RECENT NEWS, OPINION, ANALYSES & RESOURCES

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Learn of the plight of our Afghan sisters & brothers from the headlines of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

towards Global Sisterhood Network operations and to support feminist struggles in South Asia and the Middle East

Ireland: Despite recession, men’s demand for paid sex & abuse of prostitutes, one third women and girls trafficked mainly from Africa, rises

South Africa: Women farmers, the worst affected by climate change, food insecurity, and natural disasters, ignored by Govt Policy 

Russia:   Macho who? More like “Yobbo who“, with the answer again Vladimir Putin now firing darts at a grey whale from a crossbow!

  War Is Not Over When It's Over: Women and the Unseen Consequences of Conflict by Ann Jones

  Missing Half the Story - Journalism as if Gender Matters, Edited by Kalpana Sharma

 Feminism's Second Wave: A Recap of Changes and Emerging Issues 1970-2010

Ireland: Celebrating Sisterhood - A lot done, a lot more to do

Online Media: IPS Gender Wire the desired exception in asking ‘what does a news story mean for women and girls?’ 

USA:   Enlightened sexism [high-profile success stories which mask persistent inequality] takes root

Australia:  36 years post-ratifying the UN Convention on Equal Remuneration for Work of Equal Value, Women still await Equal Pay

Sweden:  Feminist Initiative Party burns 100,000kr, the symbol of women's minutely pay gap

UK: On the first anniversary of her murder, launch of Scholarsip in memory of Chechan Human Rights activist Natalia Estemirova

Australia: The National Obscenities of Starving Rural Aboriginal children & Feminized Homelessness 

Burma: Driven by poverty into local prostitution, women then duped to be trafficked into foreign sex trade

Afghanistan:  A 9 year US-led invasion on the pretext of freeing women from the Taliban, turns truly farcical as the US encourages Karzai to welcome back the Taliban misogynists

Vatican: Thick as a brick misogynist Benedict XVI approves merely tweeked laws on clerical sexual abuse and lumping of women’s ordination in same serious crimes basket as the rape & molestation of girls, boys, women and men by the Catholic Church's ordained men

India: Reminders from the Bhopal atrocities & injustices of the need to to reclaim universal and common humanity in order to halt the blue murder of MNCs

South Africa: Intimate male partner violence increases rural women’s incidence of HIV infection 

Australia: Brut & Lynx male deodorants recommended as pepper sprays even as sexist ad campaigns prove a huge flop

Germany: Legalizing prostitution turned whole country into a hub for women trafficked from Eastern Europe and African countrie, and led to the exploitation of German as well as other foreign women

Vatican: Benedict XVI's anger reveals papal insecurity over judicial access to clerical abuse charges

Read also: Benedict XVI unable to tolerate secular societies, all set to create "Office of the Catholic Taliban"

Australia: Julia Gillard, the best woman or man for PM, a gobsmacking victory for women past & present, and a lifeline for the Labor Party Read also:As Federal Election looms, women’s demands grow for equity in all sectors ....

Burma: Globally acclaimed for her dignity & valour, at 65 Aung San Suu Kyi still petrifies the military junta

Read also:   Global 65th birthday greetings for Aung San Suu Kyi, amidst demands to set her free

US: Equality Now campaign against Female Genital Cutting, an unacceptable medical compromise perpetuating Female Genital Mutilation, prompts back down by American Academy of Pediatrics

Bolivia: Cochabamba Conference focuses on the specific dire impacts of Climate Change for women

India: In a complete mockery of justice, Bhopal court slaps Union Carbide’s Indian culprits on wrist, but US accused remain scot free

Australia: Safety issues lead Northern Territory & Queensland Electrical Trade Union to ban all work in uranium mines, nuclear power plants & any part of the nuclear fuel cycle

Afghanistan: Child brides face private beatings within marriage, and public floggings, even death, if managing escape

Australia: Rio Tinto-owned ERA poisons Aborigibal living areas in Kakadu with millions of litres of radio-active waste 

Haiti: Monsanto’s $4M 'donation' of hybrid corn & vegetable seeds risks death of native agriculture 

US: In stark contrast to Catholic Church's retaining of priestly paedophiles, Sister of Mercy who saved a mother’s life by permitting abortion promptly excommunicated

South Africa:   Women religious launch campaign to prevent human trafficking for 2010 World Cup

Read also: Catering for ‘Men Who buy sex’ at WSC 2010, 100,000 prostitutes to swell an already out-of-control, HIV-ridden industry

Vatican::Benedict XVI manages only a second-hand telegram to women religious leaders meeting only a few kms from his doorstep Read also: Benedict XVI taints Portugal visit with vicious slurs on Same-Sex Marriage

India: World Bank & Governmentt policies enrich agri-corporations at expense of nation’s food sovereignty & security

Australia: Vandana Shiva, India's fearless eco-feminist, awarded the 2010 Sydney Peace for her commitment to social justice

India: Women fully or partly recovered from mental illness, abandoned for life by State & family

US:   Time Magazine names Malalai Joya in world’s 100 most influential, then commissions another author to distort her "Memo to America: Stop Murdering My People"

India: State-run cradles avoid short-term perils faced by female infant, but perpetuate gender-based discrimination

Burma: Desperate female victims of 2008 Cyclone Nargis fall easy prey to sex and wife traffickers

Afghanistan:   Failed by Bush Jnr, Blair & Howard’s fake war on terror, the burqa disguises RAWA’s ongoing revolution

US: Proposed Foreign Aid Bill, in the name of abating global hunger, mandates [Monsanto-lobbied] genetically-modified crop development

Earth Day 2010: A time to consumate a new paradigm of Earth Democracy - Without earth rights, there can be no human rights

Iraq:  Revelations of "Collateral Murder" calcify anger in civilian hearts awaiting justice

India: Feminists oppose "Fatal Third World Guinea Pig Trials" of cervical cancer vaccine, instead demanding: Informed Consent protocols, Systematic Cancer Screening, a Holistic approach to women's heath which includes attention to Nutritious Diets and access to Clean Water for Hygiene Purposes, and that the risks of multiple partners leading to a variety of STDs should be disseminated among the general population, with a focus on men

Vatican: Benedict XVI 5 years on: Morally compromised & submerged in personal complicity with "priestly filth"

UK: Gita Sahgal ditches Amnesty International due to wasted women's equality advances & mockery of universal rights

India: Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation-funded Cervical Cancer Vaccine trials suspended due to project's ethical flaws and exploitation of girls from the most vulnerable sections of society

Read also Series of false promises, and regulatory violations, lead to demands for suspension of Gardasil /Cervarix licenses and an Independent Impartial inquiry into all deaths and side effects  suffered by girls in rural Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat

Australia: Football NSW gives FIFA’s bigoted "Hijab Ban" a richly deserved red card 

Bangladesh: Underage, unpaid girls, sold into prostitution, fed ‘cow fattening steroid’ to please men who buy sex

Chile:   Homophobic Deputy Pope quotes rubbish statistics to duck guilt for Vatican's sex abuse shame

Vatican: Benedict XVI unable to conceal his delight after puppet Cardinal Soldano echoes his 'petty gossip insult' to Church's abused and Thumbs his nose at global outrage over clerical sexual, physical & emotional abuse

US: Meet the Toxic 100 Corporate Air Polluters with their Environmental Justice Report Cards

   << WHITE FEATHER AWARDS for COWARDICE 2010 >> 

Bosnia: Radovan Karadzic’s cowardly war crime denials & State inertia rub salt in the wounds of civil war’s rape victims

Vatican: Benedict XVI's cowardly overriding silences within "Lenten Letter to Ireland" win a global white feather

Read also: For Nazi Holocaust Victims to those of Priestly Paedophiles, Benedict XVI helplessly out of touch in his a "Failed Papacy"

But more importantly read: Benedict XVI, up to his neck in sex abuse scandals, & owing the Church’s victims his own resignation

and: Time for Benedict XVI to step down, making way for the proclamation of Habemus Mama to tear assunder the veils of secrecy

  << International Women's Day 2010 >>

  A message to Planet Earth's Patriarchs from poet Laura Manuelidis, playwright Lynn Nottage, & journalist Kishwar Desai: "Enough is more than enough of the psychological, physical, verbal, and financial humiliation heaped upon women and girls via male paradigms of [to name just a few] gender superiority, militarism and economics"

In solidarity with  Gita Sahgal: Global Petition to Amnesty International: Restoring the Integrity of Human Rights

  Roads to Genderocide: Sex-selective technologies, Population Control, Declinng Fertility, & Patrilinear Cultures turn the girl child into an endangered species

Afghanistan: US-led NATO occupation as catastrophic for women as previous Taliban domination

Australia: Proud of Germaine Greer, a brave and passionate advocate for liberty, notably for women’s emancipation

  Arrogant, misnformed Sydney playwright Louis Nowra’s character assassination of Germaine Greer serves only to remind of her ageless value to women

Burma:  Women’s participation a must for any kind of peace & reconciliation

And from New York Watch the Live Webcast, March 2 9.00am-6.00pm of the  International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women of Burma and read the Tribunal's Verdict and Recommendations

and from  Cora Weiss: Burma’s tortured women abandoned, yet World Bank & Foreign Investment abounds for Burma's tiger, gas, and oil

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India:  Lack of political will to stop child marriage sees 25 times higher maternal death rate in girls under 15 years

Ireland: A Papal and State apology and compensation overdue to the girls & women tortured in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries

UK:  Million Women Rise to demand an end to the worldwide institutionalised male violence against women

2009 Inspirations Feminists Malalai Joya and Amy Goodman prominent as dark decade closes

Afghanistan:  Operation Moshtarak more about uranium deposits & opium dollars than ending Taliban fundamentalism in Helmand Province

India: Welcomed by Farmers, Greens, and Human Rights and Development activists, indefinite moratorium placed on Monsanto’s Bt Brinjal averts nation’s Third War of Independence

Norway: True to prime goal of securing rural livelihoods, gives thumbs down to genetically-modified agriculture 

Vatican: In the face of the latest horrendous sexual abuse of children in both Ireland & Germany by the Catholic Church's ordained men, Benedict XVI's "Infallibility" falls to an all time low with his echoing of centuries-old judgements within law statutes worldwide " that the sexual abuse of children is a heinous crime"

Read also:  Benedict XVI's hollow platitudes at Vatican Summit with Irish Bishops fail both the Catholic Church’s victims & its faithful

and of  Benedict XVI and the State's overdue apology to the 30,000 girls & women tortured by the Catholic Church's Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, Sisters of Charity and Good Shepherd Sisters in Ireland's "State-approved Magdalene Laundries"

and: Buck for paedophile priest abuse stops with the Vatican, even as two Irish Bishops call for a 'Rape Tax' from the faithful 

UK: As Blair continues to rake in obscene mega-bucks for his "More Tory than the Tories money-hungry Gospel", a bounty on his head for war crimes

 Blair at the Chilcot Inquiry

Arrogant, deluded, unrepentant, fiddling with the truth, dancing around the questions, stark ignorance of the war's realities, outdated and/or inaccurate statistics, and ratcheting-up a war on Iran

Take your pick: A mass murderer, a liar, a war-mongering monster, a neo-imperialist-conservative, a fool, or "all of the above"

Read  Responses from British analysts, literally pouring SHAME on Blair’s 'Chilcot Theatre'

while: Based on zero evidence, Blair’s poisonously misguided war-mongering sows seeds for an Iraq replay against Iran

Mourning leading feminist deaths, but women in all walks of life, demonstrating in spades, their poise to lead

Real hope rises as ‘No Shock Doctrine For Haiti Petition’ avoids the quaked nation being IMF-ed 

India: Deaths of 4 tribal girls in Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded HPV Vaccine trial in Andhra Pradesh fobbed off as "due to suicide" and India's Cervical Cancer Bazaar

Pakistan: Emotional or mental turmoil - chiefly related to Patriarchy, Poverty, Cultural Mores & Abandonment - lands women in mental asylums, most destined never to leave

Lingering fears about HIV transmission risk due to long-acting contraceptives call for new policies

  BigPharma and Government maintain HPV vaccine safety even as casualties continue to mount

India: Booming economy fails to save a third of all deaths in young children from undernutrition - neglected nutritional requirements of adolescent girls and pregnant and breastfeeding mothers feature in the national disgrace

 The Road from Copenhagen: Feminist Perspectives on the 'Roll Overs'

Bolivia: Cochabamba Conference focuses on the specific dire impacts of Climate Change for women

Urgently needed attention: The lethal & socially negative impacts of Climate Change-related events on women 

 Muzzled and/or Evicted: Crucial Warnings on gifting Global Warming solution to the Nuclear Industry

Afghanistan: Women's suffering destined to prevail until ancient patriarchal rights criminalised

Italy: Berlusconi’s genocidal policies condemn the Roma to a life worse than dogs and pigs, denying food, health, education & even basic amenities

India: Supreme Court recommendation to legalise prostitution won't halt trafficking of women. Instead destined to increase demand & sex industry profits

Ireland: Catholic priest, Fr. Seán Sheehy who joined throng supporting violent sexual assailant, resigns widely and deservedly shamed

Read also:  Dan Foley fan club, legitimised by Fr. Seán Sheehy, vilification of sexual assault victim enough to make the Taliban envious

Afghanistan: Women in Kabaul lead demands for an end to Karzai’s alliance with the corrupt, war criminals & the Taliban 

India: A Nuclear Liability Bill to grant US nuclear corporates mere token responsibility for reactor "accidents". In other words, should there be a "Nuclear Bhopal" in India, there won't be another "Union Carbide" to haunt the US

US: Troop surge of War-is-Peace-President Obama pours fuel on flames of  Bush Jnr’s war crimes in Afghanistan

Canada: Bravest woman in Afghanistan spearheads anti-war movement

Australia: Morally outrageous poverty & human rights violations borne by country’s Indigenous 

India: One in 70 females set to die from a 65 per cent preventable pregnancy-related issue

US: Goldman Sachs gets religion - an instant look alike for the wealth-besotted mob evicted from the New Testament's temple

US:   Fearless Malalai Joya, supported by US War Vets, calls on Washington to end Afghanistan's occupation

Read also:  Malalai Joya asks President Obama to apologize to her people & to pull the military from Afghanistan

Sweden: Elinor Ostrom wins the 2009 Nobel for her “community-based environmental economics”

also from Sweden:  2009 Alternative Nobels shared by Australian-born physician Catherine Hamlin, Canada’s David Suzuki, Democratic Republic of Congo’s René Ngongo and New Zealand’s Alyn Ware

Germany:    2009 Bremen Peace Awards to Australia’s Sue Gilbey, Bulgaria’s Animus & PULSE Foundation, and South African Bishop Rubin Phillip 

Australia: Courageous author & film-maker John Pilger awarded the 2009 Sydney Peace Prize

Canada: Launch of vital new resource - Feminist Analysis and Information on Interlocking Global Financial, Economic & Climate Change Crises

US: Lesson #1 at Boston’s School for Johns - When you solicit sex, that’s someone’s daughter 

 Vatican: Benedict XV's belated self-serving pastoral letter set to rub salt into wounds of his Church’s Irish victims

Benedict XVI, desperate for recruits, and eager to distract from impending sexual abuse scandals, lays out tainted welcome mat for misogynic &/or homophobic Anglicans

Read also of Benedict XVI's two inquisitions hoping to herd US nuns back into drab ancient habits & convents, thereby robbing the Catholic Church's most worthwhile asset of any speck of modernity or independence

Man-made Missile, Mining and Industrial Atrocities [most nuclear] in the Third Millennium

Australia: Rio Tinto-owned ERA poisons Aborigibal living areas in Kakadu with millions of litres of radio-active waste 

India: 25 yrs post-Bhopal, with justice still eduding victims, Union Carbide‘s claim of no long-term effects proven conclusively wrong

Read also: Bhopal survivors mark 25th anniversary of Union Carbide’s Hiroshima & Legacy of Corporate Greed with "Food for Thought'

Iraq: US phosphorous & other missiles, including Depleted-uranium, a suspected cause of genocide in Falluja [includes additional report "Depleted Uranium Weapons: The Dead Babies in Iraq and Afghanistan Are No Joke"]

India: The price of Indigenous Development: Death by uranium waste

Read also: Planned expansion of uranium mining in Jadugoda increases tribal pregnancy & cancer terrors

Government in denial in face of a generation of uranium poisoned Punjabi children, with contamination possibly exacerbated by wind-carried depleted uranium from US missiles dropped in Iraq & Afghanistan

Australia: Aboriginal Traditional Owner says Garrett’s Four Mile uranium mission set for total disaster. In other words, Aboriginal Development translates to the proverbial slow death by uranium waste!

Environment minister Pater Garrett sells out Nation’s Indigenous for uranium bucks

Iraq:  2004 US missile strikes implicated in Fallujah's increasing number of birth deformities

Northern Ireland: Hillary Clinton, US Fibber-of-State, caught out "mis-speaking" in Belfast

Vatican: In his year for "sanctifying priests", Benedict XVI still failing to depose Church's sex criminals

 Read also: Benedict XVI's past and present "gospel" leaves him unfit to preach morality during planned visit to Britain (as too when visiting elsewhere)

and Vatican deflects guilt for Black Collar sex crimes to 'other religions' and 'homosexuals'

 Australia: New research shows that women can forget about merit and mentoring to make it on to 'boards'. Nothing beats being a man

Russia: Impunity granted "journalist slayers" makes complete farce of universal human rights, notably freedom of expression

UK: The personal becomes the base for New Age Suffragettes leading campaigns for truth, justice & social change

Read also:  The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education by Jane Robinson

Afghanistan's Presidential Election of 2009: Karzai’s dance with brutal warlords, fundamentalists & the corrupt spits in the face of democracy

and Fraudulent counting in an election which failed to facilitate a significant womens’ vote 

India: Girls & women from 378 of country's 612 districts trafficked into sex industries

Vandana Shiva on the relevance of Gandhi’s civil disobedience to fight present day injustices in a world besotted with combating violence with violence

Kenya: Purposes of Truth Justice & Reconciliation Commission only to facilitate impunity, hoodwink and massage the victims and yet again, sweep the crimes under the carpet

Africa: Aided by IMF-World Bank collusion, multinationals paying close to nothing for their looting 

Japan:  Imperative messages for a peaceful future on the 64th anniversary of the Hiroshima & Nagasaki nuclear atrocities

US: August, a month for anniversaries which recall military atrocities

UK: A first hand glimpse of Afghanistan's bravest woman, Malalai Joya, coincides with British voters turning against war in Afghanistan

Malalai Joya exposes the misery, injustices, illusions of women’s liberation, and “war criminal dominated democracy” imposed by US-led NATO forces on Afghanistan

Afghan soldier Lance Corporal Joe Glenton's brave voice deserving a gold medal but instead heading for a court martial

Acting Prime Minister Harriet Harman gives governmental and financial patriarchy a richly-deserved roast 

Dublin: Tributes flow as Amnesty International names Aung San Suu Kyi 2009 Ambassador of Conscience

Nicaragua: Total abortion ban sees 65 per cent rise in maternal fatalities rise in first half of 2009

Read also: Daniel Ortega’s new total abortion ban sold out women, a crucial element of his own Sandinista revolution, for sake of the extremist Catholic vote

India: Arundhati Roy: Democracy's Failing Light

An open letter setting the Union Minister for Health straight on the long-disproven 'Population Bomb'

New spate of acid attacks on women in Andhra Pradesh foreshadows more stringent regulation & minimum 7 year prison sentence

Raped tribal women betrayed & abandoned by National Human Rights Commission 

 Honduras:  Military coup leaves women at risk of arrest, disappearance, home raids, dis-employment

Australia: Uranium sales the epitome of immorality regarding public health risks & pathways to nuclear holocaust

Afghanistan: US military, N. Alliance warlords & Taliban extremists - the triple barrier to democracy

Read also Malalia Joya's biography and her courageous struggle for a secular democracy in Afghanistan and Malalai Joya addresses the life & death feminism under Afghanistan's rule of fear[due to the US-led occupation's legitimised Islamic theocracy which is in turn endorsed by the Australian Federal Government]

France:  Sarkozy’s "burqa bashing” exploits Muslim women’s bodies for his anti-Islam political agenda

Iran: A time for hate-obsessed neo-cons, staining an inspiringly brave uprising, to pull their heads in!

Vietnam: 36 year-old US promised compensation for ongoing human & environmental Agent Orange war crimes still unmet

China: One child policy-linked kidnapping of children swings from boys to girls

UN: Nobel Peace Laureates demand freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi & all fellow political prisoners held by Burma's military junta

Read also "Global Outrage" over Suu Kyi’s latest persecution from within corridors of political power destined to turn into "Global Hypocrisy"

Ireland: Long overdue begging of forgiveness on bended knee from Benedict XVI, sole course to save the Catholic Church after revelations of horrific child abuse

Read also: A snowball's chance in hell of Benedict XVI's cheque to pay for Church’s abuse of Irish children?

US: Drawing lines in the sand, and holding President Obama accountable, in the search for Reproductive Justice

Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty: Dr. Anarkali Honaryar, women's rights activist, named Afghanistan's Person Of The Year

UK: Obscene greed in political corridors turns Westminster into a trough which would make 4-legged pigs vomit

New York May 2, 2009: Death of Marilyn French, inspiring feminist author who corrected prevailing histories which had denied women their past, present and future

Fiji: Women, sidelined & ignored by military coups, seek implementation of UNSC Resolution 1325 to restore their multi-racial democracy

Iceland: Voters reward Johanna Sigurdardottir’s feminist leadership on economics & paid sex

Medical Research: Delaying menopause - another perilous ploy to justify the stem cell market

Easter 2009: From opposite sides of the globe Cardinal Pell and Archbishop Nichols, heir-apparents to the Throne of Peter, echo Benedict XVI's flawed condom gospel

North India: Radio-active US missiles dropped in Afghanistan a suspected source of high levels of uranium detected in 150 children with deformities