Al Jazeera: Can Hillary Clinton change gender roles in politics?

The United States stands on the brink of history with the nomination of its first female presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. Paradoxically, electing a woman president for the US will not advance women's rights around the globe.

This is because Clinton will immediately feel the need to demonstrate her power in a world that operates by traditionally male-dominated statecraft.

That world will not allow her to redefine the US' national interests, and consequently its foreign policy, in a way that will truly empower the world's women, particularly in Muslim countries where safety and security is needed the most. [...]

In reality, the world's power structures continue to operate under RW Connell's concept of "hegemonic masculinity", so women find it hard to ascend the male hierarchy in international relations unless they are willing to espouse the militarism that it favors.

A woman leader favouring peacemaking and diplomacy over war and conflict could be labelled as weak because of her gender, rather than a legitimate part of her leadership capabilities, policies and choices.

read the article 

The Telegraph: Don't look down - or perhaps do, if you dare...China opens world's highest, longest glass bridge

China has opened the world's highest and longest glass-bottomed bridge – the latest in a series of vertigo-inducing structures which are attracting tourists from all over the world.

The 1,410ft (430 metre) bridge, which opened on Saturday, and spans across the Zhangjiajie Canyon, in Hunan province, allows visitors to peer down into the abyss through 99 triple-layered glass panels. [...]

A maximum of 8,000 visitors a day will be allowed on the bridge, with park officials advising would-be guests to book to avoid disappointment.

read the article 

The New Yorker: Has Anything Changed for Female Politicians?

When news reaches Missoula that Rankin has won the general election by a plurality of 7,567 votes, reporters and photographers crowd the front lawn of her house in town, curious to bring back news of the “lady from Montana”— specifically what she looks like, what she’s wearing. (From across the country, her colleague Carrie Chapman Catt, the president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, questions Rankin’s credentials; the first woman in office should be an “intellectual”—certainly not a Westerner without a law degree.) Rankin morphs in the press from small and slight with “locks of fire” to “tall and slender, with frank hazel eyes, sandy hair, and energetic mouth.” She gets several marriage proposals by mail; a toothpaste company offers her five thousand dollars for a photograph of her teeth. It is reported that she can “dance like a boarding school girl” and that she makes her own hats. “I am glad glad glad even to Pollyannaism,” one newspaperwoman writes, “that Jeannette is not ‘freakish’ or ‘mannish’ or ‘standoffish’ or ‘shrewish’ or of any type likely to antagonize the company of gentlemen whose realm has hitherto been uninvaded by petticoats.” [...]

Rankin enters the House on April 2, 1917, in an extraordinary session called by President Wilson to debate war with Germany. The question is not how Rankin will vote but how a woman will vote. (Catt and many of the leaders of the national suffrage movement have urged her to vote for war; anything less, they assure her, will irrevocably set back the cause.) The men stand and applaud as she enters the House, dressed in blue and carrying a bouquet of flowers. She later remembers that, as she walks in, she’s a little worried, unclear where she should sit: at thirty-six and unmarried, she does not want to be accused of flirting. [...]

Twenty-two years later, at the age of sixty, the Candidate tries again for Congress and wins. She has spent the intervening years working for peace and disarmament organizations and travelling the world. She returns to the House in 1941 and achieves instant notoriety and a swift end to her political career when she casts the sole vote against going to war with Japan.

read the article 

Politico: How an Outsider President Killed a Party

Many have called Donald Trump’s unexpected takeover of a major political party unprecedented; but it’s not. A similar scenario unfolded in 1848, when General Zachary Taylor, a roughhewn career soldier who had never even voted in a presidential election, conquered the Whig Party.

A look back at what happened that year is eye-opening—and offers warnings for those on both sides of the aisle. Democrats quick to dismiss Trump should beware: Taylor parlayed his outsider appeal to defeat Lewis Cass, an experienced former Cabinet secretary and senator. But Republicans should beware, too: Taylor is often ranked as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history—and, more seriously, the Whig Party never recovered from his victory. In fact, just a few years after Taylor was elected under the Whig banner, the party dissolved—undermined by the divisions that caused Taylor’s nomination in the first place, and also by the loss of faith that followed it. [...]

Despite all this talk of staying away from one party or another, Taylor began inching toward the Whig Party, and the Whigs inched closer to him. At first glance, a general seemed to be a strange choice for the Whigs. Founded in the 1830s as a strained coalition of Southern states’ rights conservatives and Northern industrialists united mostly by disgust at Andrew Jackson’s expansion of presidential power, the Whig Party considered the war a disastrous result of presidential overreach. In fact, the popular backlash they stirred against Democratic President James K. Polk was so great that the Whigs seized control of Congress during the 1846 midterm election. But once America’s victory over Mexico triggered such enthusiasm, some Whigs calculated that running an extremely popular war hero like Taylor would prove to voters that the Whigs were patriotic, despite their anti-war stance.

read the article 

Slate: Iraq’s Bisected Onion Dome

Rising out of an artificial Baghdad lake like some kind of surreal relic from a bygone civilization, Iraq's Al-Shaheed Monument is an unforgettable reminder of the lives lost in the Iran-Iraq war.

The Al-Shaheed Monument was built under the regime of Saddam Hussein, during his push to fill Baghdad with lasting monuments during the 1970s and ’80s, so in retrospect it may strike some as a troubling artifact from a despot's rule, but it is hard to deny that it is a stunning work.

The towering memorial was completed in 1983, designed by Iraqi sculptor Ismail Fatah Al Turk. It consists of a 132-foot tall arabesque dome, covered in teal-colored ceramic tiles. The huge bulb is split down the middle, with an eternal flame in between the hollow insides. The whole thing sits on a large, circular square that is itself held in an artificial lake.

read the article