In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: War; terrorism; genocide; rape] Fucking hell: "Jihadists from the Islamic State group may have committed genocide and war crimes against the minority Yazidi community in Iraq, the UN says. In a new report, it says IS had 'the intent...to destroy the Yazidi as a group.' ...Among the atrocities it says were perpetrated against the Yazidi community by IS were: the 'brutal and targeted' killing of hundreds of men and boys in Nineveh province, northwest of Baghdad, in August 2014; the rape of girls as young as six; the abduction of women 'as spoils of war'; the forced separation of families, with boys as young as eight taken to be trained as IS fighters. The reports adds: 'In some instances, villages were entirely emptied of their Yazidi population.'" This is what the United States "spreading freedom" to Iraq looks like. We created the chaos from which this grotesquery emerged.

[CN: Rape apologia] This professor gets an A+: "When Jeremiah True wouldn't stop talking about his controversial opinions on sexual assault in his required freshman humanities course, his professor banned him from the discussion segment of the class for the remainder of the semester. The 19-year-old told BuzzFeed News that his professor, Pancho Savery, warned him repeatedly that his views made his classmates uncomfortable before he told him in a March 14 email that he was no longer welcome to participate in the 'conference' section of his Humanities 110 lecture-seminar class. 'Please know that this was a difficult decision for me to make and one that I have never made before; nevertheless, in light of the serious stress you have caused your classmates, I feel that I have no other choice,' Savery wrote in the email, obtained by BuzzFeed News." YES.

[CN: Police brutality; racism; images of injury at link] Democratic Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe has called for an investigation after 20-year-old University of Virginia student Martese Johnson, who is black, was arrested outside a pub late Tuesday/early Wednesday and beaten by police who asserted that Johnson "was very agitated and belligerent." However, in an increasingly familiar tale, Bryan Beaubrun, a fellow UVA student who photographed the incident "said police acted with unnecessary force. 'He didn't need to be tackled. He wasn't being aggressive at all,' Mr Beaubrun told the Associated Press." Governor McAuliffe "is concerned by the reports of this incident and has asked the secretary of public safety to initiate an independent Virginia State Police investigation into the use of force." Meanwhile, Johnson addressed a crowd of protesters last night, urging calm as tension rose: "We're all part of one community and we deserve to respect each other, especially at times like this." That so shouldn't be his obligation, in this moment.

People in Europe are worried about the biggest solar eclipse in fifteen years: "On Friday morning, March 20, a solar eclipse will sweep across Europe. This rare aligning of the sun, moon, and Earth will cause the standard delays and hazards as onlookers get distracted by the unusual sky and the darkness it casts. But this time around, there is a new cause for concern: solar power. The eclipse, in which the moon comes between the sun and the Earth, will be most pronounced in Northern Europe, and the bulk of the apprehension is centered on Europe's solar powerhouse: Germany. At the size of Montana and nearly the same latitude, Germany is an unlikely solar leader, but a concerted national effort to go renewable has put it at the forefront of solar power development. Its 1.4 million solar energy systems account for around a quarter of the solar capacity installed on Earth and solar provides about seven percent of the country's power. During 75 minutes in the mid-morning—when the sun's power is normally accelerating—Germany will instead rapidly lose solar generation."

[CN: Racism] This is a terrific illustration by Ronald Wimberly about racism in corporate comics. That last line is amazing.

[CN: Ciscentrism] Dr. Cheryl Chastine: "Cisgender Women Aren't the Only People Who Seek Abortions, and Activists' Language Should Reflect That." Terrific piece.

Oh god lololol: "Rep. Aaron Schock, who resigned from Congress yesterday over allegations that he'd improperly spent taxpayer money, has at least one person in [his] corner. ...'Two years from now he'll be successful, if he's not in jail,' [Schock's father] Dr. Richard Schock told a reporter from Chicago's ABC7 outside his home in Peoria, Illinois."

And finally! Here is an amazing story about a mama dog who buried her puppies to save them from a forest fire—and they were all rescued safely! Yayayayayay!