- 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
Burma:  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
US:  Abysmal report cards for Sarah Palin leave triple dose of egg on McCain’s face 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 a Super Stalkborer in an unprecedented environmental disaster
Afghanistan: 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 Film 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:  Nupur Basu: No Country for Young Girls (Love in the time of foeticide)
 Aida Schlaepfer: Gangs of Baghdad
UK, Wimbledon 2008:  Even as the Williams sisters again reign supreme, male chauvinism prevails 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 Haiti:  Under occupation by US surrogates, denial of food & potable water ensures lives of misery 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
 Call to invest in girls and women for women's equality and empowerment, and to meet Millennium Development Goals by 2015  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
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