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

Washington DC: Fast track Barack Obama into the White House and ditch Bush Jnr's incompetent - borderline criminal - bailout, alongwith his lameduck administration

Italy: Death of Miriam Makeba, fearless global songstress in the struggle against Sth Africa’s apartheid regime, following a concert in Caserta, close to Naples, on November 10 2008

Afghanistan: Amidst the trappings of globalised modernity, pregnancy still slaying country's females, the majority mere children themselves, like flies

  Innocent victims, most women & children, of Bush Jnr-imposed militarism & Taliban resurgence

Patistan: Outrage as notorious misogynists, Mir Hazar Khan Baitarani & Israrullah Zehri, elevated to Ministers in Coalition Government

Read also by Rafia Zakaria: "These developments testify to the reality that while feminism, burdened by its scepticism of anything universal, may be silent, unabashedly universal patriarchy screams as loudly as ever"

2008 Reach All Women in War's Anna Politkovskaya Award to Afghanistan's Malalai Joya

2008 Courage Awards to three brave women journalists: Aye Aye Win from Burma, Farida Nekzad from Afghanistan, and Sevgul Uludag from Cyprus

  Champions of independent journalism, peace-building and social justice honoured in 2008: Krishnammal and Sankaralingam Jagannathan, and their organisation LAFTI (Land for the Tillers' Freedom, India), Amy Goodman (USA), Asha Hagi (Somalia) and Monika Hauser (Germany)

India:   Deccan Development Society launches Asia’s first all-women community radio station in rural Andhra Pradesh

US: A strong feminine influence behind the Barack Obama victory the peace-loving world applauds

  Bush Jnr & Co-fascists at the double to further wreck regulations on the environment, civil liberties & abortion rights, among others ­ few for the good

Father of all bailouts for capitalism’s greediest, but zilch [Sweet Fanny Adams] for the global starving 

  Want more of Bush Jnr‘s war-mongering lies? Vote for the Make-Believe Maverick John McCain!

After both ignoring and silencing Brooksley Born’s "Economic Wisdom", Greenspan & Co‘s arrogance in turn created credit chaos

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo orders end to AIG’s obscene partying on Dubya’s bailout with taxpayer’s money

"The Bailout", a cooked up “no choice” emergency to enact fascist economic policies

  Sept 27 - Nov 17, 2008, Haymarket Books-sponsored "Resisting Empire Tour" by acclaimed authors

Rwanda:  Women driving the economy and filling ranks of Government

Australia:  John Howard-Philip Ruddock cruel and costly "Pacific Solution" also a death sentence for Afghan asylum seekers

UK:  Women Against Rape condemn Dame Helen Mirren & Criminal Justice System's "rape tolerance" 

Burma: On the 13th Anniversary of her latest detention, esteem for Aung San Suu Kyi grows still stronger

Post-cyclone Nargis catastrophe, men rape, rob & murder Delta women

Forced to immigrate by Junta-imposed deteriorating political & economic conditions, Kachin women, some as young as 14, trafficked as brides into China

Pakistan: Latest "Honour Murders", defended by legislator in name of culture and tradition, the tip of a misogynist iceberg

Race to the White House: Abysmal report cards for Sarah Palin leave triple dose of egg on McCain’s face while  McCain himself gripped in a dangerous militancy which mocks any talk of peace

PLUS the not to be missed by Gloria Steinem: Palin, McCain's token woman, shares nothing other than a chromosome with Clinton

as neither by  Arianna Huffington: Sarah Palin, McCain’s code name, dressed up in a skirt, lipstick, & Tina Fey glasses, for another term of Bush Jnr's failed policies

and by Jessica Valenti: Palin a disaster for both the US & women’s rights despite Republican spin painting her as a feminist

 and by  Catherine Deveny: Palin, a Gun-toting, God-fearing proof that we are at the mercy of morons

and by Naomi Wolf: Sara "Evita" Palin is Rove & Cheney's cosmetic rebranding of their "Made in the White House Fascism"

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Australia: High Court ruling gives surety & confidence to women prosecuting against their trafficking into sex slavery

India:  Thousands of abducted children annually trafficked in the guise of adoption or into sex slavery

: Arundhati Roy: Azadi - It's the only thing the Kashmiri wants. Denial is delusion

In the interests of Monsanto et al., pressure mounts to dismantle the 1986 Environmental Protection Act

South Africa: Resisting Monsanto’s Bt-Maize, Stalkborer becomes farmer's Super-Peril in an unprecedented environmental disaster

Afghanistan: Malalai Joya’s hopes & fears living under US-led occupation and US-sponsored warlords & puppet Karzai

Paramount that RAWA remains underground in efforts to combat Bush Jnr’s failed “liberation” of girls & women

With famine on the horizon, time to dump the dumb aid-agency strategies spreading poverty and insecurity

Brave women defy all odds to exhibit their abstract & contemporary art in India

Prison sentences of up to 20 years rub salt into wounds of female victims of male rape

US: Bush Jnr Administration planning to extend its international contraceptive denials to home soil

Read also from Michael Moore:  A gut-wrenching thought that in 6 steps the Democrats could put McCain in the White House

August 6, 2008: Memories of Hiroshima/Nagasaki serve to remind that Sharon and Olmert, Bush and Blair also belong in the dock alongside accused war criminal Radovan Karadzic

Burma: Women's liberation hindered by Junta’s ousting of women from politics & cultural patriarchy

Australia, World Youth Day 2008: Shamed Catholic Church in damage control, further tainted by Cardinal Pell's auxiliary Bishop Anthony Fisher & Benedict XVI's disappointingly gratuitous words of apology for "Black Collar Sexual Crime"

Read also: Benedict XVI's double insult of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers seeking a rescind of church doctrine that played a role in the genocidal onslaught of millions of indigenous people worldwide

Despite Catholic Church's role in cruel attempted assimilation of First Australians, pompous Benedict XVI arrival for whites-only

Cardinal George Pell's pathetic denials of cover-up, & denial of justice for victims of Catholic "black collar" sexual  abuse, prompt calls for his resignation, and demand action from Benedict XVI

Read also:  Father of two school girls raped by Melbourne priest demands morally & socially bankrupt Cardinal Pell begs forgiveness

Kitsch souvenirs [none bargain-priced] to reimburse Catholic Church for Papal visit costing Australian taxpayers $160M

Egypt: Sons & daughters of the poorest exploited & poisoned in country's mainstay cotton industry

Afghanistan:  Bush Jnr's "other war" of spiralling violence, and loss of security & dignity, for civilians

India:   Bhopal's long suffering victims of Union Carbide's lethal gas leak still fobbed off at every level

Quest for economic & nuclear power, demotes human dignity to national back burner

Campaign of misogynic and frivolous objections to Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act

Military Crimes against Humanity

Accusations grow louder against Bush Jnr & neo-con cronies, Anthony Charles Lynton Blair & John Winston Howard

Read also: The farce of Condoleezza Rice leading UN Security Council debate on rape as a weapon of war

Move over truth! Women are the first casualties of war!

Ethiopia: Bush Jnr ally Govt executes burnt earth, rape & starvation war against Ogaden civilians in the country's east

Philippines: Bush Jnr-sponsored Arroyo regime guilty of gross & systematic abuse of human rights, economic plunder & transgression of the Filipino people's sovereignty

 Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Global Food Security

  While billions condemned to starvation & death, Bush Jnr’s spin conceals the corporate roots of global food shortages and World Bank perpetuates agricorporate violence and threat to climate change by hoisting poisonous fertilisers on Third World farmers

Rome:  While UN FAO fraternity dither, and global food prices anticipated to soar, Monsanto et al. laugh all the way to the bank Read also: Escalating food prices have worst impact on women

India: Supreme Court appointee to Genetic Engineering Approval Committee  calls for 3-4 year moratorium on GM crops, together with chronic toxicity studies, and total reviews of India's experience with Bt cotton and the approval of Bt cotton in India

Australia: Want a truly ethical cappuccino? Then remember to ask where the milk comes from!

  Framing consumption in 10 ways that move beyond Al Gore's shopping cart

Australia: Indigenous climate change emergency, but takes British media to herald sinking Torres Straight Islands

Burma: Buddhist monks for cyclone Nargis survivors, Junta’s uniformed for media photo-ops, Junta cronies for quick cash from inflated prices of essentials

Cyclone Nargis kills 134,000, and should coincide with Aung San Suu Kyi's freedom

But as international aid finally flows   so too national & international outrage as Junta illegally extends Aung San Suu Kyi's incarceration

as  Aung San Suu Kyi, victim of the junta and a global virus [read *the world's cowardly silence*]

Read also: Perfect Hostage: A Life of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's Prisoner of Conscience byJustin Wintle

China: Cruel and myopic one-child policy bites again, deepening grief after mega-Sichuan Quake

2008 Awards to Courageous Women Carrying Forward the Feminist Struggle

New York: 2008 Roger N. Baldwin Medal of Liberty to Somali's Hawa Aden Mohamed for her efforts with women & girls affected by violence

Australia: Federal Govt awards $2M to anti-war, anti-discrimination, pro-migrant Women Groups, including the Muslim Women's National Network of Australia, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and Young Women's Christian Association, to promote their leadership and advocacy

 Further 2008 Literature and Cinema by Feminists

a) Reading Resources

Maude Barlow: Blue Covenant

  Kathleen Maltzahn: Trafficked

  Donna Dickenson: Body Shopping - The Economy Fuelled by Flesh and Blood

   Elizabeth Royte: Bottlemania How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It

  Shirin Ebadi: Refugee Rights in Iran

  Arundhati Roy: The Shape of the Beast: Conversations with Arundhati Roy

  Betsy Hartmann: Deadly Election

  Jennifer Temkin & Barbara Krahé: Sexual Assault and the Justice Gap: A Question of Attitude

The World Health Organisation and nuclear power - The great Chernobyl cover-up

#50: Flagging an Invisible Difference in a Cost-Benefit Analysis of Depo-Provera

b) Cinema Resources:

Meena Nanji: View From A Grain Of Sand (A documentary on Bush Jnr’s unfulfilled promises of peace, democracy and liberation for Afghanistan’s women)

  Nupur Basu: No Country for Young Girls (Love in the time of foeticide)

  Aida Schlaepfer: Gangs of Baghdad

July 3-July 26 exhibition by 6 London-based women artists celebrates 80th anniversary of 1928 Equal Franchise Act

Read also: Britain's brothels provide thousands of trafficked females to meet booming numbers of men after paid sex

Canada: 1992 Bush Snr Executive Order enables US to lead fight against mandatory GM labeling

 Burma Women's League calls on the UN for criminal prosecution of junta for conscripting women as sex slaves, and the gang rape, mutilation, and murder of women and girls
 

Yellow roses [and chains] mark the beginning of Suu Kyi‘s 64th year, as junta brutalises her well-wishers

Egypt: Double feminist victory with enacted laws against female circumcision & under-18 years marriage

Iran:  Morality savages whitewash their deadly torture of Ms Bani Yaghoub as suicide

  US indulging in widespread bullying to ensure ban on cluster munitions remains toothless

Turkey: Directorate for religious affairs, Diyanet, spews the ridiculous [from "cover-up" to avoid perfume] on women's morality

Wales: Bush Jnr henchman, bullyboy Bolton, heckled & almost nabbed in citizen's arrest at the Hay Festival for his war crimes

US:  Obama the Feminist choice: ‘No Way José’ to anti-choice, anti-healthcare, pro-war Republican McCain

Abject neglect of sexually assaulted women soldiers despite their nine-fold increase in post-traumatic stress disorder

Subsidised biofuel creates flourishing corn market in the US, but takes food from mouths of the world's poorest

China:  In one city alone 200,000 surveillance cameras disguised as lampposts, & system all set for export

Nepal: Hisila Yami. Minister within Interim Govt, promises to prioritise women's rights

Mexico: Patriarchy renders 2007 Federal Law to protect women against male violence toothless

Read also: With social protest a crime in the fascist nation, justice relegated to the phantom drawer

Australia: Continuing to bury Howard's flawed conservatism PM Rudd appoints feminist Quentin Bryce as country's first woman Governor-General

Report of older single women’s "extreme risk of poverty" may see aged pension overhaul

Yemen: Where females are the abused illiterate sex and domestic slaves of men

Iraq: Taken to the cleaners for its oil by Bush Jnr and his corporate cronies

A nation ruined by the war criminal trinity of Bush Jnr, Tony Blair and John Howard

 Male “kiss & tell” bragging via cell phone-cameras fuels honour killing epidemic

Women live in terror as result of Bush Jnr’s cowardly invasion & subsequent sectarian chaos

Read also: Bush Jnr's war in the name of "Women's Liberation" leads to barbaric male assault of women

Afghanistan:In the land of Bush Jnr's puppet Hamid Karzai, women & girls left only with death by fire to escape the violence & make voices heard

Child health & environmental problems linked to US's depleted-uranium missiles

Human Rights Watch New York says Afghan MP Malalai Joya’s suspension illegal. Karzai Government should instead be arresting those threatening her life 

Read also: Malalai Joya’s ousting from country's "Zoo Parliament“ unconstitutional

Pre-2001 the Taliban flogged women. Today Bush Jnr’s Northern Alliance proxies rape women

India: Gay Pride hits the streets of Delhi, Bangalore & Kolkata to overturn 19th-century-old prejudice

Transgenerational victims of Union Carbide's methyl isocyanate leak forsaken by Govt & Union Carbide's now owner Dow Chemicals

 Haryana's "murders in the name of honour" propped up by State silence & Public fear

Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 covers violence beyond the physical

Pointlessly when culprits rarely arrested, Govt planning tougher female foeticide penalties

Read also: Government failing to target medical fraternity violating sex-selective abortion law with impunity

Vatican:   Benedict XVI: In damage control [again] to appease tensions over Good Friday slur during US visit

 Rubs salt into wounds, placing Church & own "suffering" ahead of sexual abuse victims'

followed by: Bush Jnr's thanks, a la gigantic 81st birthday bash, for his second term in White House

but Stumm about the war while hobnobbing with Bush Jnr’s war criminals & torturers

Burma:  National League for Democracy vetoes Junta's draft constitution vetoing Aung San Suu Kyi

International Women's Day 2008

  ILO Report of more than half the world’s working women in vulnerable jobs 

From Afghanistan to Australia: Seeking end to violence [read *male violence*], female foeticide, poverty, misogynic laws, & fundamentalist and workplace injustices

Afghanistan   Women burn in the inferno of fundamentalists and invaders

Africa: Eliminating violence [read *male violence*] against women the key to slowing HIV/AIDS pandemic

India: A shameful maternal mortality rate, while one million female foetides per annum provide a Rs.10 billion bonanza for the medical fraternity

Amidst celebrations, deep concerns re female foeticide and infanticide, poverty, domestic violence, dowry atrocities, literacy and health

Pakistan: Girl child faces death, neglect, disadvantage & exploitation from womb to adolescence

Read also:  Seminar on "Women's voices and hidden pain [read *from men's domestic violence*]" and many other IWD activities across Pakistan

and "Death of a scholar", a tribute to Dr. Zakia Zeba Abidi, brilliant, gentle, generous feminist academic, brutally murdered in January 2008

The Genocide Games, Beijing 2008

Olympic torch to climb to top of the world, but pro-Tibet presence taboo

China’s 2008 Olympics share same purpose as Hitler’s 1936 Olympics

March 2008 events in Tibet expose China's inability to recognise and respect ethnic difference

Tibetan protests successfully transforming China and International Olympic Committee's dreams into a worst-case-scenario nightmare

Disappeared without a trace: Fears for safety of severely beaten Tibetan monks sparking Lhasa unrest

Read also:   China's Infamous One Child Policy creates booming black market for 70,000 children kidnapped annually

More Sentiments on the Shaping of the 2009  White House

  Build alliances not on ethnicity or gender, but on truth See also "Hillary Clinton; fibber in chief"

Scenarios for a “catastrophic emergency” with potential to suspend the 2008 election altogether

Want a Taste of the McCain Presidency? You've Already Had One

  Leveraging the Power of Race and Gender in race for the White House 2008 

  A Nation Says "Sorry" to the First Australians

Prime Minister Rudd apologises for the laws & policies of successive parliaments & governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering & loss on our fellow Indigenous Australians 

Even the hard men know, it must be said and Only the ignorant oppose an apology

UK: Prison system a trashcan for persecuting some of the country's most damaged & vulnerable women  

Afghanistan: Under Bush Jnr’s puppet Karzai, warlord-war criminal Abdul Rashid Dostum walks free, but free press a distant dream

Nepal: Women deprived of political & economic clout subsist in climate of horrific male violence

India: As elsewhere across the country, neither caste, colour, region or religion barriers to abortion of females in Jammu-Kashmir

Right to education advocated to combat toothless laws failing the girl child

Arundhati Roy & other noted writers and intellectuals seek citizenship for Taslima Nasreen & repeal of laws threatening freedom 

  Arundhati Roy: Listening To Grasshoppers

Europe: Tony Blair’s and his insatiable thirst for power seeking  Presidency of the European Union Council - Sign European Tribune’s petition to say "Thanks, but definitely no thanks”

India: Losing livelihoods & lives due to Govt pampering of agri-business corporates, farmers call for moratorium on GM-crops and end to special economic zones (SEZs) 

Evidence from Bt Cotton illustrates contamination from GM crops inevitable

Nalgonda farmers vote for traditional agriculture, opposing Govt push for GM-crops

In globalised era, growing malevolence against women transcends class, caste & region

Afghanistan: Refusing to be silenced, Malalai Joya tells of a new puppet regime of Karzai and a Mafia of warlords 

Also read  and sign to petition to save life of Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, sentenced to death for daring to read about women's rights

US: Women reduced to sexual commodities in the male porn world, even by Toronto Star columnist