|
Celebrations, Acknowledgements and Awards 2008  January 9, 2008: Tributes to Simone De Beauvoir, high priestess of 20th century French thought and mother of modern feminism, to coincide with the centenary of her birth
Israel:  Now a global movement, Women in Black marks 20 years of fearless protest against tyrannies France:  Prestigious 2008 Simon De Beauvoir Award to ever courageous Taslima Nasreen India: Inaugural Cyril Baselios Catholicos medal to Medha Patkar for social justice struggles on behalf of the down-trodden and marginalised Germany:  A tribute to the nameless non-Jewish wives who publicly & successfully resisted the Third Reich's plan to execute their Jewish spouses Mexico: Decriminalizing Abortion in Mexico City: A Victory for Women's Health and Rights
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Washington DC: 
Bush Jnr & cronies lied on 532 separate occasions to orchestrate Iraq assault India:  The incredible courage of Gujarat's Bilkis Bano, gang-raped, witness to murder, vindicated  Loss of ethics and values the root cause of escalating violence against women (18 women subjected to brutalities, overwhelmingly committed by men, every hour)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 Click this icon to tell the US Congress that the blood of more than a million Iraqis is on their hands if they fail to immediately end Bush Jnr's genocidal war in Iraq
  Sign the petition asking the UN Security Council to pass a resolution requiring that the Iraqi state allocate part of the revenue from Iraqi oil -- in proportion with the 4.7 million Iraqis, 4 million of whom are women and children, temporarily displaced by Bush Jnr's genocidal invasion and occupation
Read also: Two new reports indicate Bush Jnr's legacy of civilian morbidity risks exceeding the already shameful civilian mortality ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  Award-winning Cristian Mungiu cinema reminds that banning abortion turns doctors into criminals and criminals into doctors
and Third Millennium Beauty Myths: Cosmetic mutilations in the name of female empowerment ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Books and Cinema by and/or about women in 2008  Patrizia Romito: A deafening silence - Hidden violence against women and children
 Haifa Zangana: City of Widows (An Iraqi Woman's Account of War and Resistance)
 Carol Ciancutti-Leyva: Absolutely Safe (a film of everyday women finding themselves and their breasts in the perilous crossfire of health, money, science, and beauty)
Read also: 2006 FDA imprimatur on breast implants & misleading advertising exposes women to expensive risks
 Glen Kessler's "The Confidante" exposes Condoleezza Rice's thin intellectual achievements, boundless ambition
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
India:  Despite NGO & tribal environmental & health issues, Govt steams ahead with uranium mining in West Khasi Hills, Meghalaya Kenya: From the killing fields, a call for political maturity, respect for law, and a recount of votes or a fresh election Australia: Lethal violence against females off to a flying start in 2008
Pakistan:  Human Rights Commission of Pakistan grieves Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, demands international inquiry into a tragedy born of military despotism & anarchy Read also: Benazir, and US Plan A, dual casualties of October deal with Bush Jnr's brokers
UK: Women with “inkling of a brain” out in the cold at speed-dating venues
US: A 13 month calendar for counting down Bush Jnr’s remaining 386 days in the White House Scorned at home & abroad, Bush Jnr's desperate efforts in 2008 to acquire "respectability" in global history January 7: After 7 years of waging war, ludicrously seeking to promote peace in the Middle East February: US facing national insolvency due to Bush Jnr's mismanaged militarism & tax cuts for the rich
 Cultures of militarily-trained human Dobermans & male violence give rise to domestic murder spree by military veterans across the country
Exploitation & abuse of migrant labour sees Burger King & Co laughing all the way to the bank
In response to this atrocity boycott the following:   
USA Australia Britain
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
India: Phenomenal [read *atrocious*] rise in violence against women in the past two decades Women's empowerment a tragic joke in a patrilinear society failing to protect women against violence [the overwhelming majority committed by men] and  Cowardly forces of fundamentalism leave Taslima Nasreen "A Disembodied Voice, The Living Dead"
Middle East: The terrorized half of our society Iraq: Post-Bush Jnr's invasion, armed militiamen turn Basra into a brutal killing field for women
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ UK: Defined by war & corruption, with money his God, Blair’s Catholic piety insults all religions
Australia: Zubair Sayed, guilty of brutal atrocities in Afghanistan, a US ally, and his Muslim Ladies College in Perth at the receiving end of both state and federal government student subsidised funding programs, charged with fraud in Perth ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Vatican:  Benedict XVI urgently in need of political and fashion makeover Gung ho for Franco’s poodles, but still kowtowing to Beijing with the Dalai Lama Reminded of the relevance of peace by Islamic scholars
Flock warned against consumerism, but Prada-Gamarelli indulgences for self and his red hats
 Time to ditch that Santa Claus hat, and bright red Prada loafers
Iraq:  Women’s daily rapes, burnings and murders make a mockery of Bush Jnr’s farcical post-invasion claims Global: War Talk and Climate Change In an almost unnoticed subtle shift, media's gender-neutral language applies to male criminals, but not to their female victims
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ South Korea: Improving sex ratio provides cultural lessons for China, India, Pakistan & Vietnam
UK:  Govt inquiry into flourishing girl child trafficking amid fears of 2012 Games sex trade spree India:  35,000 females trafficked into sex slavery, & as cure for HIV/AIDS, from Bangladesh & Nepal each year  Females in northern States an endangered species as sex ratio continues to plummet
941,000 females "missing" from southern state of Karnataka mainly due to poor health care & foeticide, plus Karnataka father had baby girl abducted within minutes of birth
 History repeats in religious fundamentalists’ cowardly persecution of Taslima Nasreen
Read also: Taslima, persecuted & silenced, bravely faces extremists in struggle to stay where she belongs
 National Consultation on Biofuels: To Deliver or Destroy? Crops for Food or Crops for Cars?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
US: Intelligences Agencies' Report flattens Bush Jnr-Cheney accusations of Iran's nuclear ambitions Rising teen pregnancies expose flaws in Bush Jnr's myopic evangelical sex abstinence programs
Kashmir-Jammu: Women from both sides meet, agreeing that they bear the brunt of conflict's violence, & demanding an integral role in the peace process
Pakistan: Taliban misogynists torch lentils & cooking oil donated for South Waziristan's malnourished pregnant women ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Australia:  Rudd-led Labor annihilates Howard Govt, ending wars against Indigenous, Muslims & Workers  Therese Rein's shimmy a defining moment heralding golden roles for women in the Rudd era
 Julia Gillard, cool, articulate, on song, & the nation's first-ever female Deputy Prime Minister
 National hero Maxine McKew completes Howard's richly-deserved humiliation
 Howard's burial paves way for meaningful move towards Aboriginal reconciliation under Rudd
 PM who set military forces on impoverished traumatized asylum-seekers in 2001 faces own Waterloo in 2007
 Song for Saturday November 24 - "Vote the Bastards Out"
Read also: Racist dirty tricks election campaign exposes John Howard, Dubya's "man of steel", as a man of shame
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Pakistan: Urgent petition for rule of law to defeat Musharraf's attack on judiciary & civil society [Asma Jahangir under house arrest, & detention order issued for Hina Jilani, Special Representative of the UN Secretary General for Human Rights Defenders] Asma Jahangir on the challenges in a country where God hears only prayers of the [overwhelmingly male] elite and The Real Musharraf
Read also: Time for Bush Jnr to end support of an unstable, power-crazy dictator  House arrest of Asma Jahangir, replete with 20 armed guards, turns Musharraf into a global laughing stock
 Women supporters brutally manhandled by police at pro-Imran Khan, anti-emergency rally
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Australia:  Cadbury Schweppes' Solo taken to book for sexist, discriminatory and unamusing ads during Test Cricket telecast ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Indian Nightmares: Rather than an issue of conflict between environment and prosperity, Bt Cotton is a fight between life and death: Of farming controlled by farmers or colonised by profit hungry corporations.  "Missing girls" leads to bride trafficking, wife sharing, safety fears, sexual & domestic slavery
US Nightmares: Veteran's suicide rate [17 cases per day] twice national average & SEVEN times greater than that of daily US military deaths [average 2.4] in Iraq  Bush Jnr's "invasion/liberation" of Iraq turns into a Talibanization placing women at risk of death
Russian Nightmares:  A Putin-created Institute to monitor Human Rights in Europe & Growing momentum for a Putin third term ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
UK: Conference Alert, London Saturday October 27, 2007
 The Plight of Iraqi People under Occupation
 Gordon Brown saddles the taxpayer with the mega-ambitious dubiously credentialed Mark Malloch Brown
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Remembrance Day 2007: Bush Jnr & Blair's lies & hypocrisy send the daughters and sons of the underclass to die in their phony war on terror Australia:  Food giant joins demand to maintain Victoria’s GM moratorium, as independence of Govt advisor Sir Gustav Nossal challenged Iran:  For demanding women's rights, Appeals Court barbarically sentences Delaram Ali to 10 lashes, 2.5 yrs prison Read also Delaram Ali's "Lamenting a Dream" Italy:  Fearless Giuliana Sgrena to take charges against US soldier Mario Lozano to higher court UK:  London public greets arrival of House of Fraud's King for State-sponsored visit with uncontentious silence  2007 Awards to Suswati Basu & Sue McGurty and Diana Dickinson, founders of Mothers of Sexually Abused Children (MOSAC)
Australia: Aboriginal clans say NO after being misled by Howard Govt's plans for nuclear dump  Howard Govt's "Becoming an Australian citizen" historically [and symbolically] astray on facts about women MPs
UK: Despite BLiar's spouted GM-neutrality, way secretly paved to ease entry of GM crops via grants of £50m for biotech-agriculture, but only £1.6m for organic  3 years behind bars, not half long enough, for Anthony Anderson the Obscene for urinating on a dying & disabled woman
India: Increasingly skewed sex ratio set to further raise trafficking & polyandry violence for women Maharashtra-located community participation program delaying girls' age of marriage & pregnancy reduces maternal and infant mortality and morbidity
 Bush Jnr sends in heavies to rescue shonky nuclear deal, even at risk of Manmohan Singh Govt
 Genetic Engineering Approval Committee cops Supreme Court contempt notice for new GM-crop trials
US: Houston-based trafficking gang imprisoned 120-odd women for sex & domestic slavery
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
 Global Report on Income Equality: POVERTY KILLS ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
London: Doris Lessing at 88, as ever wonderfully feisty AND the 11th woman Nobel literature laureate and Sets the record straight on Bush Jnr, Tony Blair, and US preciousness re September 11
Washington DC:  Cheney, absolutely corrupted by absolute power, moves Dubya ever closer towards bombing Iran and WW III India: Talwar's anti-[women's]-fertility vaccine still rearing its ugly head ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|
International Women's Day 2008
More Sentiments on the Shaping of the 2009 White House
A Nation Says "Sorry" to the First Australians
Sabharwal affair blows lid from "Rule of Law" which places judges beyond the "Reach of Law"
Naomi Klein:
Virginia Nicholson: 
Linda McQuaig: 
Howard's New Tampa - Aboriginal Children Overboard 
centres heads Blair's shameful domestic legacies 
Malalai Joya's denouncement & expulsion exposes Karzai's hollow committment to the country's women and girls
Ayesha Siddiq: Military Inc. - Inside Pakistan's Military Economy 
Ireland: 
100s of tea workers starve to death but Minister for Commerce sees only "small number of problems"
Endangered Humanity -- Hungry faces, Angry River
Post-G8 Heiligendamm & Vatican, lame duck President returns to his fascist disasters