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

  Afghanistan, Congo, Pakistan, India & Somalia lead the world for violence and discrimination against women

Read also: India: Female foeticide, via sex-selective abortion, is “A Lethal War on Women” 

 PNG: Tributes flow as heroic women & children's advocate Dame Carol Kidu says adieu to Parliament

Australia: Vitriolic and misogynistic critics fail to take into account PM Julia Gillard’s many positives

Europe: Amnesty Report condemns burqa bans for denying Muslim women jobs and education

Columbia:   US Secret Service prostitution scandal more about the trafficking of women than US national security

Benedict XVI: Inquisition launched in 2009 leads to inexcusable & widely lamented silencing of the US Leadership Conference of Women Religious in 2012

Read also:   Benedict XVI returns to Rottweiler mode silencing US’s Leadership Conference of Women Religious with 5 years of probation

 China: Discerning women, demeaned as ‘Leftovers”, expose further social folly of the one child policy

UK: Adopting US Christian fundamentalist tactics, Cameron-led Tories forcing women to fight again for already hard-won abortion rights

India: Rape conviction rates in freefall, driven by ill-trained, understaffed police & toxic social attitudes, from 44.3% in 1973 to 26.5% in 2012

US: Rape cases not only unresolved but under investigated as arrest rates stagnate in 2012 at exactly the same 24% of the late 1970s

India: FOR-PROFIT Microcredit (with interest rates working out to almost 60 per cent) driving poor into further misery, joint liability causing village communities to implode

 Feminist Treasures departing Mother Earth 2012

Margaret Whitlam: A PM’s feminist wife who inspired generations of Australian women Nov 19 1919 - March 17 2012

Adrienne Rich: Inspiring radical feminist & poet of unswerving vision May 16 1929 - March 27 2012 

 International Women's Day, March 8 2012

 Afghanistan: Karzai's IWD misogyny – an imprimatur for religious edict that women are secondary

Australia: Female heads of State, but going backwards in international terms of political representation

India: Applauding success, but keeping in mind the glass not half full, but three-quarters empty

Burma: IWD traditions resume after junta bans & restrictions spanning almost half a century 

Ireland: Women address the need for their critical mass (50/50) in Government ranks 

UK:   For first time in living memory, Cameron-led Tory Coalition sends women's equality into reverse

China: Busted gangs, trafficking thousands of women & children, linked to myopic one-child policy

Afghanistan: A Valentine’s reminder of the West’s delusional waging of humanitarian wars

    From the past to the present feminists, putting bad taste humour in its place

Breast Implant Scandals of the Third Millennium

First, read a selection of feminist research on the Breast Implant Scandals of the late Second Millennium, and of the 2006 FDA imprimatur on breast implants & misleading advertising which exposed women to expensive harm HERE

USA: In 2010, the FDA considered Breast Implant complications, including rupture, tissue hardening, pain, inflammation, and infection, to be acceptable risks

France: In 2011, Poly Implant Prothese (PIP Inc.) revealed to have risked women's lives to save 1bn Euros annually via cheap industrial silicone rather than medical-grade silicone implants

"India Shining"? Economically YES, but for Women & Children not by a long shot!

Minister V. Sunitha Laxma Reddy & Gramya President Dr. V. Rukmini Rao engage Andhra Pradesh’s rural women leaders to tackle the female sex ratio crisis

18 yrs post the promises at Cairo's ICPD, incentives for involuntary sterilisation imposed on impoverished women & illiterate tribals in Madhya Pradesh

  Women the significant victims of the thriving FOR-PROFIT Micro-Finance industry's sharks

  Unashamedly bragging of economic successes, while girls & women face the daily indignity of life without toilets

  Unlike brides burnt at rate of one per hour, it’s the dowry concept which needs to be torched

Child malnutrition running at 42 %, with girls destined to in turn become mothers at greatest risk 

Global: Karl Marx & Radical Feminists of the 1990s vindicated, as the assumptions of globalisation commence to unravel

Global: Accounting for one in every seven or eight maternal deaths, unsafe abortion rates rising, with overall rate higher where practice banned

Australia: Former "Grand Slammer", now "Reverend" Margaret Court’s vilification of homosexuality cops a richly-deserved roast

Israel Women begin the fight back against crude, extremist, ultra-orthodox religious misogynists

India:   When it comes to dress attire and sexual assault, still prevailing male view that women have it coming to them

UK: Commencing January 12, 2012, Jennifer Drew's London lecture series exploring Feminism’s co-option & redefinition by the 'malestream' media into women’s individual choices

Saudi Arabia: Women’s local voting & electoral concessions not until 2015 as vast majority of women's rights stagnate  

Iraq: The US-led Coalition’s so-called extraordinary achievement an all-round catastrophe, and tho’ far too seldom mentioned, particularly for the country’s women and children

Worldwide physical & sexual abuse of imprisoned women, the majority of whose ‘crimes’ do not warrant gaoling

Belgium: Placating his Tory Eurosceptics, UK’s myopic posh boy PM plunges Britain adrift of Europe 

UK: Posh boy (damp squib) PM either too dumb to “get” the 2 million strike’s feminist and social justice messages or drastically needs glasses 

HIV/AIDS Day 2011: Hillary Clinton’s omission of a woman-centered policy sets a course for feminist betrayal

UK:   Justified outrage as BBC turns the 2011 Sports Personality into a SportsMAN of the Year Award

UN Climate Summit, Durban 2011:  Urgent lessons from East Africa’s famine, deforestation & ousting of indigenous trees

  As Climate Change unfolds feminist & Indigenous initiatives become imperatives  to salvage womens' livelihoods

US:  Arundhati Roy salutes the Occupy Movement for standing against injustice & introducing a new political imagination in the heart of empire

India: Dow, sponsor of 2012 Olympic stadium wrap, to join biotech giants Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, DuPont and BASF in facing trial before Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal for systematic human rights abuses

  Big Pharma’s AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Merck et al. cut drug trial costs by turning the world’s poor into non-consenting guinea pigs

Cosmetic Eugenics: The perils of fake [Botoxed, Vaginal Meshed etc., etc.] female bodies as natural female bodies become outmoded 

France: Iran’s Shirin Ebadi warns Arab feminists to push for their rights peri-, not post-revolution

Petition for a Free and Secular Middle East & North Africa, and Recognition of Women’s Rights & Equality

Australia: Fairfax Media sell out women, and taint own image of respectability, with sanitisation of Porn King Michael Day & his Penthouse Pet wife Bree Maddox

UK:  Joanna Yeates murder illustrates the urgent need to criminalise pornography’s incitement of men’s hatred of women

#72: Jade Sasser: Justice for All? Youth Environmental Activism & the New Framings of Social Justice

Australia: Feminist Coalition Against Trafficking calls for an end to State Governments (read *pimps*) legalising prostitution

Egypt: Dr. Nawal El Saadawi’s extraordinary stamina & courage in the struggle against Female Genital Mutilation & other "misogynies"

Africa: USAID & Pfizer persist with Depo-Provera contraception despite health, including HIV, perils for women

Australia: State/Local Govt-approved pseudo-legal & illegal brothels in Melbourne & Sydney found linked to female trafficking & sex slavery

Africa, Asia, Europe & South America: Girls increasingly abducted to become marriage commodities in at least 17 different countries

Long-held feminist fears of HIV perils from long-acting hormonal contraceptives finally dawn in medical research circles

Read also Africa: Women using inject able contraceptives have double risk of HIV acquisition and transmission

Philippines: 8 million-plus women, Govt-trained in servitude, exported mainly for domestic slavery - 49.1 % to North America in 2009

Ethiopia:  Sight-destroying stab wounds wounds inflicted by an ex-husband symbolic of unheard cries of the nation’s tortured women

Kenya: Farewell Wangari Maathai, a visionary for peace, women & the environment: April 1 1940 - September 25 2011

France: Kenza Drider & brave Muslim sisters defy veil ban in bids for Presidency & their case before the European Court of Human Rights

Further 2011-2012 MUSTS for the Feminist Bookshelf

  Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords, and One Woman’s Journey Through Afghanistan by Fariba Nawa

Get Real: How to Tell it Like it is in a World of Illusions by Eliane Glaser

The Favored Daughter: One Woman’s Fight to Lead Afghanistan into the Future by Fawzia Koofi with Nadene Ghouri

War's Forgotten Women: British Widows of the Second World War by Maureen Shaw & Helen Millgate 

  Daughter Deficit: Sex Selection in Tamil Nadu by Sharada Srinivasan

  Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer and Sex Changed a Nation at War by Leymah Gbowee with Carol Mithers

Man's Dominion The Rise of Religion and the Eclipse of Women's Rights by Sheila Jeffreys

  Selling Sex Short: The Pornographic and Sexological Construction of Women’s Sexuality in the West by Meagan Tyler

 Big Porn Inc. Exposing the Harms of the Global Porn Industry - Edited by Melinda Tankard Reist and Abigail Bray

India: Malnourishment & early marriage major factors in shameful & avoidable maternal mortality rate of 78,000 deaths per annum or 3 deaths every 15 minutes

US: S.A.N.E Vax-led research reveals 13 of 13 Worldwide samples of Gardasil contaminated with recombinant HPV DNA  

Iraq: Post US-led invasion, life expectancy falls from 65 years 3 decades ago to 58 years in 2010

Bangladesh:   Celebrating 40 years of independence, but murdering rapists of partition remain unpunished

US: The Great Distraction: ‘Overpopulation’ Is Back in Town by Betsy Hartmann

Afghanistan:  Supporting Karzai's mafia regime hammers nails in the coffin of freedom, democracy & human rights by Malalai Joya

UK:  Labour finally awakens to feminist conclusion that Cameron a rightwing dumbo anointed by Murdoch

China: Yet another campaign, albeit myopically for a brief 8 months, against lucrative prenatal sex determination & sex-selective abortion

Iraq: Mainstream media unjustly silent on the targeting of brave OWFI women & youth allies with sexualized attacks, intimidation & harassment

UK: Cameron's Way - Re-inventing 18th Century Penal codes for an underclass expanded by his Tory-led Coalition

India: Media agog with Anna Hazare's anti-corruption protest, but Independence Day marks a time to hail Sharmila’s decade-long fast for the repeal of the truly undemocratic Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Manipur

Arundhati Roy exposes Anna Hazare's Jan Lokpal Bill as all primed to make Corporate Corruption legal while asking "What does a hunger strike mean in a country where 49 per cent children are malnourished and perennially hungry?"

Japan: Hiroshima marks A-Bomb Atrocity & Fukushima Meltdown with plea for world peace & review of energy policies

 Read also: Mayor of Nagasaki also calls for abolition of nuclear weapons & reliance on nuclear power and "66 Years Ago: The Crime of Nagasaki - The 'Forgotten' A-Bomb City"

2011 International Peace Symposium in Hiroshima focuses upon 'The Road to Abolishing Nuclear Weapons'

Australia: Blair’s tainted reputation (his credibility crushed by the wheels of his gravy train) sees Perth & Brisbane lecture tickets slashed to half price

Nicaragua: Supreme Court vilifies the nation's women by trivializing 'Rape' as 'Fit of Passion' 

Read also: Hege Dalen & Toril Hansen, two incredible women whose bravery in the face of Breivik's bloodbath should never be underestimated

India:  The girl infant/child a cash cow without rights for genitoplasty surgeons in the latest patrilinear atrocity

UK:  alerts UK Feminista, Object, & The Guardian of need to boycott rather than support July 18 London screening of Hardcore, a porn film posing as a documentary

India: Axis Clinicals loses laboratory approval after being caught out exploiting poor women from Andhra Pradesh in breast cancer drug trials

Burma: On her 66th birthday, Suu Kyi wishes for peace, stability & prosperity across the nation

Updates from Veiled Feminist Revolutionaries

  Obama, hands off our spring by Soumaya Ghannoushi

UK: Criminalized by French Law, Kenza Drider hailed as Champion of Muslim Women’s Rights at London Islamophobia Conference May 21 2011

Read more from the Middle East & Europe's Veiled Feminist Revolutionaries at

  Broken Republic (Three Essays) by Arundhati Roy

Libya-UK: Atrocities against women concocted to sanitise posh boy David Cameron’s war against Gaddafi

India: HPV vaccine & other medical trials exploit the rural poor while failing notions of informed-consent & primum non nocere

UK: Paperback promotion of “The Journey” hastens reminders of Tony Blair’s unforgivable, breathtaking hypocrisy

Argentina: Outdated 1922 Abortion ban, plus medical ignorance, root causes of rising avoidable maternal death rate

Ireland: UN Committee Against Torture recommends prompt justice for women tortured in the Magdalene Laundries

India: Selective female abortion, especially for pregnancies after a firstborn girl, substantially increased & common across the country

Poland: Petition against Govt-enforced cervical smears, & penalties such as unemployment for women who refuse to comply

US:  Toppling of IMF’s Dominique Strauss-Kahn  by an immigrant woman & a legion of advocates gives voice & dignity to maids worldwide

Australia: 40 years post-Arbitration Commission ruling in their favour, women still awaiting equal pay for equal work

UK: PM Cameron sells out pro-choice, giving anti-abortion lobbyists the foothold in sexual health reform

France: Home to 75,000 rapes annually, intolerable pro-Strauss-Kahn bias stirs mass feminist protest

India:  Decade after decade, toothless laws see females continue to disappear from demographics

Read also: Abortion pill used to promote the birth of males & elimination of the girl infant in Haryana

Read also:  US SlutWalking gets rolling after cops loose talk about provocative clothing

Read also: Post-revolution Egypt's women fear further exclusions and even being asked to step aside

US: Hillary Clinton seals 'Disaster Capitalism deal' with Michel Martelly promising Haiti an encore of 1980’s subordination

Australia: Overdue &  appropriate, Sex Discrimination Commissioner finally to report on the Australian Defence Force Academy’s  ‘conduct unbecoming’

Read also:  Myth vs Reality: Women and girls' timidity or real risk taking? by Jocelynne A. Scutt

Japan:   Post-Fukushima, Helen Caldicott again sets the record straight for the nuclear apologists, including their latest cheer leader George Monbiot

Read also:   Why Anti-Nuclear Belongs in All of Our Movements by Betsy Hartmann

 A must for the Feminist Bookshelf [65 years overdue in the telling]: Heroines of SOE: Britain’s Secret Women in France by Beryl E. Escott

Libya:

UK: Feminist Conference “Iraqi women's struggle beyond checkpoints and segregation walls” to mark the 8th Anniversary of Anglo American occupation of Iraq, London April 9 2011

UK: presented by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at the University of Cambridge, May 11 2011

Read also Boston March 23, Rally demanding Right to hear Malalai Joya & an End to Ideological Exclusions

and Visa finally granted, Malalai Joya begins in Northampton with reminders of war’s misogyny & blood-stained hands

  100 Living women giants providing their shoulders to inspire today's & future generations of feminists 

Afghanistan: Women sceptical as US-led invaders shift priorities away from women’s liberation

Australia:  Australia: Governor-General Quentin Bryce calls for goals & targets to break the old boy’s business network

Burma:   Junta-backed courts & women’s groups blamed for failing to improve women’s lives

Canada:   Honouring feminist trail blazers while admitting the struggle is nowhere near won

Côte d'Ivoire: Further bloodshed as women fearlessly march to denounce Laurent Gbagbo as an assassin & thief

Finland:  The National Council of Women's exhibition of Women’s Rooms celebrates a century striving for female equity

India:   Millions of underweight and anaemic girls still destined for premature marriage and childbirth

Iran: Feminist activists risk death marching for the release of brave human rights lawyer Nasrin Soutadeh 

Ireland:   Feminists highlight gender inequity in politics & hidden scourge of domestic violence

Issues for the Centenary of International Women's Day, March 8 2011

The Depoliticisation of Women's Rights by Jennifer Drew

The Egyptian Revolution engenders values and a new social decade by Dr. Nawal El Saadawi 

: Egypt's Post-Mubarak Constitutional Committee which neglected & excluded female legal experts follows up with Amendments which also exclude women, and which restore the system of the past regime

 Protection and Justice for Women, Progress or Propaganda? by Marie De Santis

Guatemala & elsewhere in Central America: Feminicide, or the reality of being murdered for simply for being a woman

Iraq: [Despite UN resolution 1325] Women of Iraq Left All Alone by Yanar Mohammed

  Patriarchy and Fundamentalism Two Sides of the Same Coin by Cléo Fatoorehchi

  Empowering Women to Lead the Way in Climate Change Action

Iraq: Women prominent as Revolution's shockwaves inspire a Day of Rage across the country

Afghanistan: Equality Now calls for Urgent Action to counter Karzai’s unconvincing denial of Govt intent to control women’s shelters

Egypt: Historically neglected, gender equality richly deserved & essential in rebuilding the nation

Bangladesh: Cursed, ostracized & poverty stricken, wives of men slain in tiger attacks band together to build new lives

India:   Home to 40 million widows, the vast majority suffering economic, health, sanitary & shelter-related poverty

Italy: Their dignity not for sale, Italian women from across the globe call for PM Berlusconi’s resignation & an end to his crude sexism

Egypt:  Brave women, as per Dr. Nawal El Sadaawi, have over generations been at the fore seeking to end the country’s injustices

UK: PM Cameron exploits "women’s rights" to whitewash his racist war on multiculturalism

Ethiopia: UN Women's Michelle Bachelet begins her pledged journey with African women 

Belgium: March 9-11 2011: Seminar on the Systematic Destruction of Iraq’s Educational Infrastructure 

UK:  February 6 2011 : Seminar In Awareness of Female Genital Mutilation for International Zero Tolerance to FGM day

India:  Academic & Cultural Freedoms shrink further as Anti Terrorism Squad slaps charges on Professor Ilina Sen & Associates at National Conference on Women’s Studies

Read also: Miami Herald aside, Michelle Bachelet’s feminist message to the World Economic Forum’s Brotherhood met with silence from the global print media

and: The Irrawaddy aside, Aung San Suu Kyi’s audio plea for investment in Burma to the World Economic Forum’s Brotherhood also met with silence from the global print media