Veteran's Day Secret: Sexual Assault in the Military

Yes, I'm insanely late, but here's my contribution to honor of Veteran's Day.

Allow me to make the disclaimer, that I don't give a fuck if any one's offended. Instead of standing in front of a flag, hand over heart, blind patriotism in the mind, proud and grateful for the military "fight for freedom.."

I choose to acknowledge a less glorious aspect of military life. One that affects women especially.

Yes, military personnel are supposed to "protect," but whom are they protecting exactly? If you're a woman in the military, you're 4 times more likely to get raped than if you're not.

And it doesn't begin and end with women. Men also file claims of sexual assault at the hands of their bullet armed brethren.

Unwanted sexual advances, rape, sexual harassment and other forms of sexual assault occur daily in our armed forces. Given the way these facts are under-reported and routinely swept under the rug..

Maybe they should start calling themselves masked forces?

The perpetrators often are living in the same barracks, not some enemy camp.

WTS salutes veterans, and especially female veterans who fight for their safety on the battle field, and off. The military deems you a hero should you go to battle, but apparently, chooses to ignore you and your trauma should you survive it.

SMH. WTS.

New data show unfair treatment at the VA for survivors of sexual assault in the military.

Veterans whose post-traumatic stress disorder is caused by military sexual trauma are much more likely to be denied disability compensation than other veterans diagnosed with PTSD.

This Veterans Day, veterans struggling with the devastating mental health effects of military sexual violence who turn to the Department of Veterans Affairs for help will instead find discrimination. Their claims for disability compensation will turn out differently depending on their gender and where they live. And the VA will expect survivors to submit documentation that often does not exist—like official reports of rape or the results of pregnancy or STD tests—while taking veterans who claim benefits for many other forms of trauma at their word.

The accounts of veterans like Navy veteran Ruth Moore have shown the impact of the VA’s hostility to disability benefit claims related to rape, sexual assault, or sexual harassment. It can be devastating. Moore was raped twice by her Navy supervisor, but the VA repeatedly denied her claims for disability compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder, requiring extra evidence because her claim was linked to military sexual trauma. The VA’s discriminatory demand left Moore without compensation, homeless, and suicidal; it took her more than two decades to finally get the benefits she deserved. 

Now, after years of litigation, the VA has released data on military sexual trauma claims that show a pattern. Veterans whose PTSD is caused by military sexual trauma are much more likely to be denied disability compensation than other veterans diagnosed with PTSD. 

Our report “Battle for Benefits: VA Discrimination Against Survivors of Military Sexual Trauma” shows that each year from 2008 to 2012, the VA rate for granting claims base d on sexual trauma-related PTSD lagged behind other PTSD claims by between 16 and 30 percentage points. This disparity is particularly disturbing because sexual assault is more strongly correlated with PTSD in veterans than any other trauma, including combat trauma. The numbers make clear that many military sexual trauma survivors who suffer from debilitating mental health conditions are not getting the disability benefits they need and deserve.

Female veterans suffer most frequently from the VA’s discrimination, because their PTSD claims are more often related to military sexual trauma than are the claims of male veterans. But male veterans suffer a form of sex discrimination too: When they make claims for PTSD caused by military sexual trauma, they have a particularly hard time getting their claims approved. In 2011, for example, the VA granted nearly 49 percent of PTSD claims from female survivors, but only 37 percent of claims from male survivors. This is particularly disheartening since, according to the Pentagon, men made up over half of the military’s sexual assault survivors in 2012.

Finally, and perhaps most alarmingly, in a country that should treat all its veterans equally, our report reveals that veterans’ access to disability compensation depends on where they happen to live. Veterans submit disability claims to one of 58 VA regional offices. The data show huge disparities among the rates at which claims of PTSD based on sexual trauma are granted at different offices. For example, in 2012 the VA granted 57 percent of all of these PSTD claims nationwide. The regional office in St. Paul, Minn., however, granted only 26 percent of these claims, while the Los Angeles office granted nearly 88 percent.

Clearly, the system is flawed. To fix it, the VA must start by changing its regulations so that it no longer holds survivors of military sexual trauma to higher standards than other veterans with PTSD. The VA has repeatedly denied the need for this commonsense change, but the data make clear that it is necessary. The VA must also continue to improve its training efforts surrounding military sexual trauma, targeting claims processors and management in regional offices that have discriminated most egregiously. 

Despite years of pressure from veterans’ advocates and survivors themselves, the VA has been unwilling to make these urgently needed changes on its own. It’s time for Congress to step in. Survivors of military sexual trauma have waited long enough.

Source

Matrix Fans: Meet Neo's Mother.. REVISED POST

A WOMAN wrote The Matrix, one of the most profound movies ever made. 

Apparently there have been some false reports. Ms. Stewart DID win her case, but not for $2.5 billion dollars. Her attorney failed to appear at a court date and her case was dismissed, so she filed a lawsuit against the attorney. Never giving up, she re-filed her case and was granted permission by the California courts to proceed with her lawsuit. Below, I have outlined what is true and what isn't.

Sophia Stewart

FALSE: After a six year dispute, prolific writer and profound spiritualist, Sophia Stewart has received justice for copyright infringement and racketeering and will finally recover damages from the films, The Matrix I, II and III, as well as The Terminator and its sequels. Yes, you heard that correctly – the entire Matrix & Terminator franchises, and her suspected pay off is expected to be the highest in history – an estimated 2.5 billion.

TRUE: “Stewart filed her case in 1999, after viewing the Matrix, which she felt had been based on her manuscript, ‘The Third Eye,’ copyrighted in 1981. In the mid-eighties Stewart had submitted her manuscript to an ad placed by the Wachowski Brothers, requesting new sci-fi works.

TRUE: According to court documentation, an FBI investigation discovered that more than thirty minutes had been edited from the original film, in an attempt to avoid penalties for copyright infringement. The investigation also stated that ‘credible witnesses employed at Warner Brothers came forward, claiming that the executives and lawyers had full knowledge that the work in question did not belong to the Wachowski Brothers.’ These witnesses claimed to have seen Stewart’s original work and that it had been ‘often used during preparation of the motion pictures.’ The defendants tried, on several occasions, to have Stewart’s case dismissed, without success.

The case is not over as previously reported. HERE is the real story:

In what continues to loom as one of the biggest criminal copyright infringement cases in the history of Hollywood, a lone African American woman is fighting the battle of her life against those who would ultimately take credit for blockbuster movie franchises, Terminator and Matrix. Sophia Stewart, a divorced mother of two, Tasha and Paris. and displaced New Yorker now residing in Las Vegas, is in an epochal legal battle with the famed Wachowski brothers (Andy and Larry) from Chicago, two carpenters/Marvel comic book writers who dropped out of college to pursue careers as Hollywood filmmakers. According to Ms. Stewart, an articulate if enigmatic writer turned litigant — the Wachowski brothers stole her script for a science fiction screenplay and turned it into the mega hit that we know today as the Matrix (1999) which racked up billions worldwide.

Here’s how the story goes. Ms. Stewart, with her Bachelor’s degree in journalism from City University of New York in tow, moved to Los Angeles to pursue a writing career and to attend film school at the University of Southern California. Through her association with R&B singer Janet Jackson (go figure), she obtained entree into the entertainment business, initially working on small television projects and eventually landing at Columbia Pictures in the office of  then vice president, Dick Berres.

Soon after arriving in L.A., Ms. Stewart wrote a science fiction novel called The Third Eye. The book, she says, is a science fiction version of the ‘second coming’ which she was inspired to write after seeing Star Wars. “What I wrote was the evolution of consciousness, the second coming of Christ — man vs. the machine.”  

In 1986 Ms. Stewart answered a magazine advertisement for a science fiction script that the Wachowski brothers were going to make into a comic book. Years later, Ms. Stewart contends, her vision hit the movie screens on March 31, 1999 in the form of Matrix. In fact the Wachowski brothers used a verbatim quote from her book to introduce the film which was later removed after an FBI investigation into the criminal copyright infringement was initiated.
When I first spoke with Sophia Stewart a few months ago in April 2012, she was most gracious with her time and forthcoming with the complex details of her lawsuits. The legal documents involved could make your head spin. She shared some of them with me.

When Stewart saw the Matrix, she recognized her work right away and called the legal department at Warner Brothers on April 1, 1999. According to her, they knew exactly who she was and therefore, one would assume, they knew that her work had plagiarized. “They offered me money right off the bat,” she says. She had also kept a copy of the original Wachowski ad which ultimately became one of many aces in the hole. “The ad is what brings it all together,” she says. “The ad is what says I told the truth.”

There is a ton of information on the web about this case. There are several interesting radio interviews on Youtube where you can learn about Ms. Stewart’s early life as a prodigy, her leap into college at a young age and her travails in Hollywood. She was writing in the 1980s about technologies that had not even been invented. She’s already written Matrix 4 with “hologram clones, virtual reality, etc.” according to her, but she’s keeping it close to the vest, not surprising. She says that she writes in the universal language of mathematics.

 

Stewart contends that there are a lot of people whose work has similarly been stolen, but because the media is corrupt, you don’t hear about it. In her case, no one is talking. The Wachowski brothers were famous for their reclusion especially after the release of Matrix and the subsequent controversy. My contention is that because they knew the work was stolen, they didn’t want to address it in the media. In fact, they made a deal with Warner that they would not have to do interviews. (In a bizarre twist, one of the Wachowski brothers (Larry) had a sex change and is now a woman named Lana, so the Wachowski brothers are no more.)




I spoke with Ms. Stewart again in late July. One may read reports on the Internet that Ms. Stewart won a multi-billion dollar lawsuit when, in fact, she received some funds but not the damages. “The Wachowskis Brothers lost on a default judgment in 2004,” she says. “They never answered the complaint ever.” On June 4, 2012, she won a judgment against her now deceased attorney, Jonathan Lubell (alias Jon Lubell) for failure to appear at a pre-trial conference in  

December 2011, and failure to appear to show cause in January 2012 causing her to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue and, more important, causing the dismissal of her $300 million 2003 California lawsuit. Her judgment is for $150 million.

You will be hard-pressed to find information about Ms. Stewart’s wins in the mainstream media. I know for a fact that people had written her off as a crazy lady. How dare she take on such giant corporations as Twentieth Century Fox and influential individuals like the Wachowski brothers and other mega figures in the industry? The fact is, the woman is brilliant and brave. Her story deserves to be heard — that you can wage a battle against the so-called powers that be and win. The reader might say, “…well, she didn’t for damages…” (yet). Truthfully, I don’t think –  having spent hours on the telephone with Ms. Stewart –  that money is her motivation. The point is that people (or corporations) can not STEAL your copyrighted material, do with it as they might, make billions of dollars and think they can get away with it.

(Aside): Ms. Stewart wrote herself into her story as the Oracle, played in Matrix by the late Gloria Foster.




Notes on Terminator:




The issue of Terminator is a convoluted story of mischief, mayhem, malfeasance, misconduct and racketeering.

Canadian born James Cameron (Titantic, Avatar) is credited with directing and co-writing Terminator (his partner in crime Gale Anne Hurd, producer), but another science fiction writer, Harlan J. Ellison sued him and won a paltry $65K because Cameron admitted in interviews that he had “ripped off” story lines from two Outer Limits segments Ellison had written. Ms. Stewart claims (and the FBI concurs) that Terminator is also based on her seminal work (The Third Eye) and that it is, in fact, the prequel to Matrix. Initially, she was not aware of this infringement, not having seen Terminator. It was the FBI that informed her that Terminator was indeed part of the copyright infringement case and pursued a civil liberties case on her behalf. (Sarah Connor who the Terminator relentlessly pursues in the film is Neo’s mother (Matrix). WOW! The case was ruled in her favor.

The teleplay and the final film reveals that Gale Anne Hurd and James Cameron were not really authors, rather, they were copying the protected work product of other people and then gave false oaths to the United States Copyright Office in violation of 17 U.S.C. 506 (e) to set void agreements that were based upon these illegal acts.

…The Debtors’ have committed Felony Copyright infringement and do not own legitimate interest in the Terminator movie franchise. -  Source:  Universal Commercial Code (UCC), California, 2009
The “Debtors” refers to director James Cameron, producer Gale Anne Hurd, et al.
(Aside) The famous line ” I will be back ” in Terminator uttered by Arnold Schwarzenegger that reverberated around the world, was created by Ms. Stewart.

I have selected the following paragraphs from the Civil Rights court case filed on Ms. Stewart’s behalf to provide a synopsis of the proceeding:

41.       Hence, Plaintiff Stewart maintains that all deals made without a recognition of her rights was done to willfully suppress her rights and to show that some industry leaders concealed the malfeasance by illegal means in violation of 18 U.S.C. 4 so that the perpetrators could benefit from their illegal malfeasance and to make certain that Plaintiff Stewart did not collect her just compensation as an African American who in 1981 did not have membership in the Writers Guild of America.  That is not a reason to set up a scheme to take her work by illegal means in that the laws of the United States are the supreme law regarding the right to own and use copyrighted works, not a private agreement between writers and various studios.

76.       Nevertheless, Defendants Gale Anne Hurd, James Cameron, Pacific Western Productions, Inc., and Hemdale Film Corporation did not reveal their knowledge of the co-authorship of Sophia Stewart to the United States Copyright Office when the “Terminator” screenplay was submitted under number PAu 584-564 on February 3, 1984 as it was their duty to do under 17 U.S.C. 506 (e).

82.       On information and belief, the sole story concept that Gale Anne Hurd had between May 1, 1981 and May 10, 1981 involving a post nuclear war fight between man and machines from another planet in a darkened earth that used naked people without shame through a large mechanized spacecraft to engage the machines was written by Sophia Stewart on May 1, 1981 which was then submitted to Twentieth Century Fox to the Vice President of Creative Affairs for consideration.

175.     In spite of the fact that no “Terminator” movie has lost money at the Box Office, the companies that have acquired the rights and the companies that have profited from the use of this intellectual property repeatedly go to the Bankruptcy Court to transfer the rights from Hemdale Film Corporation in 1995 through Halcyon Holding Company LLC, the parent company to T Asset Acquisitions LLC, filing for Chapter 11 reorganization on August 17, 2009 and then illegally transferring those rights that were never lawfully acquired in light of at least two violations of 17 U.S.C. 506 (e) and multiple violations of 18 U.S.C. 152 (2) regarding the proper ownership of the so called “Terminator” merchandising, production, game, and other rights that arose from the “Third Eye” written by Sophia Stewart that was pilfered by Gale Anne Hurd and Pacific Western Productions, Inc. and then falsely represented to every buyer through subjects that were not bona fide purchasers since they could not buy all of what Hurd, Cameron, and Pacific Western Productions, Inc. did not own, which void outcome based upon violations of 18 U.S.C. 152 (2) also apply to the representations of ownership by Victor Kubicek and Derek Anderson through Halcyon Holding Group LLC to Pacificor LLC for $29.5 million on February 8, 2010 in the fictitious auction.

182.     Every entity that got close to the “Third Eye” had amazing outcomes:
a)         Roger Corman – $16.5 Million;
b)         Gale Anne Hurd – in excess of $8 million;
c)         Pacific Western Productions – (unknown);
d)         Hemdale Film Corporation – - $72 million;
e)         Carolco Pictures, Inc. — $400 million;
f)         C2 Partners (Intermedia) – $233 million;
g)         Halcyon Holding Group LLC – $172 million;
h)         James Cameron – unknown; and
i)          Roger Corman – $16.5 million.

In any case, Sophia Stewart stood her ground and refused (refuses) to be taken lightly. She is a woman of obvious spiritual strength, as well as integrity and immense courage. She battled Hollywood head on, and still continues to fight for her work and monies that it earned. If you read this blog regularly then you know, SHE is the type of woman we applaud, revere and want to know about.


Not to mention, this is what she did to her haters..

I fucking LOVE it.

It makes absolute sense that this movie was written by a woman. The knowledge that this movie captivates..?
ESTROGENATED.

Sarah Conner is Neo's Mom? Like fucking wow!

Sidenote: I hope all you aspiring filmmakers/writers/etc learn something from this story: HOLLYWOOD STEALS. They tried to discredit Ms. Stewart because she wasn't a member of the Writer's Guild at the time she submitted material. A very lame excuse but was still presented in court. Please make sure you have all your ducks in a row and know what you're dealing with. Have your material copywritten and/or whatever else you need to do to protect your work. Just because someone won an Oscar or has a distinguished career doesn't mean they aren't a thief  *cough/JamesCameron/cough*


In any case, Ms. Stewart's achievements makes me proud to be a member of the Female Club. I think I'll go bra-less for the rest of the day.

Sophia Stewart, WTS salutes you!