(Source: miss-nothing-nowhere, via danielzrotfl)
AFGHANISTAN MILITIA by oliviermatthys on Flickr.
First female village chief in Afghanistan defies gender roles || Al Arabiya
After being ridiculed by male villagers for wanting to occupy political office, Zarifa Qazizadah, the mother of 15 children, managed to become the mayor of Naw Abad, a village in the northern Balkh province.
Qazizadah’s political ambition started in 2004 when she told her mocking fellow villagers that she wanted to represent them and promised to supply Naw Abad with electricity.“I am telling the men in my village that if they have any problems, I will talk to the government on their behalf and in case of any trouble at night, I will carry my gun and come to your houses to solve the problem,” she said.
Qazizadah added that she is willing to be disguised as a man and drive a motorcycle in the middle of the night if this will enable her to help her people.
She lost the 2004 elections but kept her promise as far as connecting the village to electricity is concerned. Two years later, the same men who ridiculed Qazizadah asked her to run for head of the village and she finally succeeded.
Currently, Qazizadah’s priority is guarding the electricity supply in Naw Abad and making sure there are no power thefts in the neighborhood.
“I cannot allow this to happen,” she said. “It is against the law.”
Qazizadah also kept her promise about handling problems that occur at night – she dons men’s clothes, gets on her motorcycle, and heads to where the trouble is. According to her, disguise is better in a conservative society that would be shocked to see a woman on a motorcycle late at night.
Qazizadah also uses her own field tractor to tow cars that break down in the middle of the road or get stuck in the mud.
“She does things men are incapable of,” said Mulawi Sayed Mohamed, one of the villagers.
ENDER'S GAME BLOG: Ccspatriot35 asks:How militaristic will the environment be? Will we...
Ccspatriot35 asks:
How militaristic will the environment be? Will we be seeing the children treated like the soldiers they are meant to portray? For all intents and purposes they are in boot camp for most of their adolescence. Will we see the characters being broken down?
…
(Source: adamjone5, via oncethedustsettles)
UT12 (by peterbaker)
Things gentlemanly, hoss and literary.: Coffee and Cigarettes
Before I had even opened my eyes, I registered two things; the pistol under my pillow had shifted, meaning I had played with it at some point during the night, and that Chris was making coffee.
I opened my eyes to the world, looking up at the concrete ceiling, painted white, or maybe…
CPT Daniel W. Eggers, Class of 1997
KIA in Afghanistan on May 29, 2004
Images from the Corcoran’s Tim Hetherington exhibit Sleeping Soldiers. I was struck by the unsettling intimacy of his three-channel video projectionand accompanying photographs of U.S. soldiers stationed in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan.
(via thalassaraasch)
Just another day at the office.
[Top] Coalition special operations forces Pararescue Jumpers lower a stretcher during a medical evacuation in Nuristan province, Afghanistan.
[Bottom] Coalition special operations forces Pararescue Jumpers medically evacuate an injured Afghan National Army commando during a mission in Nuristan province, Afghanistan. Commandos and coalition special operations forces, the first to visit that area in more than two years, defeated insurgent forces overrunning a village. Commando-led missions provide national security by encouraging local villagers to look to government forces for support rather than insurgents.
(Photos by Petty Officer 2md Class Clayton Weis, 13 April 2012 via DVIDS.)
Three billboards in Montreal’s Mile End are displaying photographs by the late British-American photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who was killed in the Libyan civil war last year.
The photographs are from Hetherington’s series Sleeping soldiers. The images depict U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan.
The billboards are on the St. Lawrence Warehouse, at the intersection of Van Horne Avenue and St. Laurent Boulevard.
The outdoor exhibition of Hetherington’s Sleeping soldiers is on display in Montreal and six other cities across Canada during the month of May: Dartmouth, Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary and Vancouver.
The exhibition is part of the Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival.
The soldiers depicted on the billboards in Montreal are Kim, Alcantara and Kelso. Hetherington photographed them in the Korengal Valley, Kunar Provice, Afghanistan in 2008.
