Hero Saves Toddler Dangling From 4th-Floor Window In China Using Only A Mop

A quick-thinking man is being hailed as a hero in China for climbing outside a fourth-floor window to save a toddler who was dangling off the side of the building. And he did it using only a mop. 

Wang Baocheng, of Weifang, a city in Shandong province, heard the girl's cries while walking through the neighborhood. 

"I heard her calling for help and quickly ran over," he told CCTV. "I saw that the girl's head was stuck and it was holding her up."

The child had been left home alone and somehow managed to crawl out the window. Her head got stuck in the bars, which stopped her from falling. 

Wang ran upstairs to an adjacent window and climbed onto the ledge. 

"When I got upstairs I grabbed onto the window and used a mop to support her," he told the state-controlled news agency. 

While suspended on the window pane, Wang held the toddler in place with the mop until her parents came home and brought her inside about 10 minutes later. 

"I think his brave and courageous actions are worthy of praise," a resident of the building told CCTV. 

The news agency reports the girl, whose age was not given, was scared but unhurt. 

(h/t LiveLeak)

How Pakistan Negotiates With Balochistan

Disclaimer: The title of this article has been inspired by the remarkable book How Pakistan Negotiates With the United States by Ambassadors Teresita C. Schaffer and Howard B. Schaffer. Pakistan has a distinct way of dealing with different countries and it also applies divergent methods while tackling internal conflicts and crises. Islamabad, for instance, is more likely to forgive the Taliban and negotiate with them in the north than to talk to the separatist Balochs in the Southwest.

The Baloch narrative is loaded with stories recollecting how Islamabad took their willingness to negotiate for granted and converted those occasions as excellent opportunities to humiliate them.

For example, when veteran Baloch leader Nawab Akbar Bugti, who had formerly served as the governor and the chief minister of Balochistan but had developed sharp differences with the then military dictator General Pervez Musharraf, had agreed in 2005 to negotiate with Islamabad, he had been promised that the army would send a special plane to pick him up from the nearest airport in his home district. The Nawab reportedly waited for several hours. However, when General Musharraf, who had unleashed a military operation against the Baloch nationalists who sought maximum control over the province's mineral wealth, learned that the seventy-nine year old Nawab, the leader of the Baloch insurgents, had agreed to visit Islamabad and negotiate, he purposefully instructed his juniors not to send the plane to fly the opposition leader to Islamabad. Musharraf's apparent motive, some say, was to humiliate the old Baloch leader and bring him to his knees.

When Musharraf's ego prevailed and talks between the Pakistan army and the Baloch never took place, the senior Bugti was eventually killed in a military operation in 2006 and the insurgency in Balochistan turned into such a conflagration that it has continued for one decade and even worsened.

Only last week we witnessed a stunning change in the situation when Brahamdagh Bugti, a prominent Baloch separatist leader, took the media by storm with his staggering announcement to relinquish the demand for a free Baloch state if the people of Balochistan wanted to remain a part of Pakistan. That sounded like a lame excuse to give up his position because he has been the leader of the Baloch people and has had the authority to lead the public opinion. The people would do only what he would tell them to do because he began to lead them at the time of chaos, conflict and uncertainty in 2006. Leaders across the world emerge when people look up for some authority figure to lead and protect them at the time of threat and hopelessness. Mr. Bugti's interview with the BBC was the most dramatic change of mind ever seen in one decade by any key player from both sides of the conflict.

However, a week after Mr. Bugti's unilateral softening of stance, Pakistan's army chief General Raheel Sharif and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif have not even officially commented on the Baloch leader's dramatic shift. For them, it does not appear to be a big deal. For Mr. Bugti, there must be a sense of déjà vu. This is exactly what Musharraf did to his grandfather ten years ago when he was ready to talk to him.

It is impossible that the army chief, who is generally believed to be the most powerful authority in Pakistan, or the prime minister, did not notice Mr. Bugti's announcement to reconcile with them since it remained the biggest news on the national media for around 24 hours. But when Pakistan's two highest-ranking civil and military decision makers pretend as if they don't know what has just happened, it reflects Pakistan's distinct way of dealing with Balochistan.

The country's top leadership is totally, and rightly, self-assured that there is no way that the Baloch insurgents can overpower the powerful military nor can Balochistan break away like Bangladesh did in 1971. This feeling of assurance has generated a very indifferent and smug attitude in Islamabad. That means that the leadership in Islamabad does not find itself in a state of urgency to resolve the conflict in Balochistan. They believe it can never get out of control and they can manage it any time they want. This attitude has perpetuated the conflict.

If Mr. Bugti had hoped that negotiators from Islamabad would quickly run to warmly hug him over his change in position, that is probably not happening. Islamabad wants to wait and see what actually happens in the meanwhile. The right-wing newspapers, which vehemently oppose the Baloch insurgents, are insisting that Mr. Bugti and other Baloch leaders were no longer capable of continuing the war against Pakistan and they ultimately had to give up. Therefore, they suggest, government should not concede to any of the Baloch demands because they are no longer in a position to force the government to meet their demands. For example, the right-wing English paper, the Nation, argued in its editorial on August 28th, "Bugti is the one compromising, not the state."
On another front, Mr. Bugti has also come under sharp criticism from hardliner Baloch organizations, such as the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF), an underground armed group that continues to seek a free Balochistan. The BLF has regretted his 'hasty judgment'.

The more the army and the prime minister keep Mr. Bugti at arms' length, the more they will expose him to internal criticism from fellow pro-independence comrades. He has surprised [or some may say 'disappointed'] many followers and will have to start from scratch should he want to repair the trust of the pro-independence camp in the wake of Islamabad's continued disregard for his offer to give up the demand for a free Balochistan. Any given day, Islamabad will benefit from this situation because division and misunderstandings among the Baloch leaders will weaken sections of the resistance movement and alienate the leaders from each other.

When Islamabad keeps silence, it doesn't mean that it is not negotiating at all. It is just a different way of negotiation. That's what we are seeing toward Balochistan.

The Sweden Democrats: How to Deal with a One Issue Party

The original, slightly abridged version of this article appeared on the Swedish news website Nyheter24 and can be found here.

They're now up to over 20% or maybe even 25%. The Sweden Democrats might be a "one issue party" and there may be numerous people who agree that there are more important issues in Sweden, but evidently there are enough Swedes who think that the immigration debate should be the subject for discussion among all of the political parties. It is completely legitimate for Swedes to want to talk about immigration as a phenomenon, how it impacts society, whether it has gotten out of hand, and what levels are reasonable.

With the undemocratic "December agreement" between the center-right opposition parties (the "Alliance") and the left-wing governing parties, all of the established parties said that they weren't even prepared to discuss the issue of immigration publically, but that they (at any rate the center-right opposition parties) are prepared to effectively vote against their own budget proposals just to avoid a public discussion with a party they feel hasn't been "housebroken." (The December agreement basically said that the established opposition parties would agree not to vote against the governing parties' budget proposals, even if they could get a majority, something which had previously occurred when the Sweden Democrats joined the Alliance in voting down the left-wing government's budget). This arrogant position, which can easily appear to be a form of institutional bullying, perhaps has its roots in certain politicians' views that Sweden is, to use Ann-Sofie Dahl's expression, "the moral superpower." A little more humility and insight would probably serve the country better in this case.

"But we can't let the Sweden Democrats set the agenda," is something we have heard from many of the established parties in an effort to justify their joint decision to freeze the Sweden Democrats out of the discussion. In this case, a little democracy would go a long way. You don't have to like the Sweden Democrats' history, representatives or politics, but you can start a discussion with elected representatives who apparently represent a fifth of the population. Because if the established parties continue to assert their moral superiority, they soon might have to accept that the Sweden Democrats represent not only a fifth of the Swedish population, but maybe a third of it or more.

And if the Sweden Democrats are really a "one issue party," then the Sweden Democrats' influence should peter out if a reasonable solution can be found for that issue, a solution which not only party leaders can accept, but also the Swedish people. Who knows? Maybe just by bringing up the issue for a public policy discussion, the Sweden Democrat representatives might soften their positions a little, positions which have become more and more polarized since the other parties have given them the frozen shoulder.

And however naïve it may sound, shouldn't we at least put the very Swedish Bamse-attitude to the test? Bamse is a Swedish cartoon character, a little teddy bear, who is also the world's strongest bear and one of whose favorite sayings is: "the best way to get rid of your enemies is to turn them into your friends."

I have no idea if this would work with the Swedish Democrats, but I do know one thing: compromise is an integral part of democracy. And to be able to compromise, you have to start by actually speaking with each other.

We also see a weakness here with the Swedish party system. In Sweden the parties put the candidates' names on the ballot, along with the order in which candidates can get elected. You want a lower number and a better chance to get elected, you had better do a good job of toeing your party's line, because the electorate votes for a party rather than an individual (the voters also do have a chance to check a n individual's name, which could help better a candidate's chances of getting elected). The relationship with one's elected officials is not the same as in the US where an elected official is directly responsible to her electorate. In Sweden politicians are somehow forced to be more loyal to the party bosses than to their own constituents, and this applies, of course, to the Sweden Democrats, as well. We should seriously think about how we might change this so that elected officials do a better job of actually representing the voters, and it's not just the party bosses who call the shots. If this were the case in Sweden right now, I'm completely convinced that there would never have been any "December agreement," that the Swedish Parliament would have dared to deal with immigration a long time ago, and that we would have found a practical and sustainable solution - probably a compromise - which takes into consideration the voters themselves.

Even if the roots of the Sweden Democrats were as a neo-Nazi party, it's not relevant in the current discussion. What is relevant is that a significant part of the Swedish population thinks that immigration has gotten out of hand and the Sweden Democrats are the only ones who seem to be prepared to listen to this point of view. This is why their growth is just a natural development. Additionally, the other parties may have caused a backlash by labelling people who don't agree with the current and past government's immigration policies as "racists."

I understand that the Sweden Democrats have, to say the least, extremely questionable roots, but I still think that we need to consider the possibility that the party can evolve in a positive direction. I believe that it is a very Swedish value to believe that people can change, that people can become better versions of themselves if they want to. Maybe a little dialogue can promote mutual understanding which can lead to an improvement here, as well. Even though it took some time, Bamse actually did become buddies with the bad guy, Wolf, in the classic Swedish comic.

Regardless of Wolf and regardless of whether this idea is unrealistic and regardless of whether the Sweden Democrats are just opportunists who are trying to take advantage of the situation, the demand to publically discuss the immigration issue is completely legitimate. You don't have to like the Sweden Democrats. But when making policy, everything should be about the political issues themselves and you have to be able to talk. Hold your nose if you have to, but talk for crying out loud. By refusing to enter into a discussion on this subject, the other parties have actually allowed the Sweden Democrats to own it.

Now it's time for these parties to admit that they haven't been listening to the Swedish people the way they should have, even if they rightly can be concerned that if something actually is done about immigration and integration, the Sweden Democrats would take credit for it. Well, to heck with that. As Harry S Truman supposedly said, "It's amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit." So do something to finally take immigration to a reasonable level and to promote integration. And if the Sweden Democrats take credit, so what? If the problem can actually be solved, then the Sweden Democrats will disappear on their own if they really are a one issue party.

It's finally time to let go of the megalomania that Sweden has to save the world on its own. It's more than enough if we can implement a sensible, humane immigration policy in Sweden which is based on reasonable, sustainable levels, as well as integration goals which actually have a chance of being met and which aim to preserve and enhance that which makes Sweden so unique - in the best sense of the word and in an inclusive fashion. That way Sweden could set an example in Europe without having to pretend to be "the moral superpower."

Pope Francis Delivers His First Message To The United States

Pope Francis held a virtual audience with Americans in three U.S. cities on Monday, just weeks ahead of his first visit to the country later this month. In the first official meeting with the American public, the pope once again demonstrated his priority to pastor to often-marginalized communities by targeting issues relating to youth, homelessness and immigration.

During the audience, which will be part of an ABC News special airing on Friday, the pope said he is praying for the U.S. and asked for Americans' prayers in turn.

The pope spoke from the Vatican to students at the Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Chicago, individuals from homeless shelters in Los Angeles and immigrants at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church near the U.S.-Mexico border in McAllen, Texas.

One 17-year-old student started crying as she told the pope about being bullied for a skin condition she has had her whole life. She said she has found strength in music, which inspired Pope Francis to make a special request.

"I would like to hear you sing," the pope said in English. "May I ask of you to sing a song for me? Be courageous!" The teenager then treated Francis to song in the Argentine pope's native Spanish.

The virtual audience, moderated by "World News Tonight" anchor David Muir, offered Pope Francis a chance to connect with Americans in cities he will be unable to visit during his trip in late September. 

Pope Francis is scheduled to arrive Washington, D.C., on Sept. 22 and will visit New York City and Philadelphia before flying home to Rome on Sept. 27. The pontiff's trip will emphasize care for "the least of these," as referenced in Christian scripture and which has been a major theme of his papacy. He will meet with prisoners, immigrants, elementary school children and family members of Sept. 11 victims.

The one-hour ABC special, titled "Pope Francis and the People," will air on the ABC Television Network on Friday at 10 p.m. EST.

Also on HuffPost:

Canada Responds To Scott Walker: 9/11 Terrorists Had U.S. Visas

WASHINGTON -- Canada responded on Monday to GOP presidential contender Scott Walker's controversial comments about building a northern border wall by pointing out that the terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks had U.S. visas.

Walker said on Sunday that a border wall between Canada and the U.S. was a "legitimate issue for us to look at." Critics quickly pointed to his comments as another example of conservatives spouting extreme rhetoric on immigration. His spokeswoman has since clarified that he was not "advocating" for such a wall.

The Huffington Post asked the Canadian Embassy in Washington to weigh in on Walker's original comments. Spokeswoman Christine Constantin responded with a long statement about the safety of that shared border.

The first point: "It is a fact that no terrorists have been successful in attacking the United States coming through the Canadian border. All of the terrorists responsible for 9/11 were in the United States with visas issued by the U.S. government."

U.S. government officials have previously said there are security vulnerabilities along the Canadian border, HuffPost's Elise Foley reported. A 2010 Government Accountability Office report found that the potential threat of terrorists crossing from Canada into the U.S. was greater than that from Mexico, in part due to the northern border's greater length. But constructing a wall would be extremely expensive and would likely harm U.S. relations with a valuable ally and neighbor.

Indeed, Constantin's statement did not express support for building a wall. Instead, she noted that the border is "jointly managed through strong information sharing and intelligence cooperation between our two countries" and that "our shared border services the world's largest trading relationship."

She added, "As neighbors, partners and allies, Canada and the United States will continue to be there for one another in time of need. A threat to one country is a threat to the other."

Pope's Letter To Gay Children's Book Author 'Uses The Language Of Respect'

 

The Vatican issued a statement on Friday reiterating the church's stance against same-sex relationships and gender fluidity after news broke that the pope sent a letter to Francesca Pardi, author of a children's book with gay themes.

Monsignor Peter Wells, the Vatican's secretariat of state, sent the letter to Pardi on behalf of Pope Francis, thanking her for a package of books she sent him that included Piccolo Uovo, her book that was banned in Venice. The book traces the journey of an unhatched egg in search of a family. Along the way, it encounters different family structures, including two lesbian rabbits raising a family, a pair of gay penguins, and more.

Anti-gay sentiment appears to be gathering steam in Italy, where an event dubbed "The Family Day" brought hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets of Rome in June to protest same-sex families. The event prompted Pardi to send the pope copies of 30 books from her publishing house with a letter asking for his support in the face of anti-gay contingents of Italian press and politics that claim "gender theory" is ruining the family structure. Conservative Catholic groups in the country, such as the organizers of Family Day, believe "gender theory" instills in children the notion that gender does not necessarily correspond with one's biological sex.

“When I found Pope Francis’s letter in my mailbox I was about to faint from all my emotions,” Pardi told HuffPost Italy.

Precisely on the occasion of Family Day, Pardi and her partner Maria Silvia Fiengo -â€" who were married in Barcelona and have five children -â€" wrote to the pope and included a catalogue of all the books that had been indicted. “I would so like you to read them,” Pardi wrote. “You would not find, in these pages, so much as a shadow of the gender theory that they are accused as being an instrument for. Where do we tell the children that they can choose their own gender? Where do we speak to them about sex?”

Pope Francis's letter did not respond directly to these questions.

“His holiness is grateful for the thoughtful gesture and for the feelings which it evoked, hoping for an always more fruitful activity in the service of young generations and the spread of genuine human and Christian values," the letter read.

Francesca Pardi in a photo on Facebook:

For Pardi, whom HuffPost Italy reached by phone, this letter is “a very important sign.”

“The pope is opening up a dialogue about a topic that many people disagree over, but he’s doing so with a respectful tone, far from the distortions of truth and aggressions of extremists like Mario Adinolfi,” Pardi said, referring to a conservative Catholic journalist and former Italian politician.

Below is the rest of the interview:

Why did you write to the pope after Family Day in June?

My letter was about the libelous and aggressive tone toward my alleged use of “gender theory” and toward gay people in general, used by the conservative Catholic group called “Manif pour Tous” and circles of people associated with Mario Adinolfi. I was asking Pope Francis to put a halt to these tones, to intervene, not so much by saying someone was right or wrong but rather by calming people’s nerves and impeding these people from continuing to sully our work and our existence as gay people with children.

And so you included the catalogue of your publishing house’s works, one of which was the children’s book Piccolo Uovo (“Little Egg”), illustrated by Atlan and banned by Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro, who deemed it dangerous for children in preschool â€" an act that has reverberated internationally.

Yes, I wanted the pope to open Piccolo Uovo and to look through it so that he could realize that it’s respectful and simply teaches children that many [different types of] families exist, in a way that does not put a higher or lower value on any types of families. In his response, Pope Francis expresses his hope that I continue fruitful work; he doesn’t get into the content but neither does he say that it shouldn’t be read. I think his message is: Let’s open these books, let’s even critique them, but let’s read them.

Do you think this is a powerful yet indirect message to the extremist Catholics who, in sounding a continuous alarm about gender theory, sometimes resort to homophobia?

I don’t want to give a political meaning to the letter. Nevertheless, it seems to me that there is a clear difference in the tone of the pope’s words and the tone of certain people from Family Day. This letter gives us dignity and respect back after a year of ideological and blatant attacks against us by extremist Catholics, after Mayor Brugnaro decided to censure our book without even bothering to read it. So far nobody has agreed to make a real comparison â€" except for Pope Francis, who did so while still holding onto his principles. For us, this is so very important because it gives light to a common ground; all it takes is to read Piccolo Uovo to see how it has values that anyone can share.

Do you hope that this unexpected gesture can change the minds of the many people that deem you as being messengers of a gender ideology that is unnatural and dangerous for children?

I’m convinced that Mario Adinolfi and the other leaders of these organizations are not doing a good job in partaking in this debate because they present the topic in a distorted light to those who place their trust in their words in a naïve way. Hence the many appeals made by upset parents, as they don’t know how things really are nor can they adequately inform themselves.

Are you going to send this letter by the pope to Brugnaro, at least to provoke a reaction?

It’s not my intention to debate with the mayor of Venice; he doesn’t have my experience in and sensitivity for evaluating children’s books, and I don’t want to set myself up to be insulted. His choices remain incomprehensible: He’s banned two books from Venetian preschools that were deemed as being messengers of the gender theory ideology (Piccolo Uovo and Jean ha due mamme, or “Jean Has Two Mommies”), yet he has left five short books oriented toward children of homosexual couples. I prefer to converse with the pope, who, as we’ve seen, uses the language of respect.

Update: After the publication of this interview, Father Federico Lombardi wanted to specify that “in no way does the letter of the Secretary of State intend to endorse behaviors or teachings that are not consistent with the Gospel. Manipulation of the content of the letter is completely out of place.” The Vatican Press Office has also specified that the blessing of the pope “was towards the person and not any teachings out of line with the Church on Gender Theory.”

The letter that Francesca Pardi wrote to the Pope last June:

This article first appeared on HuffPost Italy and was translated into English.

A Modern Slave Tells Her Story In 'The Storm Makers' Documentary

Some 155,000 Cambodians -- about 1 percent of the country's population -- are enslaved, the Global Slavery Index estimated last year. "The Storm Makers," a documentary premiering Monday night on PBS, goes behind those numbers to show the human beings who suffer and prosper from trafficking.

"Behind every figure, there are families being wiped out by the system," French-Cambodian filmmaker Guillaume Suon told The Huffington Post via email. "I wanted to give a face to an opaque and secret plague. Revealing the voice of the 'voiceless victims' of trafficking."

Suon interviewed people in remote Cambodian villages, in the suburbs of the capital Phnom Penh and along the Cambodian-Thai border from July 2011 to September 2014. "The Storm Makers" -- the name that some Cambodians give slave traffickers because of the havoc they wreak -- follows the lives of three individuals: Aya, a peasant girl sold into slavery at 16, who returns to her village with a child born out of rape; Pou Houy, a ruthlessly successful trafficker in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh; and Ming Dy, an impoverished mother who sold her daughter to Houy and continues to provide the trafficker with others from her village. 

"Money was at the center of all the discussions," Suon said. "Everything has a price. I was surprised to see how far people were ready to go in order to have money."

In a July report that looked at human trafficking in Cambodia (and elsewhere), the U.S. State Department wrote, "Children from impoverished families are highly vulnerable to forced labor, often with the complicity of their families, including in domestic servitude and forced begging." The department noted that the Cambodian government does not fully comply with even minimum standards to combat human trafficking.

Suon said he wanted his documentary to tell the untold stories of those enslaved Cambodians.

"They were not complaining. They accept their fate," he said. "So the film had to carry this voice. Because it hasn't been heard."

"The Storm Makers" will premier on PBS's "Point of View" at 10 p.m. EDT on Aug. 31 and will continue streaming throughout September exclusively on PBS's website.

Check out a preview of the documentary here:

Air Guitar World Champ Kareel Blumenkrants On How He Nailed His Big Performance

In case you didn't know, the 20th annual Air Guitar World Championships (yes, it's a real event) wrapped up in Oulu, Finland, last Friday with Russian competitor Kareel "Your Daddy" Blumenkrants beating out the American runner-up Matt "Aristotle" Burns for the title.

Blumenkrants joined HuffPost Live to discuss his lively performance and how he nabbed the coveted top prize -- a handmade electric guitar -- after competing for five years.

"[The performance is] like a lightning bolt or an arrow from a bow," he told host Caroline-Modarressy Tehrani. "It's just so quick and filled with all kinds of movement, you barely ... have any time to think. You just do it and then in a blink of a second, it's over."

Watch HuffPost Live's interview with 2015 champ Kareel Blumenkrants above. 

Also on HuffPost: 

Without Sex Ed, Young Tunisians Have To Get By On Their Own

In Tunisia, sex is taboo, and it’s rarely discussed at home or school. The country's pornography industry is flourishing, but when it comes to sex education, Tunisian youth must fend for themselves.

“In my family, we don’t talk about sex. Everyone does their own thing when it comes to dating," said Malek, 24, in an interview with HuffPost Maghreb. He and other young people interviewed in this story declined to provide their last names due to fears that their families wouldn't approve.

"I remember my first sexual encounter; it was with a prostitute," he said. "My friends and I were looking for sex that was easy to find. We all had to pitch in to pay her. I have really bad memories from that experience; it was almost traumatic.”

Malek also confessed that he is addicted to porn. “I live in a more or less open environment, and I’ve had many girlfriends. However, I can’t help but watch porn," he said. “We are the ultimate porn generation: porn is easily accessible, and the result is guaranteed, if I may say so.”

However, Malek said he recognized that pornography distorts reality and simplifies sexual interactions. “It creates hang-ups about performance or penis size. There’s a tendency to imitate what you see, to think that one position or the other is guaranteed to make a woman climax -- when in reality, everything is relative, and it differs from woman to woman,” he said.

Emna, also 24, also confirmed the influence of pornography in Tunisia in the absence of sexual education. “I must admit that sometimes it’s enjoyable. It’s something very intimate that we experience, and it’s nobody else’s business,” she stated.

Yet the lack of sex ed, combined with the violent behavior sometimes modeled in porn, can lead to negative real-life sexual experiences for young Tunisians.

“In Tunisia, we suffer from a lack of sex ed. The only sexual references that men have come from X-rated films, which guide them towards extreme behavior, where women are treated as objects," Emna lamented. "Ultimately, in real-life encounters, we are treated like the objectified women in X-rated films. It’s rare to find men who don’t have that pornographic culture of domination."

“Sexually, you can feel the difference! A little training in Europe wouldn’t hurt, I think,” she added.

Sexual inexperience can be problematic, particularly on honeymoons. Leila, 30, comes from a religious family, and both she and her husband adhere to strict religious practices, so they abstained from sex before marriage. Since she was worn out on the night of her wedding, Leila wanted to postpone their first time.

She was unsuccessful. “At 5 a.m., my husband woke me up abruptly, and insisted that I let him have his way," she recalled. "The problem is that he was really clumsy, even violent, asking me where he should penetrate me. I still hold this as a bad memory."

“The lack of sex ed and the demonization of physical pleasure before marriage creates devastating effects, especially after marriage,” explained psychiatrist and sexologist Hind Elloumi.

Poor sex education can disrupt the sex lives of new couples, contributing to vaginismus (contraction of the vagina in response to physical contact, preventing penetration) for women, or erectile dysfunction for men, Elloumi said.

Yet if these types of sexual dysfunction aren't exclusive to conservative societies, are they really linked to a lack of sex ed?

“If sexual dysfunction exists everywhere, its causes differ, based on the prevailing culture in any given society," Elloumi explained. "Vaginismus, for example, can be the result of a bad experience for a sexually liberated woman, but it is generally the result of being unprepared for sex after marriage” within more conservative societies, she said.

“With the instilled notion of chastity before marriage and the repression of sexual urges, a woman finds herself asked in the span of one night to have a sex life, without being equipped with enough information on the subject -- besides the funny stories she hears from friends and cousins,” Elloumi said.

For men, it’s the fear of not being the best that haunts them. “Porn exacerbates this fear, creating a model in which the man always performs exceptionally well, and where sex always lasts a long time,” she added.

Obsession with sexual performance is a clear issue for men. Noureddine, 30, has never had sex, but he has been in a long-term relationship. He said he's been able to give a woman an orgasm without penetration.

Still, predicting his first time after marriage, Noureddine acknowledged, “With all of my friends’ stories, porn, and the state of anxiety I’ll be in, I will most probably be quite bad.”

While parents do not dare to talk to their children about sex, Tunisian education also fails to fill this role. It’s often up to secondary or high school science teachers to take on the task.

A lack of sex ed, the influence of pornography, and young men and women’s fears of their families also complicates the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. The Tunisian Association to Combat Sexually Transmitted Diseases and AIDS is working to address the issue.

“We try to perform preventative work, and to reach the highest number of high school or university students possible, but it’s still insufficient. In two hours, you are only able to supply the most foundational, basic information,” Program Manager Issam Gritli told HuffPost Maghreb.

“We are facing people who have trouble going to a pharmacy to buy condoms out of fear that they may run into someone they know, or that their mother will find out,” Gritli said.

In a society where sex remains linked to marriage and reproduction, birth control is often frowned upon. “Some people accuse us of encouraging extramarital sex by distributing condoms; meanwhile, they do nothing to acknowledge the situation,” Gritli added.

This post first appeared on HuffPost Maghreb and was translated from French into English.

The Other Conflict That Is Costing Nigeria Billions

WASHINGTON -- When people think of violence in Nigeria, they usually think of Boko Haram, the militant group that terrorizes parts of the country's northeast. But there's another long-running conflict in Africa's largest country: the one between farmers and herders in Nigeria's central region, known as the Middle Belt. There, disputes over land have claimed more than 6,500 lives since 2010, although experts say the actual death toll is likely much higher.

While Nigeria's military has publicly battled Boko Haram in recent years, conflicts between farmers and herders have also escalated, as bigger herds of cattle have encroached on greater parcels of farmland. Religious and ethnic differences tend to exacerbate the disputes over land use and water rights. Herders from the north of Nigeria tend to be Muslim, while farming communities in the south are generally Christian. The Middle Belt is where they overlap, and is comprised chiefly of eight states stretching across the middle of Africa's most populous nation.

"Land ownership is very unclear in the Middle Belt," explained Lisa Inks, director of conflict management programs in Nigeria for Mercy Corps, a nonprofit global humanitarian organization. "One scenario for violence is that a herder grazing his cattle destroys part of a farmer's crops, and then the farmer might shoot some cattle, and the herders could retaliate against the farmer's village. This could take the form of night raids or burning down houses."

Many of these conflicts start out in isolation but spread across communities, Inks said, affecting those not directly involved. "After an attack in the area, people change their habits, they may stop going to market, or stop sending their kids to school because they're afraid of another attack."

To help put an end to this cycle of violence, Mercy Corps has been piloting a new model of economic cooperation in the Middle Belt, aimed at helping farmers and herders resolve their land disputes peacefully and identify new markets they can tap into together. Launched in late 2012, the program is officially called Conciliation in Nigeria through Community-Based Conflict Management and Cooperative Use of Resources, or CONCUR.

Community leaders from disparate groups of herders and farmers are trained by Mercy Corps in a special kind of conflict resolution, called interest-based negotiation. Then, the leaders of those groups agree to come together to identify new economic initiatives they can pursue jointly that will benefit both farming and the herding communities.

So far, CONCUR has provided training and seed money for a nearly a dozen such economic projects in Nigeria, ranging from a joint honey producing enterprise, to a processing plant for cassava root, to a cooperative that manufactures fuel briquettes out of farm waste. Alongside the brick-and-mortar endeavors, the CONCUR negotiation program operates in more than 50 communities in Nigeria's Middle Belt, funded by a three-year grant from the British equivalent of USAID, the UK Department for International Development.

In the Nasarawa State, a biomass briquette-making project that began in 2013 has helped three communities recover from a dispute that had escalated into widespread violence earlier that year. Today, more than 120 people from all three communities work at the production site.

In another state, Kaduna, Mercy Corps provided training and beekeeping kits to communities, so they could operate hives and collect honey for commercial sale. When the honey was in production, Mercy Corps helped to connect the newly formed co-op with a local wholesale buyer. "Their last honey sale was around $6,000," Inks said.

Determining the success of conflict resolution programs is difficult, because the relationships between different communities of herders and farmers are fluid. But in the past two years, community leaders trained by Mercy Corps have resolved 272 disputes over land, water and resources in central Nigeria, each of which could have escalated into major inter-community violence.

Despite this success rate, "a drop in incidences of violence are not the primary way we measure success, because of the difficulty of collecting accurate data in the field," said Christy Delafield, a senior communications officer for Mercy Corps. "We also know that any sort of long-term behavioral change takes time. But in the areas where we have helped communities build significant brick-and-mortar economic projects, thus far there have not been any large-scale community incidents of violence."

The Nigerian conflict resolution project is now in its third year, and Mercy Corps has high hopes for it. An internal study predicted that if farmers and herders living in just four of the states in Nigeria's Middle Belt could end their cycles of retaliation, the nation could gain up to $13.7 billion in additional economic productivity and revenues.

The model also has other benefits, both for war-torn areas and for countries seeking to bolster sometimes fragile peace accords. Currently, there are variations of Mercy Corps' conflict resolution programs underway across Africa and Asia, including in Uganda, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Iraq and Syria.

"In Iraq, there is a network of 350 mediators who have resolved more than 1,000 disputes with mediation in the past decade," said Rebecca Wolfe, Mercy Corps' director of conflict management. There, the group's Iraqi Centre for Negotiation Skills and Conflict Management "builds on the culture of mediation that has already existed in Iraq for centuries through elders and influential community members," said Wolfe.

"In the latest conflict with ISIL, our mediators have worked on behalf of internally displaced persons, helping to mediate conflicts arising in IDP camps. They've also helped humanitarian groups gain access to camps they might not have otherwise."

Since the civil war began in Syria, Mercy Corps mediators have also helped to train new mediators in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Libya on how to resolve small-scale conflicts before they grow.

Market crashes and Migration Linked by Hot Money Flows

The collapse in stock markets and the surge in the number of refugees flooding into Europe captured August's headlines.

There are many underlying causes for each phenomenon, but they are linked.
Unprecedented flows of hot, or illicit, money are damaging most economies. Investors are fleeing this, as are migrants.

Ironically, China has outperformed all others economically even though it has been looted more than most. Between 2003 and 2012, an estimated US$1.25 trillion left, bypassing currency controls. The most recent attempt to turn off the tap contributed to the collapse of the Shanghai Composite.

Many commentators blamed the Shanghai's 8.5% plummet in hours on Beijing's orchestrated devaluation of the Yuan. But that occurred two weeks prior without impact.

The day before the crash the government announced a tougher three-month crackdown on underground banking to curb money-laundering and illegal funds transfers. Chinese law prohibits individuals from transferring more than $50,000 out of the country per year, but an underground industry of banks, casinos and intermediaries have remained relatively unimpeded.

The August 23 announcement followed reports that an estimated $100 billion left China in the first three weeks of August alone.

China was forced to bail out its markets through monetary and banking tampering. This has improved markets somewhat but volatility will continue. There are also worries because, during the melee, an anonymous article was published in state-owned newspapers warning that the reform process faces "unimaginably fierce resistance". This has led to speculation that the reformist regime is wobbly.

And, undoubtedly, has triggered the disappearance of more capital from its economy.
China's wealthiest have been getting themselves and their children, and money, out of the country for years, mostly to the U.S., Canada, Australia or Britain. This will increase and represents a growing migratory trend of well-heeled Chinese persons into the world's richest markets.

Such trends - outflows and migration - are also underway in poorer nations, with tragic consequences. Their economies tank and Europe bears the brunt of a growing refugee problem.

For instance, a recent study revealed that more money leaves the world's 82 poorest nations illicitly - an estimated US $1 trillion per year -- than flows in as foreign aid or direct investment, according to Global Financial Integrity in Washington.

The greatest damage has occurred in three regions which are the largest sources of refugees coming into the European Union at the rate of tens of thousands daily. Between 2003 and 2012, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and developing Europe were drained of US$2.5 trillion in capital and substantially more since.

In dollar terms, this is equivalent to what Russia, Mexico and India have lost but when compared to their populations, GDP and educational budgets, this is truly tragic. (All these outflow figures include trade frauds such as misinvoicing and illicit investments abroad as well as hot money outflows.)

In poor nations, such hemorrhages are destabilizing, but the money ends up in rich markets where it creates dislocations, such as in the Toronto, Vancouver and New York condo markets. Billions in hot money is salted away in real estate and is making prices unaffordable for locals.

There are other developing countries contributing to this issue. Between 2003 and 2012, Russia lost US$1 trillion and more since sanctions; Mexico US$500 billion and Indian US$439 billion.
The outflow of money and migrants is not going to stop anytime soon. A 2013 United Nations survey showed that roughly 230 million people live outside their home country by choice and another 640 million would leave if they could.

This sociological impact affects politics in all the countries involved. Illegal immigration in Europe and U.S. are becoming hot button political issues.

The American illegal immigration issue is becoming front and center. An estimated 11.5 million illegals live there (on top of one million annual immigrants and 39 million visa holders.)
By comparison, this year alone Germany was inundated with 800,000 non-EU refugees, four times' more than previous years. It is the principal destination for all the refugees because of its economic prosperity.

Solutions are necessary but elusive. An announcement like China's, that a crackdown on illegal outflows is imminent, only triggers more of the same. Similarly as word spreads that European countries are building fences, more refugees arrive.

The motivation is to get out while it's still possible. This is understandable but it's also becoming a global problem.

First published in National Post

Turkey Charges Vice News Journalists With Supporting ISIS

NEW YORK â€" Two Vice News journalists and their fixer were charged Monday with "engaging in terror activity" on behalf of the Islamic State, or ISIS, allegations the media company quickly dismissed as an attempt to censor its reporting.

"Today the Turkish government has leveled baseless and alarmingly false charges of 'working on behalf of a terrorist organization' against three Vice News reporters, in an attempt to intimidate and censor their coverage,” said Kevin Sutcliffe, head of news programming in Europe, in a statement. “Prior to being unjustly detained, these journalists were reporting and documenting the situation in the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakir."

“Vice News condemns in the strongest possible terms the Turkish government's attempts to silence our reporters who have been providing vital coverage from the region,” Sutcliffe added. “We continue to work with all relevant authorities to expedite the safe release of our three colleagues and friends.”

Vice News has become known for reporting in some of the most difficult and dangerous parts of the world, including getting unprecedented access last summer to part of Islamic State-controlled Syria. The three journalists -- Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury, of the U.K., and an unnamed journalist fixer -- were detained Thursday in a predominately Kurdish region of southeastern Turkey. Reuters reported that the journalists, who were “filming clashes between Turkish security forces and Kurdish militants," did not have government accreditation. 

Hanrahan was tweeting images from southeastern Turkey the day before his arrest. 

The group's driver was let go without charges, AFP reported Monday.

The Turkish government is known to level terrorism charges in attempts to silence the press. Earlier this month, the Turkish government accused 18 editors at nine news outlets of supporting terrorism.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has claimed Turkey's press is the freest in the world, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Turkey was the world's leading jailer of journalists in 2012 and 2013, and ranked near the top in 2014. 

Several advocacy groups called on the Turkish government to release the Vice journalists soon after reports of their arrests surfaced last week. 

Andrew Gardner, Amnesty International’s Turkey researcher, said in a statement that the arrests were “yet another example of the Turkish authorities suppressing the reporting of stories that are embarrassing to them.”

“It is completely proper that journalists should cover this important story,” Gardner said. “The decision to detain the journalists was wrong, while the allegation of assisting Islamic state is unsubstantiated, outrageous and bizarre.”

Nina Ognianova, the Europe and Central Asia program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said “authorities ought to protect, not gag journalists on the job."

What Non-Believing Muslims Say About Faith In The World's Largest Muslim Country

"If Islam is a religion of peace, why are people so violent?"

That rhetorical question brought me up short. I wasn't watching Pamela Geller's latest piece of Islamophobic stagecraft or listening to a stump speech from a UK Independence Party candidate.

I was talking to Evan, a 26-year-old student in Yogyakarta, a peaceful, Muslim-dominated university town in Indonesia.

"People who say that what extremists are doing isn't Islamic are just cherry-picking what they like," said Evan, who was raised in a "not very religious" Muslim family and now identifies himself as atheist. "I've read the whole Quran, and it's just not for me."

Evan--who asked to be identified by a pseudonym--is part of a small but growing network of atheists in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim-majority country. About 70 members of the group live near Yogyakarta, and about 1,500 more are connected through a private Facebook account based in Singapore.

That caution is understandable. Though Indonesia is officially pluralistic, belief in God is enshrined in its constitution, and at least one prominent nonbeliever has been prosecuted under the country's blasphemy law.

Meeting Evan, along with several other religiously disaffiliated young people in Yogyakarta, has been on my mind because of a recent piece in The Guardian about suffering and alienation among Muslim atheists in Britain. For me, the most striking feature of this angle on Muslims who question their faith is its tight focus on a handful of stories that conform to one of the dominant Western narratives about Islam--that its adherents are either the mindless purveyors or the helpless victims of a form of violence coded into the DNA of their tradition. The most common example of this fun-house mirror distortion of Islam is the casting of violent fringe groups as mainstream Muslims.

The pervasiveness of such distortions explains how Evan--a media-saturated Millennial sitting in a café at the heart of a vibrant city in a young, relatively stable Muslim democracy--could wonder why Muslims are so violent.

A few of the young men and women I met in Yogyakarta said they had experienced ostracism and even threats as a consequence of their questioning the faith. But the common and far more compelling element threading through all of their stories was the fierce drive to examine the systems of belief that have shaped them. This intense self-scrutiny has led some of them to walk away from belief altogether, while others are reimagining their identities as Muslims in ways that are radically different from the beliefs and practices of their family members and more religiously traditional Muslim peers.

In addition to Evan, I also met Aditya--Adit, for short--while I was in Yogyakarta. Adit, 23, was raised Muslim, like his father, though his mother is Christian. His first step on the road to unbelief was questioning the concepts of heaven and hell when he was a teenager. In his father's family's version of Islam, his mother would have to convert if she wanted to avoid damnation.

"At one point I was afraid to question any further," Adit said. "I still had a problem with it, but I was afraid of going to hell!"

Like Evan, Adit has found a community of like-minded former Muslims through the atheist Facebook group. But his process of spiritual questioning has also led him to study Buddhist meditation as well as the writing of Maajid Nawaz, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Irshad Manji--figures whom he described as "Muslim reformers."

"I admire her works," Adit said of Hirsi Ali, the most controversial of the three writers he mentioned. "But she's trying to be too critical."

Adit likened the harshness of some of Hirsi Ali's writing to the work of Sam Harris and other "New Atheists."

"It's not helpful to be that arrogant," Adit said. "That primordial mentality is one of the reasons I started to dislike organized religion in general--if you're not with us, you're against us."

Then there were my favorites: 21-year-olds Indri and Annisa. The women, both wearing the hijab, met on their university's debating team. They said that members of the team routinely challenge one another to justify their religious and political beliefs.

"There's a lot of questioning of your religion," Indri said. "Why do you believe this or that? Why don't you take off your hijab? People challenge you to say what you think is right."

For Indri, the intellectual rough-and-tumble of the debating team is a crucible in which her faith has been tested and strengthened. She said that her beliefs are now different from those of her conservative parents--exposure to diverse ideas, particularly about LGBT rights, has set her on a different path--but the Islam that she practices has become a more deeply integrated part of her identity.

"I realized it wasn't good to believe just to believe," she said. "You have to question in order to grow to be more than you are."

On the other hand, the critical self-examination encouraged by the culture of the debating team has led Annisa away from her faith.

"I'm not a devout anything," she said. Gesturing to her hijab, she added, "This is a hand-me-down from my parents. It's an economic calculation"--that is, as long as she is financially dependent on her family, she will do what they expect of her. "After I graduate and get a job," she added, "we'll see."

Young adult Muslims who are questioning their faith are finding a variety of ways to navigate those frequently turbulent existential waters. Some form groups, such as the Women's Mosque or Totally Radical Muslims, that seek to reclaim the liberating spirit of the faith for people who have felt marginalized in traditional Muslim communities as well as non-Muslim cultures. Others are creating new associations around a shared identity as nonbelieving former Muslims. All of these movements encourage the same kind of deep, often critical introspection that I found among the students I met in Yogyakarta. And whether overtly or covertly, they exist everywhere. No story about the edges of Islamic affiliation is complete without them.

Seminarians Plan Rowdy Welcome For Pope's Visit

The last time a pope visited the St. Charles Borromeo Seminary just outside Philadelphia, he got a rousing, even rowdy, rock star welcome. "Viva! Viva Papa!" the seminarians shouted.

With the rector's blessings, expect more of the same when Pope Francis arrives in four weeks at the end of his first U.S. trip.

Back in 1979, then-Archbishop John Cardinal Krol was a known stickler for ceremony. So when St. John Paul II came to visit, the seminarians knew what was expected: Welcome the pope in a traditional manner - with a refrain from a Gregorian chant - and then listen to the speech. There would be prayer, quiet reflection, peace.

It started well, anyway.

In a video of the visit, the seminarians sing when John Paul arrives. But when they catch their first glimpse of him, clad head to toe in white, the song is drowned out by clapping, stomping, cheering and whistling, a welcome that would make even Mick Jagger jealous.

"We were supposed to behave ourselves," admitted the seminary's current rector, Auxiliary Bishop Timothy Senior, who on that evening was a 19-year-old seminarian.

Senior doesn't plan any edicts for Pope Francis' visit.

"I'm not going to attempt in any way, shape or form to stifle their enthusiasm," he said. "I want them to have the experience I had as a seminarian. Being in the presence of the pope made me want to give more to the service of God's people and the service of the church. It made me want to be holier, to be a better priest and a better person."

Francis arrives at the seminary on the morning of Sept. 26, his first day in Philadelphia. He'll be greeted on the front steps by the seminarians, who plan to serenade him. The next morning at the seminary chapel, he will address international bishops gathered for the Vatican-sponsored World Meeting of Families. The seminarians will also attend, and afterward they will take a group photo with the pope.

They wil l sing the "Domine" chant, an anthem unique to the seminary, three times to Francis. The timing can be spontaneous, church officials said.

"It's part of our tradition here," Senior said. "That's our version of 'For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.'"

The video of John Paul's visit provides a unique look inside a rarely seen world. Instead of seeming foreign and distant, it seems familiar: the young men excited to see a superstar, their usually stern teacher scolding them but with a smile. Current seminarian John Howarth, 29, said that's because even the ordained "are real guys."

"Priests don't just sit and say Mass every day. They order pizza. They drink beer," he said in a telephone interview after a weekend at the beach. "I didn't come out of the womb wearing a collar."

Howarth's friends and family have asked what he'll say to the pope if they meet. Howarth said he's more interested in listening to what Francis has to say.

"I hope his words will empower us and unite us," Howarth said. "Pope Francis' gift lies in reaching people the church may not have otherwise reached. He has that approachability and the world is falling in love with him."

In the 53-minute 1979 video, Krol also engages in some levity. He jokes about the quality of the seminary class, noting, "We have to do the best with what's available. This is the best." That line earns him groans.

Then Krol apologizes to John Paul "for the apparent undisciplined behavior of our seminarians." That line results in more clapping and cheers.

"I can remember feeling the building shake, the happiness and joy of seeing the Holy Father literally reverberated," said Sheila Longworth, a longtime seminary employee who watched from the choir loft. "It was electric. It absolutely consumed you."

Toward the end of the video, John Paul stands and grants the seminarians three days off from work. Some respond by shouting "free day!" in Polish. Then they sing the "Domine." The pope listens with his head slightly tilted, smiling.

As Senior noted, "We took the roof off with it."

Also on HuffPost:

From Superhero To Supermodel

As a naïve kindergartener, Kritchaya “Lolita” Boonhorâ€"now 24â€"dreamed of the day she could become a superhero. And, in a sense, she has become one, particularly to the thousands of people who struggle to accept their true gender identity.

Boonhor knows the struggle because she has lived it. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, friends and family members mocked and targeted her for not conforming to the male prototype. Instead of partaking in rambunctious physical activities, such as sports, Boonhor found solitude in more reserved activities, like painting and drawing.

“Can you just be a boy for one day?” her father asked.

Her father began observing his only born son with eyes like a hawk. Feeling pressured, Boonhor attempted to downplay her naturally effeminate disposition. Despite a valiant effort, she couldn’t act like a man. As a result, her father took matters into his own hands.

“The reason why my father decided to take me to a boy-only school was to let me be a soldier [like him],” she said in Thai. “My father thought this [my gender identity] can be changed, but it can’t. The truth is, it can’t be changed. It is something deep from my heart.”

For Boonhor, enrolling in boarding school was a blessingâ€"a way to escape her father’s verbal and physical abuse. Every weekend, though, she would become the target of her father’s explosive behavior.

“There was one time he found my girl clothes and saw a picture of me dressing like a girl on my phone,” Boonhor said. “He took my phone and saw my pictures inside. He was angry. He told me if I don’t stop acting like this, he would kick me out of the house. His words hurt so much. I actually ran away once.”

She continued, “My father prefers physical assault as he is a soldierâ€"slapping, squeezing my neck. He was very bad tempered. He attacked me, and I hated him so much when I was a child.”

The abuse didn’t end there, eventually seeping into her daily life at boarding school. The place where she would escape the wrath of her father was no longer the safe haven it once was.

“When I was in M.2, it was the first time I got raped by seniors,” she said. “They were hall monitors. Sometimes I would get summoned to these hall monitors’ room and get locked in. Other senior students knew too, but they helped each other out.”

Boonhor says sexual assault became more prevalent when she began taking birth control tablets, which are non-prescribed medications in Thailand, in M.4â€"the U.S. equivalent of 9th grade. Convinced by a friend, she began taking female hormones in hopes of developing breasts, a smoother complexion, and, overall, a more feminine appearance.

After a month, Boonhor noticed results from the hormones. Despite the pain she felt in her chest from growing breasts, she says she felt “good” and continued taking the pills for additional results.

“I felt that maybe I should go on transforming myself as I am quite slender, quite like a girl,” she said. “So I keep on taking birth control pillsâ€"even though I’m still in this school.”

Her new appearance, though, posed problems at school. She would go to great lengths to conceal her female physique from teachers and students, but the communal style of living created obstacles. Boonhor says she would not only shower at odd times to avoid ridicule and humiliationâ€"she would also bind her developing breasts, which were particularly obvious under her white uniform.

But, she wasn’t alone. After eight years of boarding school, Boonhor cultivated trustworthy friendships with a few fellow students. These sidekicks became her family, her protectors.

“Some nights there was someone that I didn’t know who it was, and he jumped into my bed,” Boonhor said. “It was a shared dorm, and it was dark. He tried to touch my body, to feel what my breasts were like. It was scary, but my friends helped take care of me. It was a very deep relationship between me and my friends. Sometimes my friends [would] sleep with me in my bed to prevent someone else [creeping] in.”

Boonhor channeled her energy into her studiesâ€"studies she wasn’t passionate aboutâ€"in order to prove herself to her father. After she decided against her father’s wishes not to take an exam that would enroll her in cadet schoolâ€"to become a soldier like himâ€"Boonhor chose the science-math track in high school and majored in Food Science at Phranakhon Rajabhat University.

While attending the university, Boonhor says she felt more comfortable in her skinâ€"as a girl. She was no longer required to abide by boarding school rules, which forced her to wear the male uniform. She also developed a serious relationship with a man named Andy from Cardiff, Wales, whom she met on the Internet. After dating for about two or three years, Boonhor says they knew each other from the inside and out. What happened next, however, was something she never foresaw.

During their last year of dating, Boonhor says he began acting differentlyâ€"became frequently angry, and always asked for private time. Thinking he was cheating on her, Boonhor confronted Andy and his change in behavior.

“He took me to see his safe deposit box,” she said. “He opened it. The first thing I saw were girl clothes, wigs, make-up. He told me they were his own. I was confused.”

This was Andy’s way of telling his Boonhor that he was making the transitionâ€"at 26 years of ageâ€"to female.

Boonhor says she found herself in an odd situation, in limbo. On one hand, she wanted to support his transitioning, especially as someone who had gone through it. On the other hand, this was a person she trusted and loved. Everything she thought she knew no longer held true. Nonetheless, Boonhor decided to support her ex-boyfriend. She would take her shopping, advise her on which hormones to take, and accompany her to the bars as a transitioning woman.

“I consider it as a life experience, which makes me become stronger,” she said. “I don’t find it more difficult to trust other people. I’d like to see it [the experience] as the way to understand life and move on.”

The strength she acquired from her past experiencesâ€"the physical and emotional abuse from her father, the sexual assault at boarding school, and the relationship with her exâ€"has not only allowed her to survive the competitive, ruthless modeling industry, but also to break the “glass ceiling” for transgender models worldwide.

In the fall of 2014, Boonhor, on her way to her waitressing job, caught the attention of a European photographer, who appreciated her “look” and invited her to a shoot. The image he took went viral on social media and enchanted Apple Modeling Management, which, in November 2014 was pioneering its transgender modeling division. Boonhor says about 100 transgender women were invited to the casting, but only ten were offered five-year contracts with the agency.

“I’ve been in this career for not even a year, just about seven months,” she said. “Now that I entered this career, I got featured in four magazines, and participated in two big fashion shows.”

Boonhorâ€"the quiet, reserved child who had dreamed of becoming a superheroâ€"transformed into a confident and outspoken model, one who aspires to walking a Chanel runway in New York.

An increased awareness of the transgender identity in the U.S. has made it possible, now more than ever, for Boonhor to one day strut down a high-fashion runway. Following Caitlyn Jenner’s public debut, Apple Modeling Management announced its decision to open a transgender modeling division in Los Angeles. Cecilio Asuncion, the director of the Los Angeles branch, says having a “third gender” category facilitates an open and inclusive environment within the industry.

“There have been transgender models in the past,” he said in a phone interview. “However, because of the stigma of society, they would have to be under stealth mode because they would lose jobs. So, the importance of it is for model development. When you go to work and you have nothing to hide, and you are proud and celebrated for who you are, you can focus on being the best model possible.”

He continued, “What I love about her is she’s not the victim. It’s so refreshing. You want to root for her, and that’s what makes her amazing.”

One of those people rooting for Boonhor is her father, who has become his daughter’s number one supporter.

Getting to that point took some doing. Thirsting for her father’s approval, Boonhor committed herself to academics and personal growth. The shift in attitude, she says, came when teachers spoke of her intelligence and artistic talent.

“My father was shocked when I first [wore a] girl’s uniform, but he understands now because I always have good grades…I’ve always been a good person, so my father accepts me that, at least, I’m not a bad person.

“Being a model makes my father proud," she says. "He’s a soldier, but he’s now learning about fashion…I must be true to myself, that’s what my father said. He’s cute. He’s very cute now.”

A native of Scranton, Pennsylvania, Julia Boccagno recently graduated magna cum laude from American University with a degree in broadcast journalism in May 2015. She also pursued a double minor in international studies and Italian.

As a self-proclaimed global nomad, Julia has an innate curiosity about the world and its diverse inhabitants. She is especially interested in how digital journalism plays a role in human rights and post-conflict societies. She traveled to Haiti as an alternative spring break participant and to Peru as a global volunteer. Most recently, Julia completed a language-intensive study abroad program in Italy at the Università di Modena.

Julia interned at United to End Genocide, Search for Common Ground and National Geographic, all in Washington, D.C. She is also an initiated member of Kappa Tau Alpha, the national collegiate honor society recognizing the top ten percent of journalism students in the United States.

Julia now works for CBS in Washington, D.C., as the News Associate, where she helps produce content for CBS Morning News, CBS Evening News, and Face the Nation.

Julia traveled to Thailand with a grant from the Pulitzer Center. View her project here.

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Can a Singer Do Greek Politics Better?

It was a full moon night, with a light breeze to ward off the August heat at a stadium in the seaside town of Marathon, Greece, where in ancient times the soldier Pheidippides set off to Athens to deliver news of a military victory against the Persians.

Today this is where thousands of athletes from around the world flock to test themselves every November...will they beat their record and run the traditional 42.1km Marathon to Athens in a shorter time?

On this night, one by one sun-tanned locals and seasonal holidaymakers (many Athenians have their weekend cottages here or nearby along the coast) came to the stadium with their folding beach chairs in hand. There was seating available, of course, but as of late, inventive Greeks living by the beach usually bring their own chairs, which admittedly have all the comforts one could expect of a fully-fledged chaise lounge.

Peacefully, everyone took a spot in the stadium for the concert. But this was no ordinary concert, this was Greek singer Alkistis Protopsalti's first concert as the country's alternate tourism minister.

The popular performer was appointed to the post and had stepped in as interim alternate minister on Friday, taking over from model Elena Kountoura. With her glowing smile, Alkistis came to the stage amid hundreds of fans after a brief but witty intro by Marathon Mayor Ilias Psinakis. She coyly thanked the audience and promised to do what she's successfully been doing for over four decades: bringing Greece closer to the world through her song.

Art vs. Politics

When Alkistis was announced tourism minister, I could picture the heckling and sneering comments: "What does a singer know about tourism?" "Wasn't there anyone better trained to select," even SKAI TV Greece went as far as to air a not-so-flattering video of one of the singer's dubious hits minutes after the breaking news.

But I really do wonder, does one need to be an expert to take on a Greek ministry? After all, we've seen where that group got us. I mean, the man who organized the two-hour concert -- which was free to all -- is bon viveur/eccentric/artist manager Ilias Psinakis, who came to power in 2014 by majority vote and took over a totally ravaged Attica municipality attempting in his short tenure (and amid trying times) to make up for lost time and money by tapping into every advantage his seaside municipality has. And he is doing so successfully, without the bickering, inter- and intra-party antics and backstabbing -- the standard modus operandi of Greek politics.

And perhaps we should add, that in this country of 11.5 million (plus the staggering numbers of illegal migrants and refugees flocking here as other EU countries in favour of human rights simply "look on"), we have all learned, for lack of trust in any form of "authority," to do things on our own. How does this fit in you ask? Well simply put, most of us kinda know a lot about everything: from politics and plumbing to medicines and management. So if one really wants to survive in the Greek working (and living) environment, they'll basically have to be amateur lawyers, doctors, accountants, politicians or in one word: managers.

Which brings me to Alkistis. For over four decades, she has been a role model of a performer. Yes, she's made some not-so-smart choices, like appearing in an ad for a bank, but who hasn't. (I will not examine each and every one of our politicians.) But she has worked hard, diligently and with respect to anything she has decided to take on. I don't know if it's the sport ethic she grew up with as a sprinter in her younger years or her idealistic love of her country being born in Alexandria, Egypt, and displaced by the Nasser hyper-nationalist regime in the '60s, but she feels genuinely proud every single time she travels abroad to perform and represent Greece with her undeniable talent.

Had I been asked years ago, I would probably have agreed, even argued, that singers (and artists, in general) have no place in politics, and yet, now, after all the so-called "knowledgeable" and "devoted" individuals who describe themselves as politicians have led my country to the depths of despair, I can only wonder whether instead, we need people who are good managers more so than those who know how to play the game of politics -- i.e. kinda lying, kinda negotiating, kinda compromising, kinda forgetting morals in the process.

I admit, I feel both happy and sad for Alkistis, because on the one hand it is indeed an honor for someone who loves their country in the idealistic sense to be asked to become a minister, but on the other, one needs a stomach of steel to cope with all the ugliness of politics... and I would add, the helplessness that accompanies certain decisions, especially in these so testing times for Greece.

Protopsalti will be serving as alternate tourism minister in the caretaker Greek government for some three weeks to the snap elections on September 20. At the Marathon concert, attended by several political personalities including former Athens Olympics Mayor and foreign minister Dora Bakoyannis, Alkistis gave us her all. The full moon in the background, the flashing blue and white lights, the talented musicians, the historic location and the weary-of-promises audience all made up the picture of Greece today: paradise lost... after all, tomorrow is another day.

Recognize that Iraq Is HIstory

Oftentimes when the U.S. superpower intervenes in the business of other nations, after U.S. troops withdraw, the American people lose interest and the country disappears from the consciousness of the public. For example, after the Vietnam War in the 1970s, the exhausted and disgruntled American public no longer cared what happened to the poor, faraway land. That same phenomenon initially occurred with Iraq after Barack Obama withdrew U.S. forces at the end of 2011 from the long American occupation on a schedule set by George W. Bush. However, on the fifth anniversary of Obama's announcement that the American combat mission had ended, Iraq is still in the news because the brutal group Islamic State (or ISIS) took over about one-third of Iraq -- areas where the Sunni Arab Muslim minority live. Not coincidentally, those were the same areas that most violently opposed the U.S. occupation from 2003 to 2011.

The reason the Sunnis fought so hard against the Americans was that for decades they had used central governmental power to control and oppress the other two main groups in the artificial country -- the minority Kurdish population in northern Iraq and the majority Shi'ite Arab population in the southern part of the country -- and the American invasion had thrown the Sunnis out of power and installed a Shi'ite dominated government that returned the favor. George W. Bush and Barack Obama have been criticized for propping up the chauvinistic and Shi'ite government of Nouri al-Maliki, as he predictably failed to deliver on promises to reintegrate Sunnis into the new army and give them positions in the Iraqi government's civil service.

Al Qaeda in Iraq, an even more radical affiliate of the main al Qaeda group in Pakistan, which was created to oppose the ill-conceived U.S. invasion, went to Syria and morphed into the even worse ISIS. When the group stormed back into Iraq in 2014 and took over the Sunni third of the country, it found not-so-surprising support from Sunnis, who preferred the even the vicious group's rule to the oppression of Maliki's Shi'ite dominated government.

After ISIS's invasion of Iraq, al-Maliki was thrown out as Iraqi leader, and Hadar al-Abadi, a nominally more inclusive leader, became prime minister. However, recently large protests in the capital of Baghdad have erupted over Iraq's broken political system, which the Americans installed in 2003. In response, al-Abadi has eliminated some high-level government positions and promised to streamline the government and fight corruption. However, he has also dropped sectarian quotas for hiring personnel in the government, which could further discriminate against and anger Sunnis that are not living in areas of ISIS rule.

The takeover of Sunni areas by the ferocious ISIS is not a good thing, but the long-term effective partition of Iraq into Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurdish areas might be. For much of its history, Iraq has been an artificial country held together by Sunni strongmen, of which Saddam Hussein was only the last in a long line. After World War I, the British and French carved up the spoils of the losing Ottoman Empire, creating most of the artificial states that have stoked most of the violence in Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. To snatch oil, the British combined three provinces of the old Ottoman Empire together, which had more ties to the Ottoman capital in Turkey than they did to each other. Thus, anyone who knew anything about the Middle East -- which George W. Bush didn't bother to consult before carrying out his whim of finishing off Saddam, the Bush family's mortal enemy -- would have predicted that Iraq would be one of the least likely countries in the region to be converted into a stable democratic state. The winner-take-all political culture, the historically severe ethno-sectarian fissures, and the long series of brutal dictators needed to keep a lid on the place were obvious clues that things would not go well for Iraq without a dictator around to hold the pieces together. But none of that stopped curious George from invading a sovereign nation for no convincingly good reason.

In 2009, during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, I published a book called, Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq, in which I predicted that because of its ethno-sectarian divides, that country would ultimately be partitioned by peaceful means or by war. I suggested that the United States mediate a voluntary peaceful division of the country into a loose confederation of autonomously governed regions. Unfortunately, that did not happen and the country has been effectively partitioned by war. And there will be more war if this partition is not formalized and the boundaries adjusted.

A formal partition would help at even this late date. During the later years of U.S. occupation, the American military essentially bribed many Sunnis to quit fighting U.S. forces and start fighting the brutal al Qaeda. In the media, this positive outcome and consequent lessening of violence in the country was then cleverly and more "patriotically" portrayed as the fruits of an added American troop surge into the beleaguered land. Yet, in 2005, the United States had had a similar elevated number of forces with no attenuation of violence. Unfortunately, part of the bribe to the Sunnis -- promised reintegration into the new Iraqi army and more civil service jobs -- was not honored by the Shi'ite al-Maliki government. All the Sunnis got was more oppression from that central government.

Thus, as a result of a "once bitten, twice shy" feeling among Sunnis, this strategy would probably not get them to turn against the even more brutal ISIS today. However, if the existing partition of Iraq were formalized and Sunnis were promised autonomous rule in a loose Iraqi confederation of regions, their incentives might change. No longer needing ISIS to defend against the predations of the Shi'ite central government, Sunnis, knowing that they would rule themselves, might revolt against the barbaric ISIS. This solution is much better than the United States' recent teaming with Turkey to allow the killing of the only U.S.-friendly people who have to date been effective fighters against ISIS -- the Kurds.

As Joe Biden realized before becoming Vice President and loyally keeping quiet, partition is the only workable long-term solution for Iraq and also for generating credible local Sunni forces to fight ISIS -- so that large numbers of U.S. forces don't need to be reinserted into the country.

Is There Anything Cuter Than A Seal Getting A Belly Rub?

Sometimes there's nothing like a gray seal to brighten a gray day.

A 2014 video of a diver giving a belly rub to an appreciative seal is seeing regained popularity thanks to a writeup this weekend in The Dodo. The underwater footage shows diver Gary Grayson encountering an Atlantic gray seal in Great Britain’s Scilly Isles, according the video’s description on YouTube.

The friendly pinniped swims right up to Grayson, stroking the man with its flippers before rolling over to expose his belly. The diver responds how just about any person would when presented with such an adorable scene -- he scratches the seal’s belly.

Though the video is adorable, scuba divers should not try this on their own. The video was shot in any area where seals have become very accustomed to human beings, which is not the case in most places.

"[The seal] is part of a colony where divers dive on a regular basis and so the seals have become, obviously, very used to people and allow them very close," Ally McMillan, director of Seal Rescue Ireland, located in County Wexford, Ireland, told The Huffington Post in an email. "Not all seals are like this, and if approached could well cause harm if they feel threatened due to their large size and very sharp teeth."

"Wildlife are better off being left wild," she added.

That being said, McMillan agrees the video is pretty cute.

"It really shows how sweet, curious and dog-like [seals] are," she said.

She noted that in some areas, the seal’s image desperately needs an overhaul.

"So many communities dislike seals and demonize them, calling them 'rats of the sea' or vermin, simply because they eat fish," she said. "Many fishing communities do not like them, and illegally kill them thinking them as competition for the fish."

She noted it's been tough finding government support and adequate funding to keep Seal Rescue Ireland running, and she fears the nonprofit -- which has worked to rehabilitate seal pups and other wildlife in need for around four years -- will likely be closing down at the end of the year.

"[We’re] praying for a miracle before the inevitable happens," she said.

Contact the author of this article at Hilary.Hanson@huffingtonpost.com

Shark Video Freaks Out Australian News Anchor

Beach-goer beware. 

Karl Stefanovic, co-host of the Australian morning show Today, so eloquently expresses something we all must feel when this shark violently launches itself out of the ocean.

"I am never going back in the water," he claims.

Or, to summarize in pictures...

This:

Will leave you feeling like this:

Or this: 

Assad Is Slaughtering Civilians and It's Helping ISIS: Why We Need a No-Fly Zone

BRUSSELS -- U.S.-led anti-ISIS airstrikes aren't working. When they began one year ago, many Syrians, including myself, thought they would be a step towards ending the horrors in Syria. We thought they would root out ISIS. We thought they would bring an end to Syrian President Bashar Assad's brutality. But today, ISIS continues to hold as much as 50 percent of Syrian territory, and Assad's forces continue to brutally murder civilians. But today, ISIS continues to win new ground across Syria while Assad's forces continue to brutally murder civilians. If the U.S. and its allies don't correct course soon, there is a risk that only a costly and deadly full-scale military intervention will defeat ISIS.

The U.S.-led coalition is too narrowly focused on an ISIS-only strategy. Assad's brutality against his own people is used as a recruiting tool for ISIS, which some see as an alternative to or protection from Assad.

While the rest of the world is focused on ISIS, the reality is that Assad is killing many more civilians. According to the Violations Documentation Center, the leading killer of Syrian civilians this year has been barrel bombs and chlorine gas dropped from Assad's helicopters. And the regime is continually intensifying their use, as seen in the recent brutal bombing of a marketplace in Douma killing more than 100 civilians.

The refusal of the coalition to provide protection from Assad's barrel bombs has led to more than 12,000 deaths since the introduction of this crude weapon. Assad is only encouraged to intensify the use of barrel bombs because he faces no consequences for his crimes. Syrians see no justice and no accountability. In a crisis that has seen more than a quarter of a million deaths and half the country displaced, this new form of brutality has Syrians on the ground pleading for a no-fly zone.

While the world is focused on ISIS, the reality is that Assad is killing many more civilians.

No ordinary Syrian wishes to see foreign intervention in our country. But the crisis in Syria is beyond ordinary. The Syria crisis is no longer a domestic Syrian issue; it is an international issue. Syrian refugees flee outside Syria's borders, and the threat of ISIS is a global one.

A no-fly zone in Syria would address core issues facing both Syrians and people in Europe, the U.S., the wider Middle East and elsewhere. It would halt the killing of countless Syrian civilians per week. It would help alleviate suffering by creating some space into which humanitarian aid can be delivered more safely more of the time. It would slow the refugee exodus.

A no-fly zone would suffocate a central ISIS recruitment narrative by showing that the West is interested in protecting Syrians. It will effectively eliminate the use of barrel bombs and could thereby change Assad's military calculations so that he is forced into real negotiations on the political transition to which the international community -- including Russia -- has agreed. A no-fly zone could bring all this. Even the mere threat of a no-fly zone could be enough to move the Syrian crisis towards a political solution.

A no-fly zone would suffocate a central ISIS recruitment narrative by showing that the West is interested in protecting Syrians.

Enforcing a no-fly zone from the sea rather than the sky would not require pre-emptive strikes against the Syrian regime's air defenses. Despite the availability of this sea-based option, some in the international community still hesitate to acknowledge the benefits of a no-fly zone. They worry that it is a slippery slope to a broader intervention. They worry that once a no-fly zone is announced, the problem of Syria becomes the international community's problem. But the international community is already involved in Syria. International aircraft fly over Syrian territory. The humanitarian crisis is a problem for everyone.

The current efforts are not working because they do not address the leading killer and primary driver of the crisis: Assad's attacks on Syrian civilians. If the U.S.-led coalition continues with the failing ISIS-only approach and continues to neglect the core of the problem, it will perpetuate the bloodshed and empower ISIS.

If the crisis is allowed to continue, the U.S. and Europe will remain vulnerable to ISIS and ISIS-inspired attacks. That is why the West is already on a slippery slope to full military intervention. A no-fly zone is the first step to avoiding that disastrous outcome that neither the West nor Syrians want to see.

Close

• The group of kidnapped people escaping across the frontline from ISIS-controlled territory near the Sinjar mountain

• A rescued woman is carried to safety

• She is carried across the frontline by a soldier

• The moment a young girl who was abducted by ISIS is reunited with her family in a camp for displaced people in northern Iraq.

• A young Yazidi women suffers a post traumatic collapse during a protest in a camp for displaced people

• A camp for those displaced by ISIS in Dohuk, Northern Iraq

• Secret filming captures an activist being questioned at a ISIS checkpoint near Raqqa in Syria.