Year: 2018

Saudi Arabia’s ban on women driving officially ends

Markozen.com Transportation

Saudi women are officially allowed to get behind the wheel, after a decades-old driving ban was lifted.

The change was announced last September and Saudi Arabia issued the first licences to women earlier this month.

It was the only country left in the world where women could not drive and families had to hire private chauffeurs for female relatives.

However, the move comes amid an intensified crackdown on activists who campaigned for the right to drive.

At least eight women’s rights activists are being detained and could face trial in a counter-terrorism court and long prison sentences for their activism, human rights group Amnesty says.

They include Loujain al-Hathloul, a well-known figure in the campaign for women’s driving rights.

Amnesty has also called for wider reforms in Saudi Arabia, where women remain subject to male guardianship laws.

Excited Saudi women up early to go for a drive

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Human rights groups in the kingdom have campaigned for years to allow women to drive.

Dozens of women were arrested for driving in Riyadh in 1990 and some Saudi women began posting videos of themselves at the wheel in 2008, and between 2011 and 2014.

Thousands of women could soon take to the roads.

“It is a historic moment for every Saudi woman,” Saudi television presenter Sabika al-Dosari told the AFP news agency

She said she was behind the wheel minutes after the end of the driving ban at midnight local time (21:00 GMT Saturday).

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Insurance companies are bracing! I kid I kid.

Trump wants to deport American Indians to India

Markozen.com Satire

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Washington (dpo) – As part of his plan to improve national security and combat illegal immigration, US President Donald Trump intends to send around 3 million American Indians back to where they came from – India. He is to sign an executive order to this effect this week.

In an interview with Fox News, President Trump described Indians living in the USA as lawless warriors with a history of attacking and killing US citizens. He claimed, “I’ve seen it in all kinds of TV documentaries. Horrible attacks on good Americans using hatchets or bows and arrows. You can’t trust these Indians.”

President Trump consulted with the appropriate members of the government and found that most Indians do not possess the relevant immigration documents. “That means they are here illegally. I had to act.”
The White House has announced that Indians will be given a three month period in which to leave the country. India is to pay for their flights.

High Times Abound

Markozen.com Offbeat

Now that my home country of Canada is for sure legalizing marijuana in October, I decided I needed to educate myself on the subject. Tongue in cheek here.

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Unlike Bill Clinton, I have smoked the stuff, and I inhale every time.

To get the lowdown on the pot scene in North America I am subscribing to High Times.

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Fake cover above.

High Times is a New York–based monthly magazine founded in 1974 by Tom Forçade. The publication advocates the legalization of cannabis. The magazine has been involved in the marijuana-using counterculture since its inception.

The magazine was founded in 1974 by Tom Forçade of the Underground Press Syndicate. High Times was originally meant to be a joke: a single-issue lampoon of Playboy, substituting weed for sex. The magazine was at the beginning funded by drug money from the sale of illegal marijuana. But the magazine found an audience, and in November 2009, celebrated its 35th anniversary. Like Playboy, each issue contains a centerfold photo; however, instead of a nude woman, High Times typically features a cannabis plant.

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The magazine soon became a monthly publication with a growing circulation, audited by ABC as reaching 500,000 copies an issue, rivaling Rolling Stone and National Lampoon. In 2014, its website was read by 500,000 to 5 million users each month. The staff quickly grew to 40 people. In addition to high-quality photography, High Times featured cutting-edge journalism covering a wide range of topics, including politics, activism, drugs, sex, music and film. Tom Forçade was quoted as saying “Those cavemen must’ve been stoned, no pun intended.” Tom Forçade’s previous attempts to reach a wide counterculture audience by creating a network of underground papers (UPS & APS) had failed, even though he had the support of several noteworthy writers, photographers and artists. Yet, through High Times, Forçade was able to get his message to the masses without relying on mainstream media.

In January 2017, the magazine announced it would be relocated to an office in Los Angeles permanently. This followed the legalization of marijuana in several west coasts states including California.

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Another fake cover.

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The Art of Shepard Fairey

Markozen.com Art

Frank Shepard Fairey (born February 15, 1970) is an American contemporary street artist, graphic designer, activist, illustrator and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” (…OBEY…) sticker campaign while attending the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), which appropriated images from the comedic supermarket tabloid Weekly World News.

He became widely known during the 2008 U.S. presidential election for his Barack Obama “Hope” poster. The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston has described him as one of the best known and most influential street artists. His work is included in the collections at The Smithsonian, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

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Lauterbrunnen: The Valley of 72 Waterfalls

Markozen.com Geography

Tucked away in the Bernese Oberland of the Swiss Alps, about 70km southeast of Bern, lies the valley of Lauterbrunnen, regarded as one of the most beautiful valleys in Europe. The valley is about a kilometer in width, and lies between gigantic rock faces and mountain peaks that rises almost perpendicularly to heights of 300 meters from the floor of the valley. At the bottom, nestled between towering limestone precipices, lies the village of Lauterbrunnen, surrounded on three sides by the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau Mountains. The valley, carved by receding glaciers, extends south and then turns south-westwards from the village to form a U shape.

Lauterbrunnen means “many springs”. The name is derived from the 72 waterfalls that gush down into the valley from the vertical cliff faces, some of which are several hundred meters high. The most famous of these are the Staubbach Falls that plunges almost 300 meters, making it one of the highest in Europe formed of a single unbroken fall.

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Another spectacular natural phenomenon are the Trümmelbach Falls hidden behind a mountain, and consisting of a series of ten glacier-fed waterfalls that carries 20,000 litres of water per second. It drops a total of 200 meters. These thunderous falls have carved corkscrew-shaped gorges inside the limestone mountain. The waterfalls were invisible until 1877, when a tunnel was chiseled into the mountain. Today, you can ride an underground funicular and hike the walkways to see it. In winter, however, the falls are reduced to a trickle.

Lauterbrunnen’s dramatic cliffs and falls have inspired many musicians and writers, such as Johann Goethe’s poem, “Song of the Spirit of the Waterfalls,” which Franz Schubert set to music. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Misty Mountains of “The Hobbit” is also based on Lauterbrunnen.

Lauterbrunnen became a UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site in 2001.

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