•  Here’s some photos from my summer so far. Everything else has been happening at the U or studying at some coffee shop. Life of a student, or life of “Grete the Student.” 

• It was Pip’s 21st Birthday yesterday, so I just wanted to remind her. I let her go and she should be thankful she still has her eye-balls. 
• 

6/13/08

Dear Senator Bennet,

I’m writing to you today because I’m deeply concerned about the killings and massive amounts rapes happening in Darfur/Sudan. Where rape is used as a weapon to gain more area of land for the possession of oil. As a women and student of the University of Utah I’m deeply distressed about this issue and there needs to be taken action.

Why has the U.S. Government taken no action on this issue? I recently attended a video documentary screening at the Salt Lake City Public Library with a panel consisting of former Mayor Rocky Anderson and two refugees from Rwanda and Sudan.

“The world vowed “never again” after the genocide in Rwanda and the atrocities in Srebrenica, Bosnia. Then came Darfur. Over the past four years, at least 200,000 people have been killed, 2.5 million driven from their homes, and mass rape has been used as a weapon in a brutal campaign supported by the Sudanese government. In On Our Watch, FRONTLINE asks why the United Nations and its members once again failed to stop the slaughter.” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darfur/). Please take the time to watch this PBS documentary.

I believe Utahans should bring this world issue to the forefront because we cannot risk another overlooked genocide. I do not want to stand by and do nothing, not just because I don’t want a guilty conscious in the coming years, but people are counting on us. And we’re in the position where we can make a difference and stop these horrible acts. Please address this issue before it’s too late.

Thank you so much for taking your time.

Sincerely,

Grete Eliassen

Instead of using those other online search engines, starting using. www.goodsearch.com Everytime you search they’ll donate to your charity of choice. Even the WOMEN’S SPORTS FOUNDATION!!!  

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• while you’re at it check out the Women Sports Foundation Web Site

Backwardsland is no excuse for IOC/VANOC to dismiss women’s ski jumping

Are we living in Backwardsland? A land where Susan B. Anthony, Billie Jean King, Mumeo Oku and Fatma Kayhan — who have fought for women’s rights across the globe — been forgotten? It seems that way.

            The International Olympic Committee has denied women’s ski jumping in the 2010 Winter Olympics; that’s not new news. But the fact that people are giving grief to the women’s ski jumpers of the world for fighting this decision on principle is unfathomable. So what, living in Backwardsland is OK?

             No, and that’s why democratic countries offer its citizens a political process — such as the courts — to stand up against those people that have forgotten that women, especially in the U.S. and Canada, actually have equal rights. To hear that women aren’t getting equal opportunities in sports is like learning that Billie Jean King is still playing Bobby Riggs in “The Battle of the Sexes” almost four decades later. Haven’t people changed their views about women in sports already? Guess not, and that’s why women’s ski jumping has had enough with the IOC and has decided to bring a lawsuit against the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee.

            In late May, nine plaintiffs (including jumpers from all corners of the world) filed the suit against VANOC for discriminating against women’s ski jumpers under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The women are asking the court for an injunction requiring VANOC to include women’s ski jumping in the Games, or, alternatively, to exclude men’s ski jumping if it decides to also exclude women. Ski jumping will be the only sport in the 2010 Olympic Winter Games that will not include competition for the opposite gender.

            The truth is: This lawsuit is a long shot for women ski jumpers’ hopes of competing in the Olympics even though they have met the IOC’s “prerequisites” for inclusion. At this point, it’s more about principle. These women, including U.S. jumpers Jessica Jerome and Lindsey Van, have taken a figurative jump to speak out against those old stodgy behind the times, Backwardsland men running the show at the IOC and now VANOC. They feared losing their positions on the U.S. Ski Team, but went forward forward anyway on principle. They say the sport will die if girls don’t have the opportunity to compete at the highest level.

            “I’m here because I’ve dedicated my life to ski jumping,” said Van at the press conference announcing the lawsuit. “I want to make this right for future girls of the sport. This is not right any more. It has to change. I don’t want to have to tell girls coming up that I will be coaching that, ‘There really is no future for you.’”

            Recently a columnist wrote, “While one has to question the IOC’s thinking and logic about not sanctioning women’s ski jumping, the organization is not known for its enlightenment … the IOC does what it wants when it wants.”

            Just because the IOC “does what it wants” is not a good reason to sit back and take the punches, and do nothing. The jumpers “have been pushing for this for over a decade and we have followed all the proper channels to Olympic inclusion. A lot of people don’t understand that we have ‘played by the rules’ and done everything the IOC has asked,” Jerome said. Instead of dealing with that antiquated organization, the plaintiffs are asking the British Columbia court to rule on principle, on modern law for the loveofgawd and let the women jump in just one event (men have three). The facilities are already built after all.

The nine plaintiffs in the suit aren’t swinging a carrot at IOC/VANOC. They have a big stick in Ross Clark, a partner at Davis LLP, who is putting aside his $1,000 an hour charge and helping the women pro bono. They are led by Women’s Ski Jumping USA President Deedee Corradini, who some think “is just running the athletes up the flag pole for personal gain.” The fact is, she like Clark, volunteered countless hours (500 a year to be exact) to help the world remember what Billie Jean King actually fought for; the fight for equal rights in sports is enough to fire anyone up, Clark and Corradini included. Not personal gain, principle!

            “We don’t appreciate the implications you make that we are being led like sheep,” wrote the plaintiffs in response to being helped by Corradini, in particular. “We are all intelligent adults who have made the decision to pursue this course of action out of years of frustration — no one else has stood up for us over the years.” 

            This whole debacle is so infuriating because it’s turned in to a political show of pandering and blackmail instead of the Olympic spirit. As of now, that flame as been pissed away. It’s out. Case in point: VANOC claims it has nothing to do with the IOC decision, it supported the inclusion of women’s ski jumping in 2010, and that this lawsuit is futile. Not so fast. An IOC official has shared with a confidential source that Canada did not want more than the minimum done for jumping in the Games. This shadiness is a shame being that the Beijing Games are coming up, but people need to know what has become of the Olympic spirit.

            Backwardsland. Definitely. For women’s suffrage and all the “fighting” that seemed to be a thing of the past, take a stand and at least prove to the world that women’s ski jumping has universal support by going to www.wsj2010.com and signing a petition.

Vanessa Pierce is the features editor at Ski Racing magazine, co-founder of the “applied for” nonprofit SheJumps.org, and a former Division 1 soccer player at the University of Washington. She can be reached at vpierce@skiracing.com. 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darfur/ 

•  I recently attended a screening for the documentary “On Our Watch.” You can watch the movie by clicking the link above. Please, I’ve asked you before. Please, look into this. This is happening right now and I know all of you (especially my friends) won’t sit back and allow this to happen. If you would like to get involved. Please visit www.highroadforhumanrights.org
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• During the early stages of the genocide in Rwanda, a human rights activist urged President Clinton’s National Security Advisor to take urgent action. He said that people were not calling to express their concerns and that no action would be taken unless people made “more noise”. Senator Paul Simon thought 100 letters to each US Senator would have spurred the action necessary to stop the genocide. The American people were silent, letters were not sent, phone calls were not made – and 800,000 men, women, and children were brutally butchered. The United States and the international community did nothing – they did not even pursue aggressive diplomatic action – to stop the atrocities – because the American people remained silent.

•  Alright, my semester is half-way done. Getting pretty anxious! This photo was taken last Fall when “One Love” did a photo shoot of all the professional ski & snowboard athletes that go to school at the U of U. 

• Recently, HRC has been gaining ground and I can’t believe the fight she’s put up. So proud of her!  

• I found a recent quote of Senator Clinton’s on CNN.com 

  “I think it’s only now that we’re finishing these contests that people are going to actually reflect. Who’s our stronger candidate? And I believe I am and I’m going to make that case. And at some point it will either be accepted or it won’t be, but I feel strongly about making it.”   

• You can’t deny the momentum she’s gained? People are really starting to understand what she can truly achieve.  

• (The title of this article is the Title of Senator Obama’s book). 

U.N.: Brutality against women in Congo ‘beyond rape’

• Story Highlights
• U.N. finds gang-rape rampant; men forced to rape daughters, mothers, sisters
• Victims shot or stabbed in genital area, survivors forced to eat excrement, flesh
• Army, police, non-state militias involved, protected by senior authorities
• Justice system does nothing to protect women and girls from atrocities

GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) – Extreme sexual violence against women is pervasive in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and local authorities do little to stop it or prosecute those responsible, a U.N. investigator said on Monday.

Rape and brutality against women and girls are “rampant and committed by non-state armed groups, the Armed Forces of the DRC, the National Congolese Police, and increasingly also by civilians”, said Turkish lawyer Yakin Erturk.

“Violence against women seems to be perceived by large sectors of society to be normal,” she added in a report after an 11-day trip to the strife-torn country.

Erturk, special rapporteur for the United Nations Human Rights Council on violence against women, said the situation in South Kivu province, where rebels from neighboring Rwanda operate, was the worst she had ever encountered.

The atrocities perpetrated there by armed groups, some of whom seemed to have been involved in the 1994 Rwandan massacres in which 800,000 people were killed, “are of an unimaginable brutality that goes far beyond rape,” she said.

“Women are gang-raped, often in front of their families and communities. In numerous cases, male relatives are forced at gun point to rape their own daughters, mothers or sisters,” she said.

After rape, many women were shot or stabbed in the genital area, and survivors told Erturk that while held as slaves by the gangs they had been forced to eat excrement or the flesh of their murdered relatives.

Women who have been raped are systematically rejected by their families and society.

Widespread sexual abuse in the various conflicts racking the republic — which last year held elections hailed as marking a new era — “seems to have become a generalized aspect of the overall oppression of women,” Erturk said.

Her report followed charges from U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour last week that soldiers and police used excessive force, including summary executions, in quelling opposition protesters in the west of the DRC earlier this year.

In the central Equateur province, the police and army often responded to civil unrest “with organized armed reprisals that target the civilian population and involve indiscriminate pillage, torture and mass rape”, the report found.

Although the DRC parliament outlawed sexual violence in July 2006, “little action is taken by the authorities to implement the law and perpetrators continue to enjoy immunity, especially if they wear the state’s uniform,” Erturk said.

Erturk said Congo’s justice system was corrupt and in “a deplorable state,” while conditions in prisons were “scandalous”.

Senior army and police officers shielded their men from prosecution, and when some were arrested they escaped easily, probably “with the complicity of those in charge.”

In a few cases courts had ordered the state and individuals to compensate victims. But “to this day the government has not paid reparations to a single victim who has suffered sexual violence at the hand of state agents,” said

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/07/30/congo.rape.reut/