact alone is not necessarily a condemnation of Penman’s work. I do think a better understanding of how England formed and functioned in its early years is necessary to dismantle the power structures created by and continued through colonization and imperialism. However, Penman leaves little room in her novels for readers to make connections to the world outside European boundaries. Although the Crusades are mentioned repeatedly in both novels, the people and cultures of what is today known as the Middle East are notoriously absent. Similarly, Penman mentions the horrific treatment of Jewish people by King Richard once in “A King’s Ransom” and obliquely in “Here be Dragons,” but so briefly it barely registers. Such a tight focus on English royalty is severely limited in its ability to push back against power imbalances, even if it is centered around women.

Despite their shortcomings, “A King’s Ransom” and “Here be Dragons” were influential books for me at this moment in my life. They motivated me to think more critically about “English history” and my own heritage, as someone with ancestral ties to both England and Wales. They also reminded me why I chose to make a career out of studying the medieval period and how much work remains to be done on the intersections and margins of history, literature and identities. Finally, as another blogger so eloquently wrote, they prompted me to think about how “historical fiction and feminism can work hand in hand” (https://themillions.com/2017/07/how-can-historical-fiction-be-feminist.html). Penman does not claim the title of “feminist,” as far as I could find. Still, her contribution to historical fiction as a woman writing about other women illuminates the possibilities of the genre in retelling and relearning the parts of history that are so often shielded from common knowledge.

Author’s website: http://www.sharonkaypenman.com/

Editor’s Note: This is a review and not a paid promotion.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of the Sydney Feminists. Our Blogger and Tumblr serve as platforms for a diverse array of women to put forth their ideas and explore topics. To learn more about the philosophy behind TSF’s Blogger/ Tumblr, please read our statement here: https://www.sydneyfeminists.org/a

[theconservativebrief]

Russia, Iran, and Turkey didn’t stop Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from starting a new major military offensive in his country — almost certainly condemning tens of thousands to die.

On Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held a summit in Tehran to discuss the ongoing conflict in Syria. At the top of their agenda was Idlib, a northwestern Syrian province and the country’s last rebel stronghold. Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has threatened to reconquer the province with a massive, imminent military attack that would put the roughly 3 million people living there directly in harm’s way.

Russia and Iran are Assad’s main backers in the seven-year civil war, and Turkey supports anti-Assad rebels, so the three leaders, not surprisingly, had very different views about how to proceed.

Turkey wanted all sides to sign a peace deal to stem the fighting before it starts, but Russia and Iran demurred, instead opting to give Assad a green light to carry out indiscriminate bombings and a block-by-block takeover of Idlib, the rebel-controlled province. And Russia and Iran, as they have for years, will almost certainly support those efforts.

Javier Zarracina/Vox

The Syrian government, Putin said at the trilateral meeting, “has a right and must eventually take under control of its entire national territory.” Rouhani echoed the sentiment, saying that “Fighting terrorism in Idlib is an unavoidable part of the mission of restoring peace and stability to Syria.”

While a powerful terrorist group does operate in Idlib, most people living there are civilians. Over half the population moved to the region to escape fighting in other parts of the country. And some, including the Trump administration, fear Assad’s troops may use chemical weapons on these innocent bystanders. Syrian and Russian warplanes are already dropping bombs on Idlib, even during the talks in Tehran on Friday.

Turkey’s Erdoğan wanted to stop all of that from happening. “We don’t want Idlib to turn into a bloodbath,” he said at the summit. Another reason Turkey is pushing back is that Idlib is on the border with Turkey, and Ankara doesn’t want thousands of refugees flooding into the country.

But Turkey failed in this seemingly last-ditch effort to stop the offensive. Which means that the already horrible reality for millions of Syrians is now about to get much, much worse.

“Increasing hostilities will turn the growing desperation into misery,” Iolanda Jaquemet, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, which tracks and helps alleviate humanitarian suffering in Syria, told me earlier this week.

Syrian relatives mourn during the funeral of Mohammed Ahmed Rahim in Idlib province on June 22, 2012. Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

The Syrian civil war was born out of the Arab Spring in 2011, as citizens protested the Assad regime. The dictator cracked down on dissenters, leading to a full-scale fight that has since ravaged Syria and the region for seven years. The war continues as Syria — mainly backed by Russia and Iran — fights anti-government rebels supported by Turkey, among others.

The last reliable estimates from 2016 put the death toll at around 400,000 people, but the number is surely much higher now — especially since the war has raged even more over the past two years.

Indeed, attacking Idlib wouldn’t be the first time this year that the Assad regime launched a major offensive against a rebel stronghold. In February, for example, regime forces attacked — and eventually captured — Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of the Syrian capital of Damascus.

The Syrian government took control of the area by employing a strategy it’s used during much of the war. “The regime has been leading a ‘siege, starve, and surrender’ campaign for years,” Jennifer Cafarella, a Syria expert at the Institute for the Study of War, told me in February when we discussed the Eastern Ghouta fight.

In practice, that means the Assad government purposely overwhelms opposition-held areas with attacks to make life for the civilian population unlivable. Assad’s forces destroy hospitals, schools, markets, and even mosques, so it’s nearly impossible for noncombatants to eat regular meals, receive medical attention, or pray where they want.

Assad used that tactic and others — like extrajudicial executions and torture — when he attacked Idlib during a two-week offensive in 2012. It’s likely the regime will commit similar atrocities if it launches a campaign in the coming days or weeks.

The regime uses the “siege, starve, surrender” strategy because it works: Rebels who don’t have food or medical provisions quickly lose the will or the ability to fight, and civilians in besieged areas often start cooperating with the government just to make it stop.

Assad’s forces already bombed and killed dozens of people in Idlib in early August, but it’s unclear exactly when the regime plans to start a new full-scale attack.

But one thing is known: When the offensive starts, it will likely be a humanitarian disaster.

A man carries a wounded child out of a building following a car bomb explosion in the northern Syrian city of Idlib on May 26, 2018. Omar Haj Kadour/AFP/Getty Images

In multiple interviews, humanitarian officials assisting civilians in Idlib painted a bleak picture of the expected suffering to come.

“People already live in difficult conditions, particularly those who live in makeshift camps,” and have little access to basic necessities including access to food, water, and medical care says the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Jaquemet.

Those who need medical attention will struggle. Jaquemet says eight of the 28 medical facilities in Idlib are entirely out of service. Many others function only at partial capacity because they may have little to no medicine or medical staff.

That means many Syrians who desperately need medical help will have to travel farther to find a doctor working in a standing facility — an especially dangerous endeavor in the middle of an active war zone.

Here’s just one example of how this plays out: In January, the only maternity hospital in Maarrat al-Nu’man, a city in Idlib province, was destroyed in airstrikes that killed at least five people. Jaquemet says around 90 percent of the medical equipment received damage, and now women and children in the area struggle to receive gynecological and other care. Many now have to travel elsewhere to receive that treatment.

It’s also possible that Syrian and Russian warplanes bomb more medical facilities, making it even harder for citizens to receive necessary treatment. “In case of attacks on the south of the province, we will lose major hospitals, and hospitals close to the borders won’t be able to respond,” says Mohamad Katoub, an advocacy manager for the Syrian American Medical Society, a medical relief organization that works to heal those injured or harmed in some way in the war.

The government also doesn’t provide electricity to the province, which means millions of people must rely on generators for power. But it’s hard to install generators during fighting — and it’s even more difficult to provide reliable service for so many.

The problem is made worse because people in Idlib can’t really leave. The Turkish border to the north is closed to keep refugees out, and the Assad regime controls areas to the east, south, and west. The only way they can reliably get out of the province is if Russia, Turkey, and Iran strike a deal and offer them a pathway out even as the fighting rages.

That, as of now, seems very unlikely — which means we should expect to see more strife in Syria. It’s clear that the humanitarian consequences of Assad’s planned attack “will be catastrophic,” says Fred Hof, President Obama’s special adviser for transition in Syria.

Original Source -> Turkey’s last-ditch effort to stop mass slaughter in Syria just failed

via The Conservative Brief

[democratsunited-blog]

Jewish Democrats grapple with party's mainstreaming of Israel criticism

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=5708

Jewish Democrats grapple with party's mainstreaming of Israel criticism

NEW YORK (JTA) – After Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shocked the political world by defeating longtime New York Rep. Joseph Crowley in a Democratic primary last month, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez quickly aligned himself with the former political outsider, saying on a radio show that “she represents the future of our party.”

If so, that future appears to include the kind of sharp criticism of Israel once considered taboo in both major parties.

Ocasio-Cortez ran on a platform of Medicare for all, fully funded public schools and a universal jobs guarantee. But she has also been critical of Israel, calling its military’s killing of Palestinian protesters in May a “massacre.”

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The Democratic Socialists of America, of which Ocasio-Cortez is a member, supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Ocasio-Cortez has remained silent on the issue.

In Minnesota, Democratic congressional candidate Ilhan Omar calls herself an “intersectional feminist” and Israel an apartheid regime.

Drawing attention to the apartheid Israeli regime is far from hating Jews. You are a hateful sad man, I pray to Allah you get the help you need and find happiness. https://t.co/SvEXjlxlEN

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) May 31, 2018

In Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, Democratic nominee Leslie Cockburn is the co-author, along with her husband, of “Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship,” a scathing 1991 attack on the Jewish state.

“It seems to me that some criticism of Israel is part of a package among young progressives along with health care for all and jobs for all,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon told Newsweek recently.

That puts Democrats who are both liberal and pro-Israel in a bind. Whether the result of “intersectionality,” which links Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to other left-wing causes, or a willingness to call out its right-wing government, progressive criticism of Israel may make for some hard choices come Election Day.

The Sanders effect

According to a Pew Research Center survey, the percentage of Democrats saying they sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians has declined from 38 percent in 2001 to 27 percent in 2018 — the lowest level of support on record. Support for Israel further decreased among self-identified “liberal” Democrats from 48 percent in 2001 to 19 percent in 2018. In the same time period, their support for Palestinians rose from 18 percent to 35 percent.

Although the Pew survey received notable criticism, the general trends it notes have been shown elsewhere.

US Sen. Bernie Sanders responds to a question during a town hall meeting in Jackson, Mississippi, April 4, 2018. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Some credit Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with normalizing such criticism of Israel. While the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate defined himself as “100 percent pro-Israel,” he recently called on the US to adopt a more balanced policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. In late March, Sanders’ office posted three videos to social media harshly criticizing Israel for what he deemed its excessive use of force in Gaza and the Trump administration for not intervening during the border clashes.

Last year, Perez appointed as his DNC deputy Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who in addition to being dogged by ties to the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan implied that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is “governed” by considerations of what is good or bad for Israel. (Ellison, who was the first Muslim elected to Congress, is running for attorney general in Minnesota and is not seeking re-election. Omar is seeking his seat.)

Keith Ellison (R) talks to reporters as he leaves a House Democratic caucus meeting at the US Capitol, February 8, 2018. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images via JTA)

Left-wing activists have also drawn Democratic politicians into Israel controversies. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, a potential 2020 presidential candidate who has recently tacked left, penned a glowing Time magazine write-up of controversial progressive heroines and Women’s March leaders Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour. Mallory, in a non-apology steeped in intersectional progressive terminology, has since defended her own relationship with Farrakhan following his recent anti-Semitic rants. Sarsour, who argued that Zionism and feminism are incompatible, is a prominent supporter of BDS.

Activist Linda Sarsour attends Glamour’s 2017 Women of The Year Awards at Kings Theatre on November 13, 2017 in Brooklyn, New York. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Glamour/AFP)

“There’s a lot of evidence that defining liberalism through an intersectional lens has had the effect of casting Israel as an ‘oppressor’ and thus a nation worthy of condemnation even as its actual policies on issues associated with intersectionality are infinitely better than those of its neighbors,” KC Johnson, a history professor at Brooklyn College, former Fulbright instructor at Tel Aviv University and regular Washington Post contributor, told JTA in an email interview.

‘Bad for US-Israel ties’

The Republican Jewish Coalition is expected to make the rise of the Democratic left a target of its activism. It already has run ads in a Philadelphia-area congressional district where the Democratic candidate, Scott Wallace, faced heat after a charity he runs was shown to have given to anti-Israel groups. (He said he wasn’t aware and is pro-Israel.)

RJC spokesman Neil Strauss told JTA that anti-Israel rhetoric has become mainstream in Democratic politics and is a means to securing left wing support.

“Democrats running in competitive primaries, some in swing districts, are getting left wing, base votes by attacking Israel. For Democrat groups to pretend like this is a made up wedge issue is audacious considering they won’t commit to supporting (or denounce) these candidates,” Strauss told JTA.

”Make no mistake about it, Scott Wallace, Leslie Cockburn, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other candidates attacking Israel, one of our closest allies and the only democracy in the Middle East, is bad for US-Israel relations. It is also a bad political strategy,” Strauss added. “We proved this when we educated the voters of PA-01 about the fact that the foundation that Wallace was in charge of, and which bears his family name, gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations that support BDS and terrorism against Israel. The prestigious Cook Political Report moved his race from toss up to lean Republican and specifically cited our ads in their write-up.”

“We will continue educating voters in many other districts about the anti-Israel behavior of Democrats, between now and November,” Strauss promised, referencing the midterm elections.

‘Israel not a wedge issue’

Halie Soifer, the executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said there is no contradiction between Zionism and Democratic politics, maintaining that the Democratic Party continues to best represent Jewish interests.

“Given President Trump’s alignment with neo-Nazis and in his politicization of Israel as a partisan issue — not to mention his radically right-wing domestic agenda — we are confident that the overwhelming majority of the Jewish electorate will continue to support Democrats in the upcoming election,” Soifer told JTA. “JDCA is supporting Democratic candidates who share our policy platform and values, and we have, in some instances, spoken out against candidates who are not aligned with our views. JDCA is proudly serving as the voice of pro-Israel and socially progressive Democrats, and we will do everything in our power to ensure that the Jewish community’s values are represented in the midterm elections.”

Halie Soifer heads the Jewish Democratic Council of America. (Courtesy of JDCA)

“Every election, Republicans attempt to use Israel as a partisan wedge issue, and every year they fail to get a majority of the Jewish vote. This year will be no different. The more Jewish voters who go to the polls in November, the better the result will be for Democrats.”

Although anti-Israel attitudes certainly exist within progressive circles, some liberal Jews believe they are on the margins.

“I believe that support for Israel remains as strong among both Republicans and Democrats as ever,” said Rabbi Jack Moline, the executive director of the Interfaith Alliance and the former head of the National Jewish Democratic Council. “With some few exceptions on both sides of the aisle, the notion of a national homeland for the Jewish people is accepted and secure. However, just as people who were formerly on the margins of both parties are now considered part of a big tent, ideas that were once marginal in Israel are being entertained by mainstream leaders.

Rabbi Jack Moline, right, joins Rev. James Forbes, left, and Imam Suetwedien Muhammad at an interfaith gathering on Sunday, July 23, 2016 on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Ron Kampeas)

“For a liberal Zionist like me, objecting to bad policy in Israel is an indication of deeper concern, not lesser support,” he said. “Consider it a victory for the reactionary right that honest disagreement with the current administration has been successfully depicted as betrayal.”

Daniel Shapiro, the former US ambassador to Israel under President Obama, said there is no contradiction between liberal values and Zionism, which he said “is the expression of the wholly legitimate right of the Jewish people to sovereignty in their ancient homeland.”

“If there are those in the Democratic Party or the progressive coalition who misunderstand that — there may be some, but we tend to exaggerate the phenomenon — it is incumbent on people like me to educate them about Israel’s inherent legitimacy,” he said.

The larger divide, Shapiro said, relates to the Palestinian issue, not Israel’s existence.

“An Israel that is seen as still seeking to keep a realistic two-state solution alive, where its security needs are met and it is recognized as a Jewish state — and even though Palestinian leaders have not yet met their obligations to make that outcome possible — will not have trouble retaining the broad, bipartisan support it has historically enjoyed,” he said.

Demonstrators march to protest the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in front of the White House November 9, 2015 in Washington, DC. (AFP/BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI)

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the executive director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, said the Pew study was flawed, insofar as it suggested that support for either Israel or the Palestinians implies a lack of advocacy for the other.

“The question of whether one is pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian is a false dichotomy. We need to stop asking questions, in polls and otherwise, that suggest that one must choose between the human rights of Israelis or Palestinians,” Jacobs said. “The only defensible position is one that stands up for the human rights of both – and insists that these are not in conflict.

“That means working toward two states, and opposing the occupation and the growth of settlements that entrench it. This is the position of the Israeli left who should be the natural partners for the Democratic Party – in contrast to the Republican Party, which has allied itself with Likud, the Jewish Home party and the rest of the pro-settlement, pro-occupation hard right.”

Liberal Zionists in turmoil

Yet others see the Democrats continued embrace of progressive figures and Israel critics like Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Ellison, Sarsour and Mallory as further divorcing their party — America’s liberal party — from Israel, leaving liberal Zionists — a majority among American Jews — in political turmoil.

“Democratic base voters are more hostile to Israel than at any point in decades, which will produce a less supportive House Democratic caucus next year,” Johnson told JTA. “As the 2020 presidential primaries take shape, it’s easy to imagine more ideologically flexible contenders (such as Kirsten Gillibrand or Kamala Harris [the California senator]) sharply criticizing Israel to boost their standing with progressive activists.”

“Liberal Zionists,” Johnson warns, “will need to more effectively communicate how Israel’s policies on women’s issues, LGBT rights and civil rights are consistent with a Democratic Party increasingly oriented around identity politics.”

A Wider Bridge, a pro-Israel LGBT group, insists that it is doing just that: making the progressive case for Israel.

“Israel has long received broad support from both Democrats and Republicans. I believe that is still true today,” said Ronit Bezalel, the group’s communications director. “Much of our work at A Wider Bridge is to make the case for Israel among progressive allies. We do not believe that support of Israel excludes the concerns raised on behalf of the Palestinian people.”

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The Arab American Left and Palestine: The Untold Story

Book review of "The Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and Their Fight against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s–1980s" by Pamela E. Pennock

President Donald Trump has twice tried to institute a travel ban on all refugees from six or seven Muslim-majority countries. During the presidential campaign, Trump called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” slated to last “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” His Muslim ban has been struck down by two courts of appeals and may be headed to the Supreme Court.

With his mean-spirited bans, Trump aimed to capitalize on fear of Muslims fueled by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and exacerbated since by the U.S. government and the corporate media.

Long-standing prejudice against Arabs

This anti-Muslim sentiment is a continuation of long-standing prejudice against Arabs that reached its zenith during the last third of the 20th century. In her provocative book, “The Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and Their Fight Against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s-1980s,” Pamela Pennock traces the trajectory of Arab American leftist activism in the United States over a series of key decades.

Pennock writes about the enduring portrayal of “Arabs as variously exotic, erotic, savage, uncivilized, and incapable of autonomy.”

Indeed, media critic Jack Shaheen’s book and 2007 film, “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People,” document negative stereotypes of Arabs depicted in American movies.

“All aspects of our culture project the Arab as villain,” Shaheen says in the film.

He includes lyrics from the opening music of the Disney film “Aladdin”:

“Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place, where the caravan camels grow, where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face. It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.”

“Aladdin” has been seen by millions of children around the world.

Anti-Arab prejudice has also been fueled by Hollywood’s depictions of Arab women as

“highly sexualized belly dancer[s] … inspired by early images of the Orient as the place of exoticism, intrigue and passion,” Shaheen notes. More recently, however, “this image has dramatically changed: The Arab woman is now projected as a bomber, a terrorist.”

Events that politicized Arab Americans

These stereotypes are racist, sexist and patently false. Many Arabs came to the United States to study. Once here, they were moved to activism primarily by Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

As Pennock observes, the single biggest factor that galvanized Arab Americans was the dispossession of Palestinian Arabs occasioned by the creation of the state of Israel and its occupation of Palestinian territories.

In order to establish Israel as a Jewish state in 1948, nearly 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were expelled from their homes and their land. They call it the Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic.

A second catalyzing event occurred in June 1967, 50 years ago this month. Israel, with help from the United States, invaded Egypt, Jordan and Syria and seized the Palestinian territories in the West Bank, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula.

Later that year, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 242, which refers to

“the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and calls for “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.”

Nevertheless, Israel continues to occupy Palestinian territories it acquired in 1967.

In addition, the 1967 war stoked anti-Arab sentiment in the United States.

“While anti-Arab prejudice became especially pervasive and damaging after September 11, 2001, the stigmatization heightened in the aftermath of the 1967 war when many Americans increasingly grouped people of Arab heritage together, regardless of their citizenship or whether they resided in Arab nations or in the United States, and viewed them as threatening and suspicious,” Pennock writes.

The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

One event intensified anti-Arab prejudice in the United States and made it difficult for Arab Americans to “dissociate from stereotypes of terrorists,” according to Pennock: the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy by Palestinian American Sirhan Sirhan.

Sirhan was 4 years old when he and his family were forced by the Israeli military to flee their home in Jerusalem. That trauma informed his perception of Israel. Sirhan was disturbed by U.S. support for Israeli policies. During the presidential campaign, Kennedy vociferously backed Israel. For the 24-year-old Sirhan, who suffered from mental illness, Kennedy’s words intensified his pain.

Attorney Abdeen Jabara, a member of Sirhan’s defense team, told Pennock that this confluence of events supported a diminished-capacity defense to the murder charge. Sirhan ultimately was convicted of murdering Kennedy and condemned to death. His sentence was later converted to life without possibility of parole when the law changed in California.

The Munich Olympics murders

Four years later, in an attempt to free Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, the Black September faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization murdered Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

As a result of the 1972 massacre, the Nixon administration increased surveillance and investigation of Arab Americans, in a program called “Operation Boulder.”

Operation Boulder

“[B]ecause the Arab visa checks and investigations of Arab Americans were publicized in the American media as constituting the U.S. government’s reaction to the Munich massacre,” Pennock observes, “the government had in effect stigmatized all Arabs as suspect in the public’s mind.”

But the investigations

“never detected a single case of terrorist or espionage activity among Arabs living in the United States,” she reports.

Operation Boulder, which officially ended in 1975, lasted only two years. But the U.S. government continued to monitor Arab Americans for many years thereafter.

Many leaders in the Arab American community thought the real aim of Operation Boulder was

“to suppress Arab Americans’ legal political expression, particularly their pro-Palestinian activism … it was a program of political intimidation” that “also sought to ‘divide and conquer’ Arab American communities by making them suspicious of one another,” Pennock writes.

Jabara, one of those investigated during Operation Boulder, later wrote that the program could

“only be understood against the background of the definite pressure that [has] been brought to bear by Israel and its supporters in the U.S.”

Jabara told Truthdig,

“The matrix of the prejudice was part and parcel of the ‘unswerving commitment’ by the U.S. and its allies to Israel despite its gross violation of Palestinian rights. In short, there was an organic connection between the prejudice that was promoted in American popular culture as a support mechanism to a foreign policy that enabled Israeli aggression and colonization. Both the Americans and Israelis wanted to crush any resistance, regardless of what forms it took.”

In the wake of 9/11, in another racist operation, the Bush administration rounded up and incarcerated hundreds of Arab Americans who had committed no crime. Bush also instituted his Terrorist Surveillance Program to spy on people without judicial review. That program was codified by Congress and continued during the Obama administration.

In 2011, Wired uncovered FBI training materials that described how agents were taught to consider “mainstream” Muslims as supporters of terrorism.

The Intercept reported in 2014 that documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the FBI and the National Security Agency covertly read emails of prominent Muslim Americans, including lawyers, academics, civil rights activists and a political candidate.

Arab American activism

Jabara was a founder and past president of the Association of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG), the first national organization of Arab American peace and civil rights activists. Founded in 1967, AAUG was the most visible and active Arab American organization in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It had chapters in most U.S. cities and universities.

AAUG was

“a select group of Arab Americans [college graduates] who formulated a sense of ethnic identity, fostered community solidarity, and practiced progressive and transnational politics,” Pennock writes.

This group was committed “to an anti-racist, anti-imperialist analysis of Arab world problems” and was ideologically aligned with the global left. It aimed to demonstrate to Americans that “Zionism was a form of colonialism rather than a legitimate expression of Jewish nationalism.”

Significantly, AAUG “helped elevate the Palestinian struggle to the status of a premier universal human rights issue,” AAUG member Ghada Hasem Talhami later observed.

AAUG’s scholarly analysis, published in the Arab Studies Quarterly and other papers and monographs,

“was usually critical not only of Israel and U.S. policy in the Middle East but also of conservative Arab states,” Pennock notes. Following the 1967 war, Egypt and Syria had “demonstrably retreated from their commitment to pan-Arabism and Palestinian independence,” she adds.

Thus, Jabara notes, AAUG provided a forum for Arab intellectuals, artists, activists and political figures who may not have had such opportunities to meet in their home countries.

Jabara saw a natural alliance between the issues facing Arab Americans and the struggles of “Black Americans, Chicanos, Oriental Americans, young people and civil libertarians,” all of whom were “excluded from any meaningful participation in the American decision process.”

Most in the African-American community had traditionally formed alliances with Jews. But by the 1980s, many became increasingly critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, which they equated with South African apartheid.

The most significant factor driving U.S. foreign policy, according to Jabara, was not the Zionist lobby, but rather “America’s definition and pursuit of its economic interests in the region.”

Arab students, many of them members of the Organization of Arab Students (OAS), likened the struggle of the Palestinians to the Vietnamese fight for self-determination.

By the 1980s, the Muslim Student Organization supplanted OAS as the leading organization of Arab American students, who were increasingly becoming Muslims.

In 1980, Jabara helped form the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) with former Sen. James Abourezk and Arab American Institute founder James Zogby. Jabara also served as president of ADC, which is still a significant organization.

Jabara told Truthdig that the 1973 oil embargo by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries led to an

“uptick” in prejudice against Arab Americans. “That led to the creation of the ADC in 1980,” he added.

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG), the nation’s oldest and largest progressive bar association, was the first in the United States to be racially integrated. From the late 1960s through the mid-1970s, Jabara played the central role in convincing NLG to take up the issue of Palestine and the rights of Palestinians to self-determination. No issue has ever been as divisive in NLG. Some Jewish members left the organization, but it continues to oppose the Israeli occupation.

In 1977, Jabara led the first NLG delegation to Israel, Palestine, Syria and Jordan, and contributed to the delegation’s groundbreaking 1977 report on conditions in the occupied territories. That report was widely circulated within the then-young human rights network and is largely credited with paving the way for other organizations to break with the pro-Israeli orthodoxy and issue their own reports critical of Israeli human rights abuses.

Jabara was also a key participant in the lawsuit filed by NLG and the Center for Constitutional Rights against the FBI and the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith for spying on NLG and other Arab American and progressive groups.

Anti-Zionism vs. Anti-Semitism

In 1975, the U.N. General Assembly, by a 2-to-1 margin, passed a resolution equating Zionism with racism. It drew parallels between Israeli Zionism and apartheid South Africa. The United States voted against the resolution.

Beginning in the mid-to-late 1960s, people critical of Israel’s policies were accused of anti-Semitism, a characterization that persists to this day. Indeed, those who support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement are often labeled anti-Semitic.

Following in the tradition of the Arab American call for the United Auto Workers to divest its Israeli bonds in the early 1970s, the BDS movement was launched by representatives of Palestinian civil society in 2005. They appealed to “international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era … [including] embargoes and sanctions against Israel.”

This call for BDS specified that “these nonviolent punitive measures” should last until Israel fully complies with international law by

1) ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the barrier wall;

2) recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3) respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their land as stipulated in General Assembly Resolution 194.

Students for Justice in Palestine, which focuses predominantly on the BDS movement, has been tarred as anti-Semitic by Zionist groups on campuses throughout the country.

But Rafeef Ziadah, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, says,

“The BDS movement is opposed, as a matter of principle, to all forms of discrimination, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”

In 2014, Palestinian human rights activist Omar Barghouti wrote in The New York Times,

“Arguing that boycotting Israel is intrinsically anti-Semitic is not only false, but it also presumes that Israel and ‘the Jews’ are one and the same. This is as absurd and bigoted as claiming that a boycott of a self-defined Islamic state like Saudi Arabia, say, because of its horrific human rights record, would of necessity be Islamophobic.”

Any criticism of Israeli policy is labeled anti-Semitism, even though many Jews—including members of Jewish Voice for Peace, Jewish Center for Nonviolence and IfNotNow—oppose the occupation.

Israel has invaded Gaza three times in the last seven years, killing thousands of Palestinians, including large numbers of women and children. The Black Lives Matter movement sees similarities between the police killings of African-Americans in the U.S. and Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, particularly in Gaza.

As the struggle against the Israeli occupation continues, Pennock’s compelling book is a must-read for progressives and all interested in a comprehensive history of Arab American activism. The parallels it draws with current events will inform today’s activists in our struggles for freedom and equality.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace. Her most recent book is “Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.” Visit her website at http://marjoriecohn.com/  and follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marjoriecohn.

[thespearnews-blog]

Uganda, A state Ascending Into Violence, Torture and Murder

New Post has been published on https://thespearnews.com/2017/05/16/uganda-state-ascending-violence-torture-murder/

Uganda, A state Ascending Into Violence, Torture and Murder

Fz Wagaba

Political violence and intolerance in Uganda has dramatically increased in the past months, with record levels of state sponsored abductions, torture and murders recorded   as opposition to dictator Museveni’s 32 year rule escalates.

Hundreds of cases of political violence and state agents inspired torture have been reported countrywide by local NGOs and newspapers respectively, that involve the use of violence and torture mainly to obtain confessions of involvement in serious crime, and many more other politically motivated assaults on individuals and known members of the opposition.

Human Rights groups based in the country have condemned the state for using illegal means in arresting and detaining suspects, as well as holding them in ungazetted facilities popularly known as ‘Torture Chambers’ which provide Ugandan security and military forces with the opportunity for unseen torture and interrogation of suspects, where victims are beaten, electrocuted, whipped and maimed by inflicting life changing injuries and trauma. One notoriously singled out detention facility that is used by the so called ‘Police Flying Squad’, an outfit that was created by the Uganda Police to tackle violent crime is based on the outskirts of the impoverished country’s former industrial town of Jinja 52 miles out of the capital Kampala, where suspects have narrated being blindfolded and beaten with blunt objects including machetes, gun butts, iron bars as well as use of electrocution, and left to spend nights undressed on cold floors while being infested on by mosquitos.

Last week, slews of limping men and women were paraded and produced before court to be charged of offenses ranging from murder, treason and terrorism. Surprisingly, one prominent politician who had as well been abducted from an undisclosed place and taken to this facility was not present in court.

This prompted questions by his relatives and friends who later found out that he had been secretly wheeled out of the torture place to a private hospital in Kampala where we was admitted under high security, while undergoing medical treatment to cure his openly gaping huge wounds on both his legs and ankles.

The horrifying scenes of the state of Mr. Byamukama the Mayor and chairman of Kamwenge District in South Western Uganda, in excruciating pain lying on his hospital bed sent shock waves all over the country. Meanwhile, the pleas of other suspects (see attached images), who were being charged mainly with the murder of AIGP Andrew Felix Kaweesi on March 17 among other charges were falling on deaf ears of the presiding magistrate.

It’s common law procedure that a lower court does not entertain pleas from capital offence suspects, but even in such extra-ordinary circumstances, it appeared evident that the magistrate was fearful, or bent on further frustrating the victims by refusing to acknowledge any of the pleas against further violence on them. So shocking to say the least. Despite showing off broken limbs and fresh body wounds, court was so short of compassion that it didn’t even bother calling for a report on the health of these men, nor recommending urgent medical attention. They were all further remanded in prison at the dismay of their relatives and friends who had gathered to show support to their loved ones.

Gavin (not his real name) is a former detainee at this notorious facility in Jinja has disclosed the shocking levels of abuse and torture he received at the hands of his captors.

He says he experienced brutal, callous and inhumane treatment every morning and evening. He further lamented how he was tied and beaten with his feet hanging in the air, while his hands were tired from the ceiling and 21 men took it in turns to whip him from the back indiscriminate of where the whip hit. He further says that his interrogators demanded that he accepts to be part of the gang that terrorises people at night by hitting them with iron bars, and also reveal more information about other human and gay rights activists he was seen associating with and who was funding their activities.

Realising that they were not getting too much from him, they secretly transferred him under blindfolds to another detention facility in Kireka an eastern Kampala suburb where the beatings continued together with threats of using pair of pliers on his genitals. He was denied water every other time he requested for it, and the right to speak to anyone from outside including access to a lawyer. As like Byamukama, Gavin was later secretly transferred in the middle of the night to an unknown place where he spent a week and half in solitary confinement as his wounds dried on portions of anti-bacteria and pain killing pills.

He narrates that at one moment, a female who he heard his guard refer to as ‘Musaawo’, meaning nurse was brought in to examine his wounds and washed them with a substance that had a thick smell of Dettol a common surgical liquid substance often used to decontaminate bacterial infections in that part of the world. Three days later, he was called into an empty room and caution against speaking to the press or any other relevant persons about his ordeal, or else he would be returned and dealt with again. He was then driven and secretly dumped on a busy Kampala road where he solicited for a phone from a stranger and called his mum.

Gavin’s experience tallies with testimonies from other former victims of this brutal treatment, indicating that there is a severe systemic and coordinated campaign of state sponsored violence whose frequency is on the rise beyond anyone else’s control, but the perpetrators themselves.

There have been other coordinated reports of electrocutions during interrogation, solitary confinement and sexual harassment.

Latest images of suspected criminals being paraded before court with sceptic wounds all over their body have ignited widespread debate, anger and condemnation of the tyrant’s campaign of violence from both local and international players on social media and foreign media outlets respectively. Over 15 suspects have so been accused of killing AIGP Kaweesi and his two bodyguards, and have all denied any involvement in this tragic murder. These arrests have caused a wave of fear within the opposition ranks and supporters who have always been an easy target whenever a security operation is underway in this East African country.

All these latest developments come on the back many more unresolved state inspired murders and arbitrary arrests including that of Dr. Stella Nyanzi, a celebrated Ugandan academic and Human Rights activist who was arrested and later imprisoned in Luzira Maximum security prison for likening president Museveni to a person’s buttocks. She has since been released on court bail but after spending 30 days behind bars. This is further proof that Museveni’s government is desperately becoming intolerant with anyone who expresses dissent and critical views, and would do anything within its means to quell free expression in the most brutal of ways possible.

So many other rights abuses have gone un investigated and perpetuators unpunished giving them the blank cheque of impunity to carry on endlessly. The most shocking of such cruelty was the mass killing of over one hundred monarchists in a police and military joint operation inside a kingdom’s palace in Kasese South West Uganda on November 26, 2016. Among the slain victims were fifteen children including women and police officers. Those who survived the bloody onslaught were arrested, driven over 180KM to the same notorious detention facility in Jinja where they were tortured, and as a result fatalities occurred but the authorities were so quick to cover them up. Responding to this massacre, Maria Burnett the Director of Africa at the Human Rights Watch said, “The assault on the palace compound in Kasese, which killed more people in a go than any other tragic single event since the height of the Northern Uganda war over a decade ago, should not be swept under the carpet”. Until now, some families are still in limbo without a trace of their loved ones as they never had the chance to bury them nor speak to them since the bloody tragic event over six months ago.

Meanwhile, the Uganda government is adamant that there will be no investigations whatsoever into this grim operation and conduct of any official involved on that day. And as a result of the above documented abuses, and many other more that remain unrecorded, coupled with no hope of imminent change of the status quo, sections of Ugandans find themselves living in perpetual fear and as refugees in their own country, faced with the prospect of never getting justice or reparation whatsoever for the abuse they have been subjected to over the years, sharing spaces with their tormentors and facing their graves with unhealed wounds. Such is the tyrant’s tragic campaign of torture and violence facing my beloved country Uganda.

N.B: Uganda is a signatory to the International Convention Against Torture (CAT) which states that torture is a peremptory norm in international law.

Fz Wagaba