Algerian man Imane Khelif has beat Italy’s Angela Carini in a welterweight round of Olympic women’s boxing and will advance. It took just 46 seconds for Carini, of Naples, Italy, to give up the match after taking a couple of heavy blows to her head.
The International Olympics Committee has decided to allow men who have X and Y chromosomes to box women. On Friday, a male boxer from Taiwan will be pitted against a woman from Uzbekistan. Yu-Ting will box in the Women’s 57kg division on Aug. 2, 9:30 a.m. Eastern time. His opponent is Sitora Turdibekova, a woman.
After the less-than-a-minute match, Carini was clearly traumatized, and was seen crying in the boxing ring.
Khelif will fight again on Saturday against an as-of-yet undetermined opponent.
The Olympic women’s division boxing match that saw a man from Algeria make quick work of a match against a woman boxer from Italy on Thursday has received no reaction from either President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.
Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska has had no comment about the invasion of men into the boxing ring previously reserved for women.
But Donald Trump said today that if elected, he’ll work to ensure men don’t take over women’s sports. Elon Musk wrote “good” to that remark.
And Alaska congressional candidate Nick Begich wrote his reaction to the match as well: ” ‘Trans women’ are not women; they’re men all the way down to their DNA. No amount of clothing, hormone therapy, or body modification will ever change that biological fact. These people need to stay out of women’s sports.”
The man who put two punches into the face of the Italian boxer has XY male chromosomes, but the Olympic International Committee has allowed men such as him to box against world-class amateur women boxers.
“I am heartbroken,” Carini told reporters. “I went to the ring to honor my father. I was told a lot of times that I was a warrior, but I preferred to stop for my health. I have never felt a punch like this.”
Enough of the gender insanity and the pandering to avoid hurting someone’s precious feelings.
The Olympics just allowed a biological man, Imane Khelif, to pummel Italian Olympian Angela Carini.
She lasted 46 seconds because to how painful it was:
The next match that pits an actual man against a woman athlete at the Olympics in Paris will be on Friday, when a Taiwanese male boxer will take on a female boxer from Uzbekistan.
A side group backing Rep. Mary Peltola that calls itself “Vote Alaska Before Party” is coming out of the closet: It’s all Democrats.
The group reveals a much bigger expenditure than the last report to the Federal Elections Commission leading up to the primary. To date, the group, headed by Alaska Democrat operative Jim Lottsfeldt, will now spend almost $834,000 opposing Nick Begich, Nancy Dahlstrom, and Gerald Heikes — all before the Aug. 20 primary.
The filing at the Federal Elections Commission shows the Peltola campaign is in more trouble than the campaign earlier predicted, because this filing shows that money has been pulled forward in time. It was money the group intended to spend after the primary.
“Vote Alaska Before Party” is a front group for the Democratic National Campaign Committee. The House “Majority PAC,” which is for Democrats, is its largest funder. The year-to-date expenditures of $834,000 is a lot of money to spend in the Alaska media market, which is small compared to almost all other states.
The group doing the work for “Vote Alaska Before Party” is Waterfront Strategies, which is a group with links to George Soros.
According to Influence Watch, Waterfront Strategies is an advertising purchasing firm formed by principals of the powerhouse Democratic political consulting firm Greer, Margolis, Mitchell, and Burns (GMMB Consulting). Waterfront typically works in conjunction with GMMB, placing media buys for political action committees (PACs), while GMMB works directly for political candidates and committees.
Jim Margolis was a top campaign consultant for President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
“Since its first election cycle on record in 2012, Waterfront Strategies has become the top vendor for Democratic PACs, labor unions, and left-of-center nonprofits, spending $206,003,697 in the 2018 election cycle. 1Senate Majority PAC, House Majority PAC, Women Vote!,League of Conservation Voters, NextGen Climate Action, and the government worker labor union AFSCME are among Waterfront Strategies’ top clients,” the watchdog group says.
A nonprofit that represents landowners on the south Anchorage hillside won a $200,000 grant from the Alaska Legislature to use for fire mitigation work in the area of town most prone to wildfire. It’s also an area of town that provides massive amounts of property taxes to the municipality, all of which could be erased if fire swept through the area.
HALO, the Hillside Home and Landowners Organization, had received the grant through the Municipality of Anchorage, which serves as the fiduciary middleman.
But at Tuesday night’s meeting, it became clear that several on the Assembly are hostile toward HALO, and so voted to postpone releasing the money.
After the city scrapes its 10% fee, HALO would actually only get $180,000 to coordinate activities with volunteers, nonprofit groups, veterans groups, contractors, and the Anchorage Fire Department to make the area safer.
One of the projects involves taking down fallen trees across a trail that children use to get to school, providing better access for the children and removing some of the possible dry fuel for wildfires. The wood would be bucked up into burnable lengths for use by homeowners who use wood for heat. That and other projects are being coordinated with the Anchorage Fire Department.
The $180,000 is one of the most modest grants the Anchorage Assembly usually approves. But Assemblyman Daniel Volland said it’s “a lot of money.” He doesn’t really “get” HALO or he doesn’t like the group, so he doesn’t want it to get the state grant.
“To me they sort of function as a collective community council, maybe community council+ that represents several of the LSRAs [limited road service areas] in South Anchorage. … It’s a lot of money, $180,000 and I guess my main question is why wouldn’t the money not be going to the fire department for elsewhere in the municipality to execute and steward the projects, but working with HALO in consultation,” Volland said, suggesting that the municipality steal the grant from the nonprofit.
Assemblywoman Meg Zaletel said that HALO should not be in the fire mitigation business, anyway. If it’s a new line of business, she just didn’t know about it.
“I really don’t get the intersection with HALO. I’m actually not comfortable with it,” Zaletel said, adding she would be a no vote.
HALO has been working for at least four years on wildfire mitigation issues and planning, especially after some large wildfires broke out in Anchorage in 2019.
In the end, the Assembly majority delayed awarding the pass-through grant from the State at least until the next meeting in mid-August, creating another two-week delay for HALO, which may result in not being able to get the work it has planned done this summer. Summers are typically shorter on the hillside and the delay may ultimately mean the group ends up forfeiting the grant if the Anchorage Assembly digs in its heels.
Although this is a State grant to a nonprofit in Anchorage, with the Municipality as the pass-through, the comments from Volland, Zaletel, and Assembly Chairman Chris Constant indicated that since the grant is to a group they consider represents a wealthier segment of the city, the Anchorage Assembly going to be obstructionist.
The Assembly routinely awards grants to nonprofits in much greater amounts, but Assemblyman Constant said it doesn’t typically direct money to community councils.
Yet HALO is a nonprofit, not a community council. On its own, it applied for, and won the award from the State; funding was shepherded by Rep. Julie Coulombe and Sen. James Kaufman, who both represent the area.
At no time during the Assembly discussion did Mayor Suzanne LaFrance ask to be heard in order to either defend the grant or point out why it should not be awarded. Her city manager Bill Falsey was unhelpful and the Anchorage Fire Chief Doug Schrage dodged the question about whether he was supportive of the grant.
The entire section of the meeting devoted to denying HALO the state grant it was duly awarded can be seen here:
As President Joe Biden winds down his term in office, irreversible decisions may come fast and furious. On Wednesday, the Department of Defense cut deals with the three top terrorists who were behind the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America, an event seared into the memories of many.
Three of the terrorists are being held at a U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, on the coast of Cuba. They are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused principal mastermind of the al Qaeda attacks, along with two alleged co-conspirators: Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi. The three terrorists will be spared from the death penalty, according to the deal made by the Biden Administration.
The Office of Military Commissions is prosecuting the case against men involved in the worst terrorist attack on the United States in its history.
In exchange for removal of the death penalty as a possible punishment, these three Accused have agreed to plead guilty to all of the charged offenses, including the murder of the 2,976 people listed in the charge sheet,” said a letter signed by chief prosecutor Rear Adm. Aaron C. Rugh.
The Convening Authority for Military Commissions, Susan Escallier, has entered into pretrial agreements with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi, three of the co-accused in the 9/11 case. The specific terms and conditions of the pretrial agreements are not available to the public at this time, the U.S. Department of Defense announced.
“The three accused, along with Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Ramzi Bin al Shibh, were initially charged jointly and arraigned on June 5, 2008, and then were again charged jointly and arraigned a second time on May 5, 2012, in connection with their alleged roles in the September 11, 2001, attacks against the United States,” the Biden Administration said.
Rep. Mary Peltola of Alaska endorsed Joe Biden’s reelection but has remained silent on Kamala Harris, who was part of a Democrat Party coup that overthrew Biden from the ticket and installed Harris as the presumptive nominee.
Biden has largely disappeared from public life since he announced he will not be the Democrats’ nominee. Harris has taken over much of the media frenzy, as the mainstream media reporters prop up her campaign for president with round-the-clock coverage. Harris, a former San Francisco prosecutor, has a long record of being soft on crime, advocating for defunding the police, and being timid when it came to tough cases brought before her.
A federal appeals court has ruled that the Biden administration can’t implement its Title IX rules in an additional four states, bringing the total number of statewide injunctions to 26.
With a recent block awarded in Oklahoma on Wednesday and then an emergency appeal granted by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, over half of the United States will be exempt from the Thursday deadline.
The new Biden administration rules add gender identity to prohibitions on sexual discrimination in Title IX, including requiring schools to allow students to use a bathroom and locker room that aligns with their gender identity.
Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina are the latest states where the Department of Education cannot implement the updated rules that expanded federal sex discrimination protections to cover gender identity and pregnancy.
“The Department is enjoined from enforcing the final rule adopted on April 29, 2024, Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance…pending further order of this Court,” the court’s order reads.
The other 21 states where the Biden administration has been prohibited from implementing its rule expanding the definition of sex discrimination to include gender are Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.
After the rule’s final implementation in April, the Biden administration was challenged by a spate of lawsuits from states, organizations and individuals arguing the rule was unconstitutional.
In the case led by Alabama, a lower court ruled against issuing a preliminary injunction on Tuesday, leading the coalition of states and organizations to file an appeal late into the evening. They asked the appellate court to issue an emergency block on the rule, citing its effects on students and schools.
“The Title IX rule not only immediately jeopardizes the rights and safety of students,” the request for an injunction reads. “But it also requires schools to digest the rest of the 423-page rule, update their policies, retrain their employees, figure out how to reconcile contrary state laws, and more. And the rule’s effective date is hours away.”
Two men boxers who were disqualified from competing with women at a global boxing event last year after a chromosome test showed they were men, are about to fight women at the Paris Olympics in the women’s division.
Footage of boxer Imane Khelif of Algeria, who was banned from the Women’s World Box Championships in 2023, and Lin You-Ting, of Taiwan also disqualified in 2023 because he has both X and Y chromosomes, are being allowed to fight women boxers.
Khelif will box Italy’s Angela Carini in the Women’s Welterweight 66kg division on Aug. 1 at 6:20 a.m. Eastern time.
Yu-Ting will box in the Women’s 57kg division on Aug. 2, 9:30 a.m. Eastern time. His opponent is Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova, a woman.
The International Olympic Committee decided both men can participate, on the grounds that they have fulfilled eligibility have female passports.
A video of Khelif in a match with a Mexican boxer has been making the rounds on X/Twitter. In it, it’s clear the Mexican woman boxer is severely outmatched:
?Beating women is now a spectator sport
We have never been more aware as a society of male violence against women
— Katherine Deves Morgan ??? (@deves_katherine) July 30, 2024
Some have made it clear that Khelif is not exactly transgender but is intersex, having both male and female traits present from birth, a very rare condition. Khelif has competed in women’s events but last year was excluded from the World Boxing Championship due to having both X and Y chromosomes, which makes him male. Khelif was allowed to box as a woman in the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 because the testing of his hormones met the parameters set by the International Olympics Committee. Yu-Ting is also intersex, according to some accounts, but is a biological male.
The City and Borough of Juneau Election Toolkit provides insightful encouragement to prospective candidates for its local elections: “Whatever the office, our public institutions are stronger when voters have a choice of candidates to represent them. Democracy works only when enough citizens have the courage and determination to run for, and hold, public office.”
While national politics and party conventions continue to dominate the news, this is the time of year when voters should shift their focus to local municipal elections. Municipal races across the state will determine the make-up of local governing bodies that could have far more impact on our lives than who will be our country’s next president.
Whatever the sporting event, we have all been to games where the competition was substandard. The teams were unevenly matched, and it was a blowout. Attendance is usually down, and most attendees walk away thinking it was a waste of time. The favorite was not tested and, as a result, no one really knows whether they are really as good as they claim.
Despite that, the beauty of sports is that it is a merit-based system, and the best team should win. Of course, there are exceptions. Anyone can have a bad day. But the point is to prove to the audience that you deserve to win based on your performance.
While not directly comparable, local elections should work the same way. After all, they call elections “races” for a reason.
Often local elections generate little excitement. Frequently it is because too few people are willing to take the plunge and run for office. In many cases, incumbent candidates run unopposed because no one is willing to challenge them. Or the one or two candidates that do file have the same viewpoint so do not represent a true choice.
Furthermore, mail-in voting can depress voter turnoutbecause it trivializes the importance and gravity of the act of voting. Where elections are competitive, however, voters pay attention and turnout increases.
Lack of competition and lower turnout and have been the case in far too many local contests.
However, for the second year in a row, Juneau’s electorate has decided to challenge the status quo in their upcoming municipal election on Oct. 1.
Of the three Juneau Assembly seats up in 2024, two are open seats since the incumbents opted out. In all, seven people are running in those two contests, two in District 1 and five in District 2. In the third race, Juneau Mayor Beth Weldon will face competition from Angela Rodell, the former CEO of the Alaska Permanent Fund.
All three Juneau school board incumbents are running against challengers.
The candidates should be congratulated for their willingness to run. Why not encourage the candidates by separating your voting choices from your support for the electoral process. Regardless of who you prefer, Juneau voters could consider sending a small contribution to competing candidates as a way to express your support for the democratic process.
Certainly, there are plenty of issues for candidates to debate. Topping the list of significant issues are increases in property taxes, Juneau’s high cost-of-living, and homelessness. Also on the list are major expenditure for controversial projects like the Capital Civic Center and New City Hall, a possible new City Museum, hospital financial stability, and the facility consolidations in the Juneau School District, to name just a few.
Without competition, incumbents and candidates without challengers would not be required to defend their record or their stated positions.
Electoral competition is a cornerstone of democracy because it grants voters the opportunity to review the record of incumbents, change direction when warranted, and implement the will of the people.
None of our elected leaders own the seats in which they sit. They belong to the public and it is up to candidates to convince voters they deserve to remain in office.
Despite some national political leaders claiming our democracy is on the ballot this year, it is not.
Democracy is the ballot. And it starts locally.
After retiring as the senior vice president in charge of business banking for Key Bank in Alaska, Win Gruening became a regular opinion page columnist for the Juneau Empire. He was born and raised in Juneau and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1970. He is involved in various local and statewide organizations.
Translators and interpreters use their knowledge of two or more languages and cultural meanings to translate or interpret texts and conversations from one language to another, to enhance communication across cultures and the parties involved.
The difference between a translator and an interpreter is how they perform their job duties. Translators convert one language to another in a written form (e.g., documents, film subtitles, books). In contrast, interpreters translate languages simultaneously through spoken words (e.g., meeting with clients in-person and attending negotiations). Also, on many occasions, interpreters play an essential role as assistants and troubleshooters behind the scenes.
For nearly 40 years, I performed both functions as a translator and interpreter of Russian for various government institutions, businesses, non-profit organizations, and private individuals. Although interpreting languages is a highly technical skill, it is also a communication task that ensures a successful cross-cultural engagement and understanding for all. In fact, unqualified interpretation can create a conflicting outcome and cross-cultural misunderstanding for those who rely on interpretation; and vice versa—a professional interpretation can lead to a successful outcome.
For example, in 1977, during U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s visit to Poland, a segment of his speech was incorrectly interpreted. The interpreter said President Carter wanted to learn about the Polish people’s “desires for the future,” which translated into a sexual desire for the then-Socialist country, instead of the country’s “aspiration for the future,” a hope or ambition of achieving something in the future.
From 1946 to the mid-1980s, Alaska was closed for Soviet citizens, except for some scholarly exchanges between two regions. During this time of the “Iron Curtain,” both nations were an enigma to one another and often subjected to dubious behaviors toward each other.
Nevertheless, initial visits of official Soviet delegations to Alaska in the 1980s and early 1990s, generated an enormous interest and excitement among all spectrum of Alaska’s residents (e.g., government institutions, businesses, educators, private individuals, etc.). In my practice as an interpreter in Alaska, three different occurrences clearly exemplified the complexity of responsible interpretations and the need for quick adaptation to an unpredictable turn of events.
The governor of the Magadan Region of the former Soviet Union, Vyacheslav Kobets, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Magadan Region, and a special envoy from Moscow visited Alaska in February of 1989. The delegation of Soviet officials and I, as an interpreter, were invited to visit the Alaska Legislature in Juneau.
While at the guest gallery of the House Chamber, then-Speaker of the House Sam Cotten welcomed the Soviet delegation. Unexpectedly, Governor Kobets stood up, pulled out several long-typed pages of text and, from the gallery, began addressing the Legislature in the Russian language.
The legislators and I were not prepared for such a turn of events. I immediately began a simultaneous translation without prior familiarity with the text. Kobets’ presentation lasted about 40 minutes and, evidently, it delayed the working agenda of the House’s session that day.
Nevertheless, all legislators listened to Kobets’ presentation via my translation attentively and patiently. I noticed, however, that the special representative from Moscow was visibly nervous during the presentation; he understood that Kobets lacked knowledge of the proper protocol.
In the early stages of the Russian-Alaskan exchanges, both sides went through a learning curve of reciprocal cultural and business familiarity with each other—sometimes quite awkward and sometimes humorous. My friend David Marshall was an economist in Juneau in the 1980s and 1990s. He, as well as many Alaskans, traveled to the Soviet Union on several occasions with the purpose of establishing a lucrative business with Russian entrepreneurs. In the early-1990s, he got acquainted with Boris from Magadan; Boris appeared to David as an enthusiastic and well-connected businessman. When Boris arrived in Juneau, they met at the Fiddlehead Restaurant to discuss David’s carefully drafted business proposal for a joint venture. (Evidently, David and Boris previously discussed establishing a financial investment company—a hedge fund—prior to the meeting in Juneau).
At some point during the meeting, Boris leaned toward David and suggested, “Listen, David, why complicate our business with this hedge fund? Instead, we can simply sell shampoo and make a good profit.” For a moment, David was puzzled by this unexpected suggestion. “And can you explain to me where and how the profit will come from by selling shampoo?” David asked suspiciously. “It is simple. We will dilute the shampoo with about 20 percent water,” answered Boris with a smirk smile. “In Magadan, no one will even notice a difference, and the product will fly off the shelves very quickly,” he continued.
Suddenly, David erupted like an ancient volcano after centuries of “hibernation,” angrily tearing the business proposal in pieces and throwing them in the air like a party confetti. All the guests in the restaurant turned their attention toward our table, each with an obvious curiosity about the commotion. All I could think at this moment, “There goes $60 per hour for my interpretation services.” Indeed, this was last meeting between these two enthusiastic businessmen. I was not paid for my efforts, and I was not daring enough to ask for it.
In December of 1994, I was hired to interpret for meetings between Natives of Alaska and Natives of the Russian Far East. The meetings were held in White Mountain Village and Shishmaref Village of Northwest Alaska under auspices of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services and Eurasian Foundation.
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The topics of the meetings were rather dramatic, emotional and urgent among Natives of both regions — alcoholism, diabetes, botulism, suicide, family abuses, mental illness, and various health-related issues. The participants shared their painful experiences, and I did my best in interpreting the information. Although Alaska Yupik and Inupiaq have close cultural and linguistic similarities with the Siberian Yupik and Chukchi, they could not fluently understand each other’s unique languages.
At one point of working with the Natives in Shishmaref Village, an elderly Alaskan Yupik woman approached me with a concern about my interpretations, “I do not like your translation,” she declared boldly. “Why?” I asked. “You do not translate our feelings,” she answered in a demanding voice, staring directly into my face. “I understand how you feel but interpreters translate words, sentences and contents, not emotions, feelings or attitudes,” I responded delicately. Her body language and facial expression gave me a distinct impression that she did not appreciate my explanation or my role at the meeting. Indeed, after 10 days of working above the Arctic Circle in December, I was relieved to return to my home in Juneau.
In my observation, the majority of the left-leaning progressive activists had impulsively initiated poorly-thought out exchanges with the former Soviet Union in the 1980s and early 1990s. Ironically, the left-leaning progressive activists went in the opposite directions after Russian annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 in supporting harsh and irrational sanctions upon the Russian Federation; which ultimately led to the rise of radical nationalism in Ukraine and, subsequently, led to the Russian-Ukrainian war of February 2022 until today.
After all, how many decades will it take to restore friendly and constructive relationship with our neighbor—Russia? It will take more than a skillful interpreter, it appears, because the two sides are far beyond the translation of “feelings” at this point in the conflict.
Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, andClipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.
