As the violence in the Eastern DRC continues, your support & your voice are critical. Hundreds of thousands of women and girls have been raped, and thousands more are at risk every day.
SHOW YOUR SUPPORT , let the women of the Congo hear you, speak out against this violence, send your message of hope, empowerment, change and victory.
CHANGING THE STORY
Join V-Day’s global campaign STOP RAPING OUR GREATEST RESOURCE: POWER TO THE WOMEN AND GIRLS OF DRC and bring much needed attention to the needs of Congolese women and girls.
The atrocities being perpetrated against women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo are nothing less than a femicide.
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25 April 2009
V-Moment
http://newsite.vday.org/vmoment/alam
AYESHAH ALAM: “This is not what we want for Pakistan…”Renowned social activist Ayeshah Alam speaks out against the recent flogging of a teenage girl by Taliban fighters. The violence was captured on a mobile phone and spread throughout the internet, highlighting militant brutality in the once-peaceful district, a sign of Taliban influence spreading deeper into the country of Pakistan.
When Samar Minallah first forwarded me the video of a young 17-year-old girl being flogged in public I was stunned. These were images that one had gotten used to seeing come out of Afghanistan but not my country. For years on my morning radio show and then later on my morning television show. I had been saying, “we are ignoring what's really happening in our tribal areas.” Hushed stories had been filtered through and my pathan friends kept going on about how the government was ignoring the gradual growing strength of extremist elements. We failed. As a society. When we could see the warning signs, they weren't in our faces and perhaps that's why it was easier to brush them aside...but we failed and today the flogging of our 17 year old sister...daughter is because we kept quiet then and didn't make a loud enough noise to say NO.... this is not what we want for Pakistan.
Today I am proud to see so many men and women stand up for the little girl and tell the people who did this...YOU WILL NOT DO THIS ANYMORE. I was even more pleasantly surprised to see clergymen, different political parties, all come together with one voice and say NO. Yet there are still the men in those areas, which are not under the write of the government who continue to have their beliefs and are making the women of that territory miserable. Some were cynical and said it was fake. Clearly Chaand Bibi's screams for help and mercy were not enough proof for them. Today we don't know where Chaand Bibi is. We don't know if she is still alive. The courts have asked for the victim to be produced but the family will never come forward as it "dishonors" the family name. That today in the year 2009, these events and ideas are still alive is a shameful thing. Yes governments have their role to play, but even as individuals, we can all contribute in making a change of opinions and ideas and ways of living and thinking, if only in the slightest way. We have a saying in Urdu that says "katray katray say durya bunta hai" which means “ a river can be created drop by drop,” or, as Margaret Mead liked to say "Never doubt a small group of people can change the world... it never happened any other way."
Thank you for your work in challenging accepted norms... lets keep challenging and changing so the Chaand Bibis' of the world don't have to scream helplessly anymore.
-Ayeshah
Ayeshah Alam is a blogger, filmmaker and radio host based in Pakistan.
http://www.ayeshahalam.wordpress.com
AYESHAH ALAM: “This is not what we want for Pakistan…”Renowned social activist Ayeshah Alam speaks out against the recent flogging of a teenage girl by Taliban fighters. The violence was captured on a mobile phone and spread throughout the internet, highlighting militant brutality in the once-peaceful district, a sign of Taliban influence spreading deeper into the country of Pakistan.
When Samar Minallah first forwarded me the video of a young 17-year-old girl being flogged in public I was stunned. These were images that one had gotten used to seeing come out of Afghanistan but not my country. For years on my morning radio show and then later on my morning television show. I had been saying, “we are ignoring what's really happening in our tribal areas.” Hushed stories had been filtered through and my pathan friends kept going on about how the government was ignoring the gradual growing strength of extremist elements. We failed. As a society. When we could see the warning signs, they weren't in our faces and perhaps that's why it was easier to brush them aside...but we failed and today the flogging of our 17 year old sister...daughter is because we kept quiet then and didn't make a loud enough noise to say NO.... this is not what we want for Pakistan.
Today I am proud to see so many men and women stand up for the little girl and tell the people who did this...YOU WILL NOT DO THIS ANYMORE. I was even more pleasantly surprised to see clergymen, different political parties, all come together with one voice and say NO. Yet there are still the men in those areas, which are not under the write of the government who continue to have their beliefs and are making the women of that territory miserable. Some were cynical and said it was fake. Clearly Chaand Bibi's screams for help and mercy were not enough proof for them. Today we don't know where Chaand Bibi is. We don't know if she is still alive. The courts have asked for the victim to be produced but the family will never come forward as it "dishonors" the family name. That today in the year 2009, these events and ideas are still alive is a shameful thing. Yes governments have their role to play, but even as individuals, we can all contribute in making a change of opinions and ideas and ways of living and thinking, if only in the slightest way. We have a saying in Urdu that says "katray katray say durya bunta hai" which means “ a river can be created drop by drop,” or, as Margaret Mead liked to say "Never doubt a small group of people can change the world... it never happened any other way."
Thank you for your work in challenging accepted norms... lets keep challenging and changing so the Chaand Bibis' of the world don't have to scream helplessly anymore.
-Ayeshah
Ayeshah Alam is a blogger, filmmaker and radio host based in Pakistan.
http://www.ayeshahalam.wordpress.com
24 April 2009
Action Alert: Journalist Jailed in Iran
Please join feminists and human rights activist worldwide in urging the Iranian government to commute the sentence of journalist Roxana Saberi.
Saberi was initially arrested in February, purportedly for working without press credentials. In March, she was charged with espionage and being an American spy. She was sentenced to 8 years in prison after a one day, closed-door trial.
Iran's Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi will defend Roxana Saberi during her appeal. We must stand behind Dr. Ebadi and Saberi at this critical time!
No evidence against Saberi has been released by the Iranian government. It is increasingly evident that the charges against her are baseless and reports indicate that she may have been forced to make incriminating statements while imprisoned.
Write to urge Iran's reversal of Saberi's sentence and her immediate release from prison.
We have asked for your help before to seek the release by the Iranian government of Dr. Shirin Ebadi's secretary, Jinus Sobhani. Your messages made a difference and Sobhani was released. We are asking you to help again.
Urge Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Iran's Head of the Judiciary, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi; the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay; and the U.N. and Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to intervene immediately to free Roxana Saberi from prison and commute her unjust sentence.
Saberi was initially arrested in February, purportedly for working without press credentials. In March, she was charged with espionage and being an American spy. She was sentenced to 8 years in prison after a one day, closed-door trial.
Iran's Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi will defend Roxana Saberi during her appeal. We must stand behind Dr. Ebadi and Saberi at this critical time!
No evidence against Saberi has been released by the Iranian government. It is increasingly evident that the charges against her are baseless and reports indicate that she may have been forced to make incriminating statements while imprisoned.
Write to urge Iran's reversal of Saberi's sentence and her immediate release from prison.
We have asked for your help before to seek the release by the Iranian government of Dr. Shirin Ebadi's secretary, Jinus Sobhani. Your messages made a difference and Sobhani was released. We are asking you to help again.
Urge Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Iran's Head of the Judiciary, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi; the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay; and the U.N. and Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to intervene immediately to free Roxana Saberi from prison and commute her unjust sentence.
23 April 2009
Action Alert: Bush's Torture
On Thursday, President Obama released memos that describe, in horrific detail, the torture techniques authorized by the Bush administration. The memos make clear that top Bush officials didn't just condone torture—they encouraged it.
So far there's been no accountability for the architects of Bush's torture program—the top officials who justified keeping detainees awake for 11 days straight, waterboarding them repeatedly, and forcing prisoners into coffin-like boxes with insects.1
We need real consequences for those responsible—it's the only way to keep this from happening again. Attorney General Holder can open an investigation into the torture program—but he most likely won't unless people everywhere speak up and demand it.
Can you sign our petition to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the torture program? If we can reach 200,000 signatures, we'll deliver the petition to Holder by the end of the week. Clicking here will sign your name:
http://pol.moveon.org/torture/o.pl?id=15951-9461854-PFHFSDx&t=3The petition
says: "No one is above the law. It's time to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute the architects of the Bush-era torture program."
Calls for action, from the United Nations, the ACLU, Amnesty International,2 Senators Leahy and Feingold, and others, are gathering steam. The New York Times made the case for accountability in an editorial:3
"...[Obama] has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners—in violation of international law and the Constitution. "
This isn't about retribution or politics. It's about accountability. If hundreds of thousands of us speak up, we can make sure Holder hears this loud and clear. http://pol.moveon.org/torture/o.pl?id=15951-9461854-PFHFSDx&t=4Thanks for all you do.
P.S. You can see all the Bush administration memos here.
Sources:
1. "Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the C.I.A.," The New York Times, April 17, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51338&id=15951-9461854-PFHFSDx&t=5
2. "Opposition Grows To Obama's Decision Not To Prosecute CIA Agents," The Huffington Post, April 19, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51336&id=15951-9461854-PFHFSDx&t=6
3. "A Torturers' Manifesto," The New York Times, April 19, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51334&id=15951-9461854-PFHFSDx&t=7
So far there's been no accountability for the architects of Bush's torture program—the top officials who justified keeping detainees awake for 11 days straight, waterboarding them repeatedly, and forcing prisoners into coffin-like boxes with insects.1
We need real consequences for those responsible—it's the only way to keep this from happening again. Attorney General Holder can open an investigation into the torture program—but he most likely won't unless people everywhere speak up and demand it.
Can you sign our petition to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the torture program? If we can reach 200,000 signatures, we'll deliver the petition to Holder by the end of the week. Clicking here will sign your name:
http://pol.moveon.org/torture/o.pl?id=15951-9461854-PFHFSDx&t=3The petition
says: "No one is above the law. It's time to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute the architects of the Bush-era torture program."
Calls for action, from the United Nations, the ACLU, Amnesty International,2 Senators Leahy and Feingold, and others, are gathering steam. The New York Times made the case for accountability in an editorial:3
"...[Obama] has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners—in violation of international law and the Constitution. "
This isn't about retribution or politics. It's about accountability. If hundreds of thousands of us speak up, we can make sure Holder hears this loud and clear. http://pol.moveon.org/torture/o.pl?id=15951-9461854-PFHFSDx&t=4Thanks for all you do.
P.S. You can see all the Bush administration memos here.
Sources:
1. "Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the C.I.A.," The New York Times, April 17, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51338&id=15951-9461854-PFHFSDx&t=5
2. "Opposition Grows To Obama's Decision Not To Prosecute CIA Agents," The Huffington Post, April 19, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51336&id=15951-9461854-PFHFSDx&t=6
3. "A Torturers' Manifesto," The New York Times, April 19, 2009.
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51334&id=15951-9461854-PFHFSDx&t=7
WHAT’S THE CONNECTION BETWEEN WOMEN AND WATER?
Throughout the world, women are intrinsically linked to water resources because of their roles and responsibilities in using and managing water.Since women and girls often cook, clean, farm,and provide health care and hygiene for their households, they are on the front lines of their communities’ and countries’ water
issues.Global challenges like over-consumption,population growth, privatization and climate change all affect the quality and accessibility of water, and put a strain on limited freshwater systems. Water scarcity and contamination disproportionately impact low-income women and girls. For many girls who must walk miles to
access clean water, school is not a reality.Without a basic education or the ability to get a formal wage-earning job, many women become locked into a vicious cycle of poverty. This has a ripple effect that impacts communities and countries socially, economically and environmentally.
TAKE ACTION!
As consumers and as global citizens, we must all do our part to break the cycle of poverty and inequity that impacts women and water resources worldwide.Women around the world must have the means and the power to protect water resources critical for their and their children’s survival.
• Encourage your decision-makers to support sustainable
development initiatives that help to achieve the
Millennium Development Goals. http://endpoverty2015.org
• Get involved with Sierra Club’s Global Population and
Environment Program. Find out how at
www.sierraclub.org/population
• Get involved with Feminist Campus. Find out how at
www.feministcampus.org
• Find out more about WEDO's publications, factsheets and
case studies on women and water at www.wedo.org
• Join Sierra Club’s Population Justice Environmental
Challenge campaign at www.sierraclub.org/popjustice
• Take action in your community by using WEDO's online
action kit to educate and advocate for gender and climate
change! www.wedo.org/category/act
• Join WEDO's Women Demand U.S.Action on
Climate Change campaign listserve by visiting
http://groups.google.com/group/wdaccus?hl=en
• Join the Think Outside the Bottle Campaign to support
strong public water systems over bottled water profits
www.thinkoutsidethebottle.org
• Find out about your region’s local water worries and spread
the word on your community and campus. Host a panel or
film-screening connecting the dots between women and
water, and generate media to educate your peers!
issues.Global challenges like over-consumption,population growth, privatization and climate change all affect the quality and accessibility of water, and put a strain on limited freshwater systems. Water scarcity and contamination disproportionately impact low-income women and girls. For many girls who must walk miles to
access clean water, school is not a reality.Without a basic education or the ability to get a formal wage-earning job, many women become locked into a vicious cycle of poverty. This has a ripple effect that impacts communities and countries socially, economically and environmentally.
TAKE ACTION!
As consumers and as global citizens, we must all do our part to break the cycle of poverty and inequity that impacts women and water resources worldwide.Women around the world must have the means and the power to protect water resources critical for their and their children’s survival.
• Encourage your decision-makers to support sustainable
development initiatives that help to achieve the
Millennium Development Goals. http://endpoverty2015.org
• Get involved with Sierra Club’s Global Population and
Environment Program. Find out how at
www.sierraclub.org/population
• Get involved with Feminist Campus. Find out how at
www.feministcampus.org
• Find out more about WEDO's publications, factsheets and
case studies on women and water at www.wedo.org
• Join Sierra Club’s Population Justice Environmental
Challenge campaign at www.sierraclub.org/popjustice
• Take action in your community by using WEDO's online
action kit to educate and advocate for gender and climate
change! www.wedo.org/category/act
• Join WEDO's Women Demand U.S.Action on
Climate Change campaign listserve by visiting
http://groups.google.com/group/wdaccus?hl=en
• Join the Think Outside the Bottle Campaign to support
strong public water systems over bottled water profits
www.thinkoutsidethebottle.org
• Find out about your region’s local water worries and spread
the word on your community and campus. Host a panel or
film-screening connecting the dots between women and
water, and generate media to educate your peers!
Action Alert: Support Clemency for Troy Davis
It's not the end of the road for Troy Davis, but the news is not good.
Yesterday, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Troy Davis' bid for a new trial. In a 2-1 vote, the court cited technical reasons to reject Davis' petition for a hearing.
But all hope is not lost. Troy has 30 days to file another petition with the US Supreme Court.
Troy and his lawyers are doing everything they can to fight this decision from the inside. It is up to us to turn up the pressure on the outside. Even if you've taken action before, keep flooding Governor Perdue's office with emails demanding justice for Troy. And pass the action on to everyone you know. There is power in numbers and when you stand behind Troy Davis, you make the fight for justice even stronger!
P.S. Save the date — National Day of Solidarity for Troy Davis coming in May. We'll be in touch soon to let you know how you can support Troy in your own community!
Action Alert: Two Women Jailed in Zimbabwe
Jenni Williams and Magodonga ("Magi") Mahlangu have done nothing illegal. But if convicted, the two women could face up to 5 years in prison.
The women, leaders of the organization Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), were arbitrarily arrested last October during a protest that called on the government to equally distribute scarce food aid among Zimbabweans.
Zimbabwe is a country in turmoil. But a power-sharing agreement struck between two rival political parties could mean a new chance for a country to right itself. Yet, this unity government, as it's called, has failed to prioritize human rights as a necessity in achieving stability.
Jenni and Magi's court date on April 30th is an opportune time for Zimbabwe's leaders to step into a new era and show the world that it respects the rights of all individuals. Tell Zimbabwe's leaders to drop all charges against Jenni and Magi and to protect the country's human rights defenders.
Zimbabwe's Finance Minister is in the U.S. this week to push for restoration of humanitarian aid to help pull his country from the brink of utter collapse. But the U.S. and the rest of the international community are looking for evidence that Zimbabwe is ready to leave its deep path of violence and intolerance behind before they will agree to restore any aid.
Just this week, authorities in Zimbabwe conditionally freed three political prisoners who had been detained since December. This is a welcome development, but the government must go further. It must stop harassing, torturing and jailing activists who only seek a better tomorrow for Zimbabwe – activists like Jenni Williams and Magi Mahlangu.
Email Zimbabwe's officials and urge them to drop all charges against Jenni and Magi.
The power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe is, in itself, a monumental step forward. And it's going to take more monumental steps forward to bring about real change in Zimbabwe.
On April 30th the government of Zimbabwe can prove to the world that it's ready to restore human rights. Let's help them make the right decision.
The women, leaders of the organization Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), were arbitrarily arrested last October during a protest that called on the government to equally distribute scarce food aid among Zimbabweans.
Zimbabwe is a country in turmoil. But a power-sharing agreement struck between two rival political parties could mean a new chance for a country to right itself. Yet, this unity government, as it's called, has failed to prioritize human rights as a necessity in achieving stability.
Jenni and Magi's court date on April 30th is an opportune time for Zimbabwe's leaders to step into a new era and show the world that it respects the rights of all individuals. Tell Zimbabwe's leaders to drop all charges against Jenni and Magi and to protect the country's human rights defenders.
Zimbabwe's Finance Minister is in the U.S. this week to push for restoration of humanitarian aid to help pull his country from the brink of utter collapse. But the U.S. and the rest of the international community are looking for evidence that Zimbabwe is ready to leave its deep path of violence and intolerance behind before they will agree to restore any aid.
Just this week, authorities in Zimbabwe conditionally freed three political prisoners who had been detained since December. This is a welcome development, but the government must go further. It must stop harassing, torturing and jailing activists who only seek a better tomorrow for Zimbabwe – activists like Jenni Williams and Magi Mahlangu.
Email Zimbabwe's officials and urge them to drop all charges against Jenni and Magi.
The power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe is, in itself, a monumental step forward. And it's going to take more monumental steps forward to bring about real change in Zimbabwe.
On April 30th the government of Zimbabwe can prove to the world that it's ready to restore human rights. Let's help them make the right decision.
21 April 2009
Why Should We Pay Attention to Girls?
Little research has been done to understand how investments in girls impact economic growth and the health and well-being of communities. This lack of data reveals how pervasively girls have been overlooked. For millions of girls across the developing world, there are no systems to record their birth, their citizenship, or even their identity. However, the existing research suggests their impact can reach much farther than expected.
The Ripple Effect
• When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children.
(United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 1990.)
• An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school: 15 to 25 percent.
(George Psacharopoulos and Harry Anthony Patrinos, “Returns to Investment in Education: A Further Update,” Policy Research Working Paper 2881
[Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2002].)
• Research in developing countries has shown a consistent relationship between better infant and child health and higher levels of schooling among mothers.
(George T. Bicego and J. Ties Boerma, “Maternal Education and Child Survival: A Comparative Study of Survey Data from 17 Countries,” Social Science
and Medicine 36 (9) [May 1993]: 1207–27.)
• When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man.
(Phil Borges, with foreword by Madeleine Albright, Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World [New York: Rizzoli, 2007], 13.)
Population Trends
• Today, more than 600 million girls live in the developing world.
Girls Count, 14
(Population Reference Bureau, DataFinder database, http://www.prb.org/datafinder.aspx [accessed December 20, 2007].)
• More than one-quarter of the population in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa are girls and young women ages 10 to 24.
Girls Count, 15
(United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision,” http://esa.un.org/unpp, and “World
Urbanization Prospects: The 2005 Revision,” www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WUP2005/2005WUP_DataTables1.pdf.)
• The total global population of girls ages 10 to 24—already the largest in history—is expected to peak in the next decade.
Girls Count, 14
(Ruth Levine et al., Girls Count: A Global Investment & Action Agenda [Washington, D.C.: Center for Global Development, 2008].)
Educational Gaps
• Approximately one-quarter of girls in developing countries are not in school.
(Cynthia B. Lloyd, ed., Growing Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries [Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005].)
• Out of the world’s 130 million out-of-school youth, 70 percent are girls.
(Human Rights Watch, “Promises Broken: An Assessment of Children’s Rights on the 10th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,”
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/crp/promises/education.html [December 1999].)
Child Marriage and Early Childbirth
• One girl in seven in developing countries marries before age 15.
Girls Count, 41
(Population Council, “Transitions to Adulthood: Child Marriage/Married Adolescents,” http://www.popcouncil.org/ta/mar.html [updated May 13, 2008].)
• 38 percent marry before age 18.
Girls Count, 41
(Cynthia B. Lloyd, ed., Growing Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries [Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005].)
• One-quarter to one-half of girls in developing countries become mothers before age 18; 14 million girls aged 15 to 19 give birth in developing countries each year.
Girls Count, 3
(United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 2005, http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2005.)
• In Nicaragua, 45 percent of girls with no schooling are married before age 18 versus only 16 percent of their educated counterparts. In Mozambique, the figures are 60 percent versus 10; in Senegal, 41 percent versus 6.
Girls Count, 44
(International Center for Research on Women, Too Young to Wed: Education & Action Toward Ending Child Marriage,
http://www.icrw.org/docs/2006_cmtoolkit/cm_all.pdf [2007].)
• A survey in India found that girls who married before age 18 were twice as likely to report being beaten, slapped, or threatened by their husbands as were girls who married later.
(International Center for Research on Women, Development Initiative on Supporting Healthy Adolescents [2005], analysis of quantitative baseline survey
data collected in select sites in the states of Bihar and Jharkhand, India [survey conducted in 2004].)
Health
• Medical complications from pregnancy are the leading cause of death among girls ages 15 to 19 worldwide. Compared with women ages 20 to 24, girls ages 10 to 14 are five times more likely to die from childbirth, and girls 15 to 19 are up to twice as
likely, worldwide.
(United Nations Children’s Fund, Equality, Development and Peace, http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/pub_equality_en.pdf [New York:
UNICEF, 2000], 19.)
• 75 percent of 15- to 24-year-olds living with HIV in Africa are female, up from 62 percent in 2001.
Girls Count, 48
(Global Coalition on Women and AIDS, Keeping the Promise: An Agenda for Action on Women and AIDS,
http://data.unaids.org/pub/Booklet/2006/20060530_FS_Keeping_Promise_en.pdf[2006a].)
girleffect.org
For More on this topic check out Girls Count: A Global Investment & Action Agenda published by The Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C.
The Ripple Effect
• When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children.
(United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 1990.)
• An extra year of primary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 10 to 20 percent. An extra year of secondary school: 15 to 25 percent.
(George Psacharopoulos and Harry Anthony Patrinos, “Returns to Investment in Education: A Further Update,” Policy Research Working Paper 2881
[Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2002].)
• Research in developing countries has shown a consistent relationship between better infant and child health and higher levels of schooling among mothers.
(George T. Bicego and J. Ties Boerma, “Maternal Education and Child Survival: A Comparative Study of Survey Data from 17 Countries,” Social Science
and Medicine 36 (9) [May 1993]: 1207–27.)
• When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man.
(Phil Borges, with foreword by Madeleine Albright, Women Empowered: Inspiring Change in the Emerging World [New York: Rizzoli, 2007], 13.)
Population Trends
• Today, more than 600 million girls live in the developing world.
Girls Count, 14
(Population Reference Bureau, DataFinder database, http://www.prb.org/datafinder.aspx [accessed December 20, 2007].)
• More than one-quarter of the population in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa are girls and young women ages 10 to 24.
Girls Count, 15
(United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision,” http://esa.un.org/unpp, and “World
Urbanization Prospects: The 2005 Revision,” www.un.org/esa/population/publications/WUP2005/2005WUP_DataTables1.pdf.)
• The total global population of girls ages 10 to 24—already the largest in history—is expected to peak in the next decade.
Girls Count, 14
(Ruth Levine et al., Girls Count: A Global Investment & Action Agenda [Washington, D.C.: Center for Global Development, 2008].)
Educational Gaps
• Approximately one-quarter of girls in developing countries are not in school.
(Cynthia B. Lloyd, ed., Growing Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries [Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005].)
• Out of the world’s 130 million out-of-school youth, 70 percent are girls.
(Human Rights Watch, “Promises Broken: An Assessment of Children’s Rights on the 10th Anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,”
http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/crp/promises/education.html [December 1999].)
Child Marriage and Early Childbirth
• One girl in seven in developing countries marries before age 15.
Girls Count, 41
(Population Council, “Transitions to Adulthood: Child Marriage/Married Adolescents,” http://www.popcouncil.org/ta/mar.html [updated May 13, 2008].)
• 38 percent marry before age 18.
Girls Count, 41
(Cynthia B. Lloyd, ed., Growing Up Global: The Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries [Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2005].)
• One-quarter to one-half of girls in developing countries become mothers before age 18; 14 million girls aged 15 to 19 give birth in developing countries each year.
Girls Count, 3
(United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 2005, http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2005.)
• In Nicaragua, 45 percent of girls with no schooling are married before age 18 versus only 16 percent of their educated counterparts. In Mozambique, the figures are 60 percent versus 10; in Senegal, 41 percent versus 6.
Girls Count, 44
(International Center for Research on Women, Too Young to Wed: Education & Action Toward Ending Child Marriage,
http://www.icrw.org/docs/2006_cmtoolkit/cm_all.pdf [2007].)
• A survey in India found that girls who married before age 18 were twice as likely to report being beaten, slapped, or threatened by their husbands as were girls who married later.
(International Center for Research on Women, Development Initiative on Supporting Healthy Adolescents [2005], analysis of quantitative baseline survey
data collected in select sites in the states of Bihar and Jharkhand, India [survey conducted in 2004].)
Health
• Medical complications from pregnancy are the leading cause of death among girls ages 15 to 19 worldwide. Compared with women ages 20 to 24, girls ages 10 to 14 are five times more likely to die from childbirth, and girls 15 to 19 are up to twice as
likely, worldwide.
(United Nations Children’s Fund, Equality, Development and Peace, http://www.unicef.org/publications/files/pub_equality_en.pdf [New York:
UNICEF, 2000], 19.)
• 75 percent of 15- to 24-year-olds living with HIV in Africa are female, up from 62 percent in 2001.
Girls Count, 48
(Global Coalition on Women and AIDS, Keeping the Promise: An Agenda for Action on Women and AIDS,
http://data.unaids.org/pub/Booklet/2006/20060530_FS_Keeping_Promise_en.pdf[2006a].)
girleffect.org
For More on this topic check out Girls Count: A Global Investment & Action Agenda published by The Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C.
19 April 2009
Research on Lesser-Known Nazi Sites Is Now Public
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/world/middleeast/20holocaust.html
By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: April 19, 2009
JERUSALEM — In the Ukrainian town of Berdichev, Jewish women were forced to swim across a wide river until they drowned. In Telsiai, Lithuania, children were thrown alive into pits filled with their murdered parents. In Liozno, Belarus, Jews were herded into a locked barn where many froze to death.
Holocaust deniers aside, the world is not ignorant of the systematic Nazi slaughter of some six million Jews in World War II. People know of the gas chambers in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen; many have heard of the tens of thousands shot dead in the Ukrainian ravine of Babi Yar. But little has been known about the hundreds — perhaps thousands — of smaller killing fields across the former Soviet Union where some 1.5 million Jews met their deaths.
That is now changing. Over the past few years, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and research center in Israel has been investigating those sites, comparing Soviet, German, local and Jewish accounts, cross-checking numbers and methods. The work, gathered under the title “The Untold Stories,” is far from over. But to honor Holocaust Remembrance Day, which starts Monday evening, the research is being made public on the institution’s Web site.
“These are places that have been mostly neglected because they involved smaller towns and villages,” said David Bankier, head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem. “In many cases, locals played a key role in the murders, probably by a ratio of 10 locals to every one German. We are trying to understand the man who played soccer with his Jewish neighbor one day and turned to kill him the next. This provides material for research on genocide elsewhere, like in Africa.”
For the purposes of this project, a killing field entailed at least 50 people, Lea Prais, the project director, said. The murdering began in June 1941 with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. From the Baltic Republics in the north to the Caucuses in the south, Nazi death squads combed the areas.
The first evidence for what took place was gathered right after the war by Soviet investigating committees largely focused on finding anti-Soviet collaborators.
The new research checks those versions against German records, diaries and letters of soldiers, and accounts by witnesses and the few surviving Jews, some of whom climbed out of pits of corpses. Sometimes, the researchers said, the Soviets seemed to have exaggerated, and that is noted on the Web site. One goal of the project is to gain greater specificity of the numbers killed.
One little-known case comes from a German sailor who filmed actual killings in Liepaja, Latvia. The film has been on view for some years at the Yad Vashem museum. But the new Web site has a forgotten video of a 1981 interview with the sailor, Reinhard Wiener, who claimed to have been a bystander with a movie camera.
According to part of his account, “After the civilian guards with the yellow armbands shouted once again, I was able to identify them as Latvian home guardsmen. The Jews, whom I was able to recognize by now, were forced to jump over the sides of the truck onto the ground. Among them were crippled and weak people, who were caught by the others.
At first, they had to line up in a row, before they were chased toward the trench. This was done by SS and Latvian home guardsmen. Then the Jews were forced to jump into the trench and to run along inside it until the end. They had to stand with their back to the firing squad. At that time, the moment they saw the trench, they probably knew what would happen to them. They must have felt it, because underneath there was already a layer of corpses, over which was spread a thin layer of sand.”
Ms. Prais, the project director, said one of the discoveries that most surprised her is the way in which Soviet Jews who survived the war made an effort to commemorate those who perished. In distant fields and village squares they often placed a Star of David or some other memorial despite fears of overt Jewish expression in the Soviet era.
“The silent Jews of the Soviet Union were not so silent,” she said.
The slaughter that some of them had escaped defies the imagination. One case Ms. Prais and her colleagues have cross-referenced involves what happened in the town of Krupki in Belarus, where the entire Jewish community of at least 1,000 was eliminated on Sept. 18, 1941.
A German soldier who took part in the mass murder kept a diary that was found on his body by the Allies, she said. In it, he wrote of having volunteered as one of “15 men with strong nerves” asked to eliminate the Jews of Krupki. “All these had to be shot today,” he wrote. The weather was gray and rainy, he observed.
The Jews had been told they were to be deported to work in Germany but as they were forced into a ditch, the reality of their fate became evident. Panic ensued. The soldier wrote that the guards had a hard time controlling the crowd.
“Ten shots rang out, ten Jews popped off,” he wrote. “This continued until all were dispatched. Only a few of them kept their countenances. The children clung to their mothers, wives to their husbands. I won’t forget this spectacle in a hurry....”
By ETHAN BRONNER
Published: April 19, 2009
JERUSALEM — In the Ukrainian town of Berdichev, Jewish women were forced to swim across a wide river until they drowned. In Telsiai, Lithuania, children were thrown alive into pits filled with their murdered parents. In Liozno, Belarus, Jews were herded into a locked barn where many froze to death.
Holocaust deniers aside, the world is not ignorant of the systematic Nazi slaughter of some six million Jews in World War II. People know of the gas chambers in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen; many have heard of the tens of thousands shot dead in the Ukrainian ravine of Babi Yar. But little has been known about the hundreds — perhaps thousands — of smaller killing fields across the former Soviet Union where some 1.5 million Jews met their deaths.
That is now changing. Over the past few years, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and research center in Israel has been investigating those sites, comparing Soviet, German, local and Jewish accounts, cross-checking numbers and methods. The work, gathered under the title “The Untold Stories,” is far from over. But to honor Holocaust Remembrance Day, which starts Monday evening, the research is being made public on the institution’s Web site.
“These are places that have been mostly neglected because they involved smaller towns and villages,” said David Bankier, head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem. “In many cases, locals played a key role in the murders, probably by a ratio of 10 locals to every one German. We are trying to understand the man who played soccer with his Jewish neighbor one day and turned to kill him the next. This provides material for research on genocide elsewhere, like in Africa.”
For the purposes of this project, a killing field entailed at least 50 people, Lea Prais, the project director, said. The murdering began in June 1941 with the German invasion of the Soviet Union. From the Baltic Republics in the north to the Caucuses in the south, Nazi death squads combed the areas.
The first evidence for what took place was gathered right after the war by Soviet investigating committees largely focused on finding anti-Soviet collaborators.
The new research checks those versions against German records, diaries and letters of soldiers, and accounts by witnesses and the few surviving Jews, some of whom climbed out of pits of corpses. Sometimes, the researchers said, the Soviets seemed to have exaggerated, and that is noted on the Web site. One goal of the project is to gain greater specificity of the numbers killed.
One little-known case comes from a German sailor who filmed actual killings in Liepaja, Latvia. The film has been on view for some years at the Yad Vashem museum. But the new Web site has a forgotten video of a 1981 interview with the sailor, Reinhard Wiener, who claimed to have been a bystander with a movie camera.
According to part of his account, “After the civilian guards with the yellow armbands shouted once again, I was able to identify them as Latvian home guardsmen. The Jews, whom I was able to recognize by now, were forced to jump over the sides of the truck onto the ground. Among them were crippled and weak people, who were caught by the others.
At first, they had to line up in a row, before they were chased toward the trench. This was done by SS and Latvian home guardsmen. Then the Jews were forced to jump into the trench and to run along inside it until the end. They had to stand with their back to the firing squad. At that time, the moment they saw the trench, they probably knew what would happen to them. They must have felt it, because underneath there was already a layer of corpses, over which was spread a thin layer of sand.”
Ms. Prais, the project director, said one of the discoveries that most surprised her is the way in which Soviet Jews who survived the war made an effort to commemorate those who perished. In distant fields and village squares they often placed a Star of David or some other memorial despite fears of overt Jewish expression in the Soviet era.
“The silent Jews of the Soviet Union were not so silent,” she said.
The slaughter that some of them had escaped defies the imagination. One case Ms. Prais and her colleagues have cross-referenced involves what happened in the town of Krupki in Belarus, where the entire Jewish community of at least 1,000 was eliminated on Sept. 18, 1941.
A German soldier who took part in the mass murder kept a diary that was found on his body by the Allies, she said. In it, he wrote of having volunteered as one of “15 men with strong nerves” asked to eliminate the Jews of Krupki. “All these had to be shot today,” he wrote. The weather was gray and rainy, he observed.
The Jews had been told they were to be deported to work in Germany but as they were forced into a ditch, the reality of their fate became evident. Panic ensued. The soldier wrote that the guards had a hard time controlling the crowd.
“Ten shots rang out, ten Jews popped off,” he wrote. “This continued until all were dispatched. Only a few of them kept their countenances. The children clung to their mothers, wives to their husbands. I won’t forget this spectacle in a hurry....”
15 April 2009
Action Alert: Help Support Fathi el-Jahmi.
Health records show that Fathi el-Jahmi will likely die in prison of heart failure and complications from diabetes if he does not receive critical medical treatment. However, the prognosis leaves out the fact that Libya's poor prison system is to blame for years of neglectful treatment given to a man who was unlawfully detained in the first place.
This is the second time Fathi has been wrongfully imprisoned for publicly calling for greater political freedom in Libya. His health condition is severe and the Libyan government knows it.
We've got two strong allies in Congress willing to speak out against Libya's injustice. Representatives Wolf (R-VA) and Kirk (R-IL) are sponsoring our letter calling on Libya’s authorities to free Fathi el-Jahmi from detention and allow him to seek proper medical care. But they'll need our help to convince other members of Congress to join this effort to keep Fathi alive.
Urge your members of Congress to add their name to a letter of support for Fathi el-Jahmi.
Fathi was briefly released from detention in 2004 because the emotion stirred by former Senator Joe Biden and other members of Congress calling for his release. Biden called Fathi "a courageous Libyan democracy advocate with serious health problems whose only crime was to speak truth to power."
It was the leadership shown then by Congress that helped lead to Fathi's release. Now, we need our representatives to stand in solidarity once again for Fathi, but this time to save his life.
Muammar al-Gaddafi, Libya's head of state, and other Libyan authorities will continue to let Fathi's life hang in the balance unless we expose this foul act for what it really is – a sad attempt to silence political opposition at all costs. We cannot just stand by while a bright flame of the human rights movement is extinguished.
Libya is seeking to improve its ties with the United States. And if we get enough members of Congress to sign the letter on Fathi's behalf, then Libya has a stronger incentive to heed our calls for justice. Email your Representatives and ask for them to stand in support of Fathi el-Jahmi.
Amnesty activists have a history of standing in Fathi's corner. His case garnered an outpouring of support and thousands of letters sent on his behalf during this past year's Global Write-a-thon.
In the following weeks, supporters will gather in front of the US mission to the United Nations and hold peaceful vigils as an act of solidarity for Fathi.
Add your voice to theirs. Tell your Representatives the story of Fathi el-Jahmi. Tell them that if we don't take a stand against Libya's gross misconduct, then we will lose a great human rights defender – and his health won't be to blame.
But for Fathi to have any chance at a future, we have got to make the present count.
This is the second time Fathi has been wrongfully imprisoned for publicly calling for greater political freedom in Libya. His health condition is severe and the Libyan government knows it.
We've got two strong allies in Congress willing to speak out against Libya's injustice. Representatives Wolf (R-VA) and Kirk (R-IL) are sponsoring our letter calling on Libya’s authorities to free Fathi el-Jahmi from detention and allow him to seek proper medical care. But they'll need our help to convince other members of Congress to join this effort to keep Fathi alive.
Urge your members of Congress to add their name to a letter of support for Fathi el-Jahmi.
Fathi was briefly released from detention in 2004 because the emotion stirred by former Senator Joe Biden and other members of Congress calling for his release. Biden called Fathi "a courageous Libyan democracy advocate with serious health problems whose only crime was to speak truth to power."
It was the leadership shown then by Congress that helped lead to Fathi's release. Now, we need our representatives to stand in solidarity once again for Fathi, but this time to save his life.
Muammar al-Gaddafi, Libya's head of state, and other Libyan authorities will continue to let Fathi's life hang in the balance unless we expose this foul act for what it really is – a sad attempt to silence political opposition at all costs. We cannot just stand by while a bright flame of the human rights movement is extinguished.
Libya is seeking to improve its ties with the United States. And if we get enough members of Congress to sign the letter on Fathi's behalf, then Libya has a stronger incentive to heed our calls for justice. Email your Representatives and ask for them to stand in support of Fathi el-Jahmi.
Amnesty activists have a history of standing in Fathi's corner. His case garnered an outpouring of support and thousands of letters sent on his behalf during this past year's Global Write-a-thon.
In the following weeks, supporters will gather in front of the US mission to the United Nations and hold peaceful vigils as an act of solidarity for Fathi.
Add your voice to theirs. Tell your Representatives the story of Fathi el-Jahmi. Tell them that if we don't take a stand against Libya's gross misconduct, then we will lose a great human rights defender – and his health won't be to blame.
But for Fathi to have any chance at a future, we have got to make the present count.
11 April 2009
V-Moment
V-Day has started a new part of their website that celebrates courageous women around the globe. Below is the first installment. To check it out in the future click here.
Since 1996, the V-Day movement has continued to grow, from one event in New York City, to over 4000 events annually in over 120 countries and all 50 of the United States. As V-Day grows we want to ensure that those in the movement to end violence against women and girls remain connected and in touch with issues facing women all over the world.
V-Day is pleased to welcome you to our newest expanded V-Moment. Here, Vagina Warriors from all over the world will speak out about issues affecting women in their countries. Eve will continue to post as well.
Check back often and tell your friends! The V-Moment will be updated frequently and we will soon have the ability for users to leave comments!
ZOYA: “This is just the tip of the iceburg…”
Upon hearing of the recent change in Shiite law in Afghanistan, one that stipulates that a wife "is bound to preen for her husband as and when he desires," V-Day reached out to long time V-Day activist and representative of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, (RAWA) Zoya for her comments on behalf of RAWA and the women of her country.
In RAWA’s opinion, the anti-women law recently signed by Karzai is a torturous nail hammered in the coffin of women’s rights is not something new or astounding because such shameful acts are the dark outcomes of Afghanistan being ruled by US-backed Islamic criminals in the past seven years. The world needs to know that many more treasons, much harsher and more painful than the last one have been committed against our people and the fate of democracy and freedom in our crying nation. This is just an example but there are much greater and terrible treasons waiting for Afghan men and women, especially when based on the new policies of Obama administration, the so-called “moderate” Taliban and Gulbuddin Party is also officially added in the collection of criminals now ruling Afghanistan.
Maybe the mother of all these treacheries is the disgraceful bill of ‘National Reconciliation’ passed in which all criminals forgave themselves from their brutal war crimes in the last three decades and built a safe haven from prosecution and trial. And this happened in the presence of tens of thousands of foreign troops headed by US, but what salts the wounds of our people especially women, is the silence of the world which watched such treason and malevolence but did not take any concrete footstep against it.
In the present situation, we do not think that this shocking law specifically targeting women would receive effective reactions from any government. Naturally, the people, mostly women, RAWA and all the justice-seekers around the world would raise their voice and strive for exposing the corrupt Jehadi and mafia government of Karzai.
It would be attention-grabbing for the people around the globe to know that this semi-secret law was signed by Karzai at a time when the governmental media itself reports 600 suicides in the first two months of 2009, consisting of mostly women. There are much more bitter and heart-wrenching truths and this is just the tip of the iceberg. The sky-rocketing rapes, self-immolations, violence and thousands of other oppression on Afghan women expands on much broader horizons but since Afghanistan is under the fundamentalists’ grip and media clings with them, such horrible atrocities fail to reflect in the media.
It is a wide notion that Karzai passed this law to attract Shia (one of the two sects of Islam) voters but this is a little corner of the much bigger and hateful reality; by signing such a misogynist law, he has empowered and stabilized the presence of both Shia and Sunni fundamentalists. It merits a mention that the content of this document is more satisfying and interesting for the Sunnis than the Shias, who were the first ones to enforce such laws during their bloody 1992-96 rule.
The women MPs like Humaira Namati and others smell of hypocrisy when condemning this law because when they see such a bright and scandalous perfidy against women with their naked eyes, why don’t they resign or resolutely raise their voice the way Malalai Joya did? Expressing disapproval is more of a posing for the foreign media and it is obvious that they are collaborating with the government.
The so-called presidential elections are in four months but everyone knows that the new president would be someone that US desires. How is it possible that despite the invasion of US and its allies in Afghanistan, the president would be freely elected, against the presence of troops and Jehadi and Taliban fundamentalists and dream of a democratic Afghanistan? Even if US are fed up of Karzai, another Karzai would come with a different name and face. It is like the famous Afghani proverb, ‘the old donkey but with a new saddle!’ the policies of US has resulted in not only the power of Jehadi warlords but Hezb-e-Islami and pro-Taliban candidates are also pouring in.
In the West, propaganda for these elections is in full swing whereas as we said before, this is not going to bring any positive change for our people.
With the new president chosen by US, the parliament would be chosen by the new government. In these parliamentary elections, even if a handful of true people’s representatives find way, it would serve as a façade for US and government to show democracy that even opposing voices are being tolerated.
In attention to the previous dishonesty of Karzai’s criminal government and the policies of US, it is quite predictable that the new president and new parliament would be more odious than the present one.
The new strategy of Mr. Obama is possible to be of any use except for mitigating the soaring and burning pains of our people but have totally stampede the rights of our people especially women. This strategy does not remove the Jehadi, Parchami, Khalqi or Taliban from the political scenery but on contrary, US is reconciling all of these terrorist bands to create a US-supportive government and establish a stable path to the gas pipes of Central Asia. The American troops are not here for security but for strengthening the Jihadis and backing their dirty policies.
RAWA calls for all the people around the world especially the kind-hearted people of America, both the supporters and opponents of Mr. Obama to join hands if they truly do not want this treacherous policy to continue. They should be against conspiracy of a government installed of criminals fiercely against democracy, women’s rights and independence and to avoid such acts under the cover of new strategy.
RAWA’s eyes have always been waiting for the people around the world particularly great American people to condemn the wrong foreign policies of their governments for supporting and protecting misogynist fundamentalists groups and ignoring and isolating pro-human rights, women’s rights and democratic forces.
- Zoya
Zoya is a representative of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women Of Afghanistan, an independent political/social organization of Afghan women fighting for human rights and for social justice in Afghanistan www.rawa.org
Since 1996, the V-Day movement has continued to grow, from one event in New York City, to over 4000 events annually in over 120 countries and all 50 of the United States. As V-Day grows we want to ensure that those in the movement to end violence against women and girls remain connected and in touch with issues facing women all over the world.
V-Day is pleased to welcome you to our newest expanded V-Moment. Here, Vagina Warriors from all over the world will speak out about issues affecting women in their countries. Eve will continue to post as well.
Check back often and tell your friends! The V-Moment will be updated frequently and we will soon have the ability for users to leave comments!
ZOYA: “This is just the tip of the iceburg…”
Upon hearing of the recent change in Shiite law in Afghanistan, one that stipulates that a wife "is bound to preen for her husband as and when he desires," V-Day reached out to long time V-Day activist and representative of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, (RAWA) Zoya for her comments on behalf of RAWA and the women of her country.
In RAWA’s opinion, the anti-women law recently signed by Karzai is a torturous nail hammered in the coffin of women’s rights is not something new or astounding because such shameful acts are the dark outcomes of Afghanistan being ruled by US-backed Islamic criminals in the past seven years. The world needs to know that many more treasons, much harsher and more painful than the last one have been committed against our people and the fate of democracy and freedom in our crying nation. This is just an example but there are much greater and terrible treasons waiting for Afghan men and women, especially when based on the new policies of Obama administration, the so-called “moderate” Taliban and Gulbuddin Party is also officially added in the collection of criminals now ruling Afghanistan.
Maybe the mother of all these treacheries is the disgraceful bill of ‘National Reconciliation’ passed in which all criminals forgave themselves from their brutal war crimes in the last three decades and built a safe haven from prosecution and trial. And this happened in the presence of tens of thousands of foreign troops headed by US, but what salts the wounds of our people especially women, is the silence of the world which watched such treason and malevolence but did not take any concrete footstep against it.
In the present situation, we do not think that this shocking law specifically targeting women would receive effective reactions from any government. Naturally, the people, mostly women, RAWA and all the justice-seekers around the world would raise their voice and strive for exposing the corrupt Jehadi and mafia government of Karzai.
It would be attention-grabbing for the people around the globe to know that this semi-secret law was signed by Karzai at a time when the governmental media itself reports 600 suicides in the first two months of 2009, consisting of mostly women. There are much more bitter and heart-wrenching truths and this is just the tip of the iceberg. The sky-rocketing rapes, self-immolations, violence and thousands of other oppression on Afghan women expands on much broader horizons but since Afghanistan is under the fundamentalists’ grip and media clings with them, such horrible atrocities fail to reflect in the media.
It is a wide notion that Karzai passed this law to attract Shia (one of the two sects of Islam) voters but this is a little corner of the much bigger and hateful reality; by signing such a misogynist law, he has empowered and stabilized the presence of both Shia and Sunni fundamentalists. It merits a mention that the content of this document is more satisfying and interesting for the Sunnis than the Shias, who were the first ones to enforce such laws during their bloody 1992-96 rule.
The women MPs like Humaira Namati and others smell of hypocrisy when condemning this law because when they see such a bright and scandalous perfidy against women with their naked eyes, why don’t they resign or resolutely raise their voice the way Malalai Joya did? Expressing disapproval is more of a posing for the foreign media and it is obvious that they are collaborating with the government.
The so-called presidential elections are in four months but everyone knows that the new president would be someone that US desires. How is it possible that despite the invasion of US and its allies in Afghanistan, the president would be freely elected, against the presence of troops and Jehadi and Taliban fundamentalists and dream of a democratic Afghanistan? Even if US are fed up of Karzai, another Karzai would come with a different name and face. It is like the famous Afghani proverb, ‘the old donkey but with a new saddle!’ the policies of US has resulted in not only the power of Jehadi warlords but Hezb-e-Islami and pro-Taliban candidates are also pouring in.
In the West, propaganda for these elections is in full swing whereas as we said before, this is not going to bring any positive change for our people.
With the new president chosen by US, the parliament would be chosen by the new government. In these parliamentary elections, even if a handful of true people’s representatives find way, it would serve as a façade for US and government to show democracy that even opposing voices are being tolerated.
In attention to the previous dishonesty of Karzai’s criminal government and the policies of US, it is quite predictable that the new president and new parliament would be more odious than the present one.
The new strategy of Mr. Obama is possible to be of any use except for mitigating the soaring and burning pains of our people but have totally stampede the rights of our people especially women. This strategy does not remove the Jehadi, Parchami, Khalqi or Taliban from the political scenery but on contrary, US is reconciling all of these terrorist bands to create a US-supportive government and establish a stable path to the gas pipes of Central Asia. The American troops are not here for security but for strengthening the Jihadis and backing their dirty policies.
RAWA calls for all the people around the world especially the kind-hearted people of America, both the supporters and opponents of Mr. Obama to join hands if they truly do not want this treacherous policy to continue. They should be against conspiracy of a government installed of criminals fiercely against democracy, women’s rights and independence and to avoid such acts under the cover of new strategy.
RAWA’s eyes have always been waiting for the people around the world particularly great American people to condemn the wrong foreign policies of their governments for supporting and protecting misogynist fundamentalists groups and ignoring and isolating pro-human rights, women’s rights and democratic forces.
- Zoya
Zoya is a representative of RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women Of Afghanistan, an independent political/social organization of Afghan women fighting for human rights and for social justice in Afghanistan www.rawa.org
09 April 2009
URGENT ACTION APPEAL: Death Penalty in Saudi Arabia
To read the current Urgent Action newsletter, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/newslett.html
----------------------------------
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa11607.pdf
Note: Please write on behalf of these persons even though you may not have received the original UA when issued on May 17 2007. Thanks!
8 April 2009
Further Information on 116/07 (17 May 2007) and follow-ups (2 August 2007; 31 March 2008; 8 April 2008; 14 August 2008; 27 November 2008) - Death Penalty/Fear of imminent execution
SAUDI ARABIA
Mohamed Kohail (m), aged 23, Canadian national
Mehanna Sa'd (m), aged 22, Jordanian national
Sultan Kohail (m), aged 17, Canadian national
The Jeddah General Court upheld the death sentences imposed on Canadian national Mohamed Kohail and Jordanian national Mehanna Sa’d on 4 April 2009. Their cases have now been referred back to the Supreme Judicial Council. If the Council approves the death sentences, the two men could be executed at any time.
Sultan Kohail, meanwhile, is still awaiting retrial before a General Court, and therefore remains at risk of being sentenced to death if convicted, despite the fact that he is 17 years old.
Saudi Arabia is a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which prohibits the execution of those under 18 at the time of the crime; in the past, however, the Saudi Arabian authorities have executed juvenile offenders who were under 18 at the time of the crime of which they were convicted.
In November 2008, the Court of Cassation confirmed the death sentences against Mohamed Kohail and Mehanna Sa'd and then referred the sentences to the Supreme Judicial Council for approval. In February 2009, the Supreme Judicial Council sent the case back to the original trial court, the Jeddah General Court, for review. This Court has now again upheld their death sentences and referred the death sentences to the Supreme Judicial Council for approval.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
At least 158 people, including 76 foreign nationals, were executed by the Saudi Arabian authorities in 2007, and at least 102 people, including almost 40 foreign nationals were executed in 2008. Since the beginning of 2009, a further 24 people are known to have been executed.
Saudi Arabia applies the death penalty for a wide range of offenses. Court proceedings fall far short of international standards for fair trial. Defendants are rarely allowed formal representation by a lawyer, and in many cases are not informed of the progress of legal proceedings against them. Prisoners under sentence of death may not be informed of the date of execution until the morning when they are taken out and beheaded. They may be convicted solely on the basis of confessions obtained under duress or deception.
In a recent report on the use of the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, Amnesty International highlighted the extensive use of the death penalty as well as the disproportionately high number of executions of foreign nationals from developing countries. For further information please see Saudi Arabia: Affront to Justice: Death Penalty in Saudi Arabia, issued on 14 October 2008: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/saudi-arabia-executions-target-foreign-nationals-20081014
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:
- urging the King as the head of the Supreme Judicial Council not to ratify the death sentences against Mohamed Kohail and Mehanna Sa'd and to commute their death sentences;
- reminding the authorities that they are bound by international standards for fair trial in capital cases, in particular the UN Safeguards Guaranteeing the Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty, which guarantee adequate opportunity for defense and appeal, and prohibits the imposition of the death penalty when there is room for alternative interpretation of the evidence;
- highlighting that the execution of child offenders is expressly prohibited by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Saudi Arabia is a state party;
- expressing concern that 17-year-old Sultan Kohail may still be at risk of being sentenced to death and asking the authorities to guarantee that this will not happen, as Saudi Arabia is a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
APPEALS TO:
His Majesty King 'Abdullah Bin 'Abdul 'Aziz Al-Saud
The Custodian of the two Holy Mosques
Office of His Majesty the King
Royal Court
Riyadh
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
Fax: (via Ministry of the Interior) 011 966 1 403 1185 (please keep trying)
Salutation: Your Majesty
His Royal Highness Prince Naif bin 'Abdul 'Aziz Al-Saud
Minister of the Interior
Ministry of the Interior
P.O. Box 2933, Airport Road
Riyadh 11134
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
Fax: 011 966 1 403 1185 (please keep trying)
Salutation: Your Royal Highness
His Royal Highness Prince Saud al-Faisal bin 'Abdul 'Aziz Al-Saud
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Nasseriya Street
Riyadh 11124
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
Fax: 011 966 1 403 0645
Salutation: Your Royal Highness
COPIES TO:
Mr. Bandar Mohammed Abdullah Al Aiban
President
Human Rights Commission
P.O. Box 58889, King Fahad Road, Building No. 373
Riyadh 11515
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
Fax: 011 966 1 4612061
Ambassador Adel A. Al-Jubeir
Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
601 New Hampshire Ave. NW
Washington DC 20037
Fax: 1 202 944 5983
Email: info@saudiembassy.net
PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.
Check with the AIUSA Urgent Action office if sending appeals after 20 May 2009.
----------------------------------
Tip of the Month:
Write as soon as you can. Try to write as close as possible to the date a case is issued.
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Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights.
This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal.
Urgent Action Network
Amnesty International USA
600 Pennsylvania Ave SE 5th fl
Washington DC 20003
Email: uan@aiusa.org
http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/
Phone: 202.544.0200
Fax: 202.675.8566
http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/newslett.html
----------------------------------
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa11607.pdf
Note: Please write on behalf of these persons even though you may not have received the original UA when issued on May 17 2007. Thanks!
8 April 2009
Further Information on 116/07 (17 May 2007) and follow-ups (2 August 2007; 31 March 2008; 8 April 2008; 14 August 2008; 27 November 2008) - Death Penalty/Fear of imminent execution
SAUDI ARABIA
Mohamed Kohail (m), aged 23, Canadian national
Mehanna Sa'd (m), aged 22, Jordanian national
Sultan Kohail (m), aged 17, Canadian national
The Jeddah General Court upheld the death sentences imposed on Canadian national Mohamed Kohail and Jordanian national Mehanna Sa’d on 4 April 2009. Their cases have now been referred back to the Supreme Judicial Council. If the Council approves the death sentences, the two men could be executed at any time.
Sultan Kohail, meanwhile, is still awaiting retrial before a General Court, and therefore remains at risk of being sentenced to death if convicted, despite the fact that he is 17 years old.
Saudi Arabia is a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which prohibits the execution of those under 18 at the time of the crime; in the past, however, the Saudi Arabian authorities have executed juvenile offenders who were under 18 at the time of the crime of which they were convicted.
In November 2008, the Court of Cassation confirmed the death sentences against Mohamed Kohail and Mehanna Sa'd and then referred the sentences to the Supreme Judicial Council for approval. In February 2009, the Supreme Judicial Council sent the case back to the original trial court, the Jeddah General Court, for review. This Court has now again upheld their death sentences and referred the death sentences to the Supreme Judicial Council for approval.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
At least 158 people, including 76 foreign nationals, were executed by the Saudi Arabian authorities in 2007, and at least 102 people, including almost 40 foreign nationals were executed in 2008. Since the beginning of 2009, a further 24 people are known to have been executed.
Saudi Arabia applies the death penalty for a wide range of offenses. Court proceedings fall far short of international standards for fair trial. Defendants are rarely allowed formal representation by a lawyer, and in many cases are not informed of the progress of legal proceedings against them. Prisoners under sentence of death may not be informed of the date of execution until the morning when they are taken out and beheaded. They may be convicted solely on the basis of confessions obtained under duress or deception.
In a recent report on the use of the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, Amnesty International highlighted the extensive use of the death penalty as well as the disproportionately high number of executions of foreign nationals from developing countries. For further information please see Saudi Arabia: Affront to Justice: Death Penalty in Saudi Arabia, issued on 14 October 2008: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/saudi-arabia-executions-target-foreign-nationals-20081014
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:
- urging the King as the head of the Supreme Judicial Council not to ratify the death sentences against Mohamed Kohail and Mehanna Sa'd and to commute their death sentences;
- reminding the authorities that they are bound by international standards for fair trial in capital cases, in particular the UN Safeguards Guaranteeing the Protection of the Rights of Those Facing the Death Penalty, which guarantee adequate opportunity for defense and appeal, and prohibits the imposition of the death penalty when there is room for alternative interpretation of the evidence;
- highlighting that the execution of child offenders is expressly prohibited by the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Saudi Arabia is a state party;
- expressing concern that 17-year-old Sultan Kohail may still be at risk of being sentenced to death and asking the authorities to guarantee that this will not happen, as Saudi Arabia is a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
APPEALS TO:
His Majesty King 'Abdullah Bin 'Abdul 'Aziz Al-Saud
The Custodian of the two Holy Mosques
Office of His Majesty the King
Royal Court
Riyadh
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
Fax: (via Ministry of the Interior) 011 966 1 403 1185 (please keep trying)
Salutation: Your Majesty
His Royal Highness Prince Naif bin 'Abdul 'Aziz Al-Saud
Minister of the Interior
Ministry of the Interior
P.O. Box 2933, Airport Road
Riyadh 11134
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
Fax: 011 966 1 403 1185 (please keep trying)
Salutation: Your Royal Highness
His Royal Highness Prince Saud al-Faisal bin 'Abdul 'Aziz Al-Saud
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Nasseriya Street
Riyadh 11124
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
Fax: 011 966 1 403 0645
Salutation: Your Royal Highness
COPIES TO:
Mr. Bandar Mohammed Abdullah Al Aiban
President
Human Rights Commission
P.O. Box 58889, King Fahad Road, Building No. 373
Riyadh 11515
KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA
Fax: 011 966 1 4612061
Ambassador Adel A. Al-Jubeir
Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
601 New Hampshire Ave. NW
Washington DC 20037
Fax: 1 202 944 5983
Email: info@saudiembassy.net
PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.
Check with the AIUSA Urgent Action office if sending appeals after 20 May 2009.
----------------------------------
Tip of the Month:
Write as soon as you can. Try to write as close as possible to the date a case is issued.
** POSTAGE RATES **
Within the United States:
$0.27 - Postcards
$0.42 - Letters and Cards (up to 1 oz.)
To Mexico and Canada:
$0.72 - Postcards
$0.72 - Airmail Letters and Cards (up to 1 oz.)
To all other destination countries:
$0.94 - Postcards
$0.94 - Airmail Letters and Cards (up to 1 oz.)
Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights.
This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal.
Urgent Action Network
Amnesty International USA
600 Pennsylvania Ave SE 5th fl
Washington DC 20003
Email: uan@aiusa.org
http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/
Phone: 202.544.0200
Fax: 202.675.8566
27 March 2009
Action Alert: Urge Afghan President Hamid Karzai to pardon Afghan journalist
The Afghan Supreme Court is upholding a 20 year prison sentence given to student and journalist Parwez Kambakhsh for blasphemy after he simply downloaded from the internet and circulated an article about women's rights under Islam.
We now must rally together to pressure Afghan President Hamid Karzai to pardon this innocent man.
Kambakhsh was originally sentenced to death for his "crime." His sentence was later reduced to jail time for distributing the internet article. Freedom-of-the-press advocates and human rights groups who have championed Kambakhsh's case are horrified by the decision.
We now must rally together to pressure Afghan President Hamid Karzai to pardon this innocent man.
Kambakhsh was originally sentenced to death for his "crime." His sentence was later reduced to jail time for distributing the internet article. Freedom-of-the-press advocates and human rights groups who have championed Kambakhsh's case are horrified by the decision.
Action Alert: Jailed Without Justice
Mr. N, a Buddhist monk, fled to the U.S. after he was tortured in Tibet for his religious beliefs. When he arrived in New York, he was immediately detained and never had a chance to argue for his case before a judge. After 10 months in detention, he was finally granted asylum. Tragically, Mr. N's story is just one of many in our new report.1
We found that countless cases of asylum seekers fleeing torture and long time lawful permanent residents are being unjustly detained in a broken and costly U.S. immigration detention system.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could issue new regulations that would quickly solve many of these problems. But instead, just three weeks ago, the office in charge of these policies testified before Congress that it plans to detain almost a hundred thousand more immigrants this year than last.
Tell the Dept. of Homeland Security that this is wrong, and that they need to fix this deeply flawed system of detention. We promise to hand deliver your signatures.
In our report, Jailed without Justice, we were shocked by what our Mr. N, a Buddhist monk, fled to the U.S. after he was tortured in Tibet for his religious beliefs. When he arrived in New York, he was immediately detained and never had a chance to argue for his case before a judge. After 10 months in detention, he was finally granted asylum. Tragically, Mr. N's story is just one of many in our new report.1
We found that countless cases of asylum seekers fleeing torture and long time lawful permanent residents are being unjustly detained in a broken and costly U.S. immigration detention system.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could issue new regulations that would quickly solve many of these problems. But instead, just three weeks ago, the office in charge of these policies testified before Congress that it plans to detain almost a hundred thousand more immigrants this year than last.
Tell the Dept. of Homeland Security that this is wrong, and that they need to fix this deeply flawed system of detention. We promise to hand deliver your signatures.
In our report, Jailed without Justice, we were shocked by what our Mr. N, a Buddhist monk, fled to the U.S. after he was tortured in Tibet for his religious beliefs. When he arrived in New York, he was immediately detained and never had a chance to argue for his case before a judge. After 10 months in detention, he was finally granted asylum. Tragically, Mr. N's story is just one of many in our new report.1
We found that countless cases of asylum seekers fleeing torture and long time lawful permanent residents are being unjustly detained in a broken and costly U.S. immigration detention system.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could issue new regulations that would quickly solve many of these problems. But instead, just three weeks ago, the office in charge of these policies testified before Congress that it plans to detain almost a hundred thousand more immigrants this year than last.
Tell the Dept. of Homeland Security that this is wrong, and that they need to fix this deeply flawed system of detention. We promise to hand deliver your signatures.
In our report, Jailed without Justice, we were shocked by what our researchers found:
~lawful permanent residents, asylum seekers, and survivors of torture are being detained while they fight for protection
~US citizens and lawful permanent residents can be detained for years without any review of their custody
~Meaningful oversight and accountability for abuse or neglect in detention is almost nonexistent
~Individuals in detention often lack treatment for their medical needs and 74 people have died while in immigration detention over the past five years
Although we're working with members in both the Senate and House on legislation to permanently fix the problems, innocent people are suffering today, and need help now. Please sign our letter to Janet Napolitano.
We've got to show the DHS that this is a priority for us. We can't let them delay while U.S. citizens, asylum seekers and survivors of torture are being wrongly detained and treated like criminals without any meaningful legal recourse.
1Read our new report: Jailed Without Justice (PDF 662K).
We found that countless cases of asylum seekers fleeing torture and long time lawful permanent residents are being unjustly detained in a broken and costly U.S. immigration detention system.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could issue new regulations that would quickly solve many of these problems. But instead, just three weeks ago, the office in charge of these policies testified before Congress that it plans to detain almost a hundred thousand more immigrants this year than last.
Tell the Dept. of Homeland Security that this is wrong, and that they need to fix this deeply flawed system of detention. We promise to hand deliver your signatures.
In our report, Jailed without Justice, we were shocked by what our Mr. N, a Buddhist monk, fled to the U.S. after he was tortured in Tibet for his religious beliefs. When he arrived in New York, he was immediately detained and never had a chance to argue for his case before a judge. After 10 months in detention, he was finally granted asylum. Tragically, Mr. N's story is just one of many in our new report.1
We found that countless cases of asylum seekers fleeing torture and long time lawful permanent residents are being unjustly detained in a broken and costly U.S. immigration detention system.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could issue new regulations that would quickly solve many of these problems. But instead, just three weeks ago, the office in charge of these policies testified before Congress that it plans to detain almost a hundred thousand more immigrants this year than last.
Tell the Dept. of Homeland Security that this is wrong, and that they need to fix this deeply flawed system of detention. We promise to hand deliver your signatures.
In our report, Jailed without Justice, we were shocked by what our Mr. N, a Buddhist monk, fled to the U.S. after he was tortured in Tibet for his religious beliefs. When he arrived in New York, he was immediately detained and never had a chance to argue for his case before a judge. After 10 months in detention, he was finally granted asylum. Tragically, Mr. N's story is just one of many in our new report.1
We found that countless cases of asylum seekers fleeing torture and long time lawful permanent residents are being unjustly detained in a broken and costly U.S. immigration detention system.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could issue new regulations that would quickly solve many of these problems. But instead, just three weeks ago, the office in charge of these policies testified before Congress that it plans to detain almost a hundred thousand more immigrants this year than last.
Tell the Dept. of Homeland Security that this is wrong, and that they need to fix this deeply flawed system of detention. We promise to hand deliver your signatures.
In our report, Jailed without Justice, we were shocked by what our researchers found:
~lawful permanent residents, asylum seekers, and survivors of torture are being detained while they fight for protection
~US citizens and lawful permanent residents can be detained for years without any review of their custody
~Meaningful oversight and accountability for abuse or neglect in detention is almost nonexistent
~Individuals in detention often lack treatment for their medical needs and 74 people have died while in immigration detention over the past five years
Although we're working with members in both the Senate and House on legislation to permanently fix the problems, innocent people are suffering today, and need help now. Please sign our letter to Janet Napolitano.
We've got to show the DHS that this is a priority for us. We can't let them delay while U.S. citizens, asylum seekers and survivors of torture are being wrongly detained and treated like criminals without any meaningful legal recourse.
1Read our new report: Jailed Without Justice (PDF 662K).
Throw Tomatoes at AIG
The people at AIG who are most responsible for the severity of the financial crisis should be in jail. But instead, they're slated to get $450 million in bonuses. Infuriating, right?
So a MoveOn member created a game to show just how mad Americans are at AIG. It's called The Great AIG Tomato Toss and it's based on the idea that we should stop throwing money at the people who ruined our economy—and start throwing tomatoes.
I just played, and it's a blast. Can you play too—and help reach the goal of 5 million tomatoes thrown? http://www.moveon.org/tomato/
So a MoveOn member created a game to show just how mad Americans are at AIG. It's called The Great AIG Tomato Toss and it's based on the idea that we should stop throwing money at the people who ruined our economy—and start throwing tomatoes.
I just played, and it's a blast. Can you play too—and help reach the goal of 5 million tomatoes thrown? http://www.moveon.org/tomato/
Action Alert: Justice for those brutally beat and raped
What do you do when the Supreme Court stands with you and your government works against you?
Last month, the Mexican Supreme Court confirmed that women in San Salvador Atenco suffered major physical and sexual abuse at the hands of police officers. But even with the affirmation of the highest court in Mexico, the women in Atenco are still waiting for these officers to be held accountable for their crimes.
The current Attorney General of Mexico, Eduardo Medina-Mora, remains suspiciously silent on this case that his office is responsible for handling. But it doesn't take much investigating to find out why: At the time of the attacks, Medina-Mora was in charge of the same police officers who were implicated in the assaults. Any real investigation into the attacks and arrests could surely place significant blame squarely on his shoulders.
If securing justice continues to rely on Attorney General Medina-Mora, then the police officers guilty of brutally beating and raping the women in Atenco will remain free to roam the streets, a threat to those they're meant to protect.
Sign the petition.
Protesters demanding justice for the women in Atenco.
President Calderón must step in to prove his leadership and uphold the rule of law in Mexico. When you add your name to our online petition, you're adding your voice to our cries against injustice, impunity and unlawful attacks on peaceful demonstrators.
By the end of April, we want to send such a long list of names to President Calderón, that he is compelled to take action. We want President Calderón to stand on the side of the Mexican people and on the side of human rights.
In May, three years will have passed since this horrific violence took place in Atenco. We cannot allow the Attorney General of Mexico to continue to side-step the justice system any more.
Sign our petition to President Calderón asking him to see to it that all those responsible for the crimes against the women of Atenco are brought to justice.
Just over a week ago, our activists gathered in Chicago and rallied around this very cause. Hundreds stood at the doors of the Mexican Consulate and demanded the Mexican government's attention and action. Our presence made our message clear -- we will not back down.
The Mexican Supreme Court has also made their message clear -- the women of Atenco deserve justice. While the Attorney General may try to drag his heels at every step of this process, President Calderón has the power to move things forward now.
Without President Calderón's leadership, any chance for justice for the women in Atenco could be lost.
Last month, the Mexican Supreme Court confirmed that women in San Salvador Atenco suffered major physical and sexual abuse at the hands of police officers. But even with the affirmation of the highest court in Mexico, the women in Atenco are still waiting for these officers to be held accountable for their crimes.
The current Attorney General of Mexico, Eduardo Medina-Mora, remains suspiciously silent on this case that his office is responsible for handling. But it doesn't take much investigating to find out why: At the time of the attacks, Medina-Mora was in charge of the same police officers who were implicated in the assaults. Any real investigation into the attacks and arrests could surely place significant blame squarely on his shoulders.
If securing justice continues to rely on Attorney General Medina-Mora, then the police officers guilty of brutally beating and raping the women in Atenco will remain free to roam the streets, a threat to those they're meant to protect.
Sign the petition.
Protesters demanding justice for the women in Atenco.
President Calderón must step in to prove his leadership and uphold the rule of law in Mexico. When you add your name to our online petition, you're adding your voice to our cries against injustice, impunity and unlawful attacks on peaceful demonstrators.
By the end of April, we want to send such a long list of names to President Calderón, that he is compelled to take action. We want President Calderón to stand on the side of the Mexican people and on the side of human rights.
In May, three years will have passed since this horrific violence took place in Atenco. We cannot allow the Attorney General of Mexico to continue to side-step the justice system any more.
Sign our petition to President Calderón asking him to see to it that all those responsible for the crimes against the women of Atenco are brought to justice.
Just over a week ago, our activists gathered in Chicago and rallied around this very cause. Hundreds stood at the doors of the Mexican Consulate and demanded the Mexican government's attention and action. Our presence made our message clear -- we will not back down.
The Mexican Supreme Court has also made their message clear -- the women of Atenco deserve justice. While the Attorney General may try to drag his heels at every step of this process, President Calderón has the power to move things forward now.
Without President Calderón's leadership, any chance for justice for the women in Atenco could be lost.
17 March 2009
Action Alert: Jinus Sobhani Released from Prison
Good news! Iran's Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi's secretary, Jinus Sobhani, has been released from prison on bail. Sobhani had been detained in solitary confinement since January 14 without access to a lawyer. Now we must make sure 60-year-old Alieh Eghdamdoust is freed. She was recently imprisoned for her participation in a peaceful protest against Iran's discriminatory laws towards women some three years ago. She was among seventy women arrested for this "crime" and is now having to serve a three-year prison sentence.
This news comes after alarming series of attacks against women's rights and human rights leaders by the Iranian government. Join feminist activists worldwide in urging Iranian leaders and the United Nations to pressure the Iranian government to stop harassing women's rights activists.
Late last year, Dr. Ebadi's Center for the Defense of Human Rights, where Sobhani worked, was forcibly closed. Following this, Ebadi's personal property was seized, her home was vandalized by an angry mob and Sobhani was arrested.
Help put an end to this harassment. Urge Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Iran's Head of the Judiciary, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi; the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay; and the U.N. and Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to intervene now to free Eghdamdoust from prison and to re-open Dr. Ebadi's center immediately!
This news comes after alarming series of attacks against women's rights and human rights leaders by the Iranian government. Join feminist activists worldwide in urging Iranian leaders and the United Nations to pressure the Iranian government to stop harassing women's rights activists.
Late last year, Dr. Ebadi's Center for the Defense of Human Rights, where Sobhani worked, was forcibly closed. Following this, Ebadi's personal property was seized, her home was vandalized by an angry mob and Sobhani was arrested.
Help put an end to this harassment. Urge Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Iran's Head of the Judiciary, Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi; the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay; and the U.N. and Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon to intervene now to free Eghdamdoust from prison and to re-open Dr. Ebadi's center immediately!
14 March 2009
American citizen shot in the head by Israeli forces in West Bank
Various, Friday, March 13th, 2009
AMERICAN CITIZEN CRITICALLY INJURED AFTER BEING SHOT IN THE HEAD BY ISRAELI FORCES IN NI’LIN
The link to watch for this story:
http://palsolidarity.org/2009/03/5324
For Immediate Release
13th March 2009, Ni’lin Village--An American citizen has been critically injured in the village of Ni’lin after Israeli forces shot him in the head with a tear-gas canister.
Tristan Anderson from California USA, 37 years old, has been taken to Israeli hospital Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. Anderson is unconscious and has been bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth. He sustained a large hole in his forehead where he was struck by the canister. He is currently being operated on.
Tristan was shot by the new tear-gas canisters that can be shot up to 500m. I ran over as I saw someone had been shot, while the Israeli forces continued to fire tear-gas at us. When an ambulance came, the Israeli soldiers refused to allow the ambulance through the checkpoint just outside the village. After 5 minutes of arguing with the soldiers, the ambulance passed.
The Israeli army began using to use a high velocity tear gas canister in December 2008. The black canister, labeled in Hebrew as “40mm bullet special/long range,” can shoot over 400 meters. The gas canister does not make a noise when fired or emit a smoke tail. A combination of the canister’s high velocity and silence is extremely dangerous and has caused numerous injuries, including a Palestinian male whose leg was broken in January 2009.
Please Contact: Adam Taylor (English), ISM Media Office +972 8503948
Sasha Solanas (English), ISM Media Office - +972 549032981
Woody Berch (English), at Tel Hashomer hospital +972 548053082
Tristan Anderson
Tristan Anderson was shot as Israeli forces attacked a demonstration against the construction of the annexation wall through the village of Ni’lin’s land. Another resident from Ni’lin was shot in the leg with live ammunition.
Four Ni’lin residents have been killed during demonstrations against the confiscation of their land.
Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with live ammunition on 29th July 2008. The following day, Yousef Amira (17) was shot twice with rubber-coated steel bullets, leaving him brain dead. He died a week later on 4 August 2008. Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22), was the third Ni’lin resident to be killed by Israeli forces. He was shot in the back with live ammunition on 28 December 2008. That same day, Mohammed Khawaje (20), was shot in the head with live ammunition, leaving him brain dead. He died three days in a Ramallah hospital.
Residents in the village of Ni’lin have been demonstrating against the construction of the Apartheid Wall, deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Ni’lin will lose approximately 2500 dunums of agricultural land when the construction of the Wall is completed. Ni’lin was 57,000 dunums in 1948, reduced to 33,000 dunums in 1967, currently is 10,000 dunums and will be 7,500 dunums after the construction of the Wall.
Updates:
Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital, tells Ha’aretz:
He’s in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests,” She described Anderson’s condition as life-threatening.
Israeli activist Jonathan Pollack told Ynet:
… the firing incident took place inside the village and not next to the fence. There were clashes in the earlier hours, but he wasn’t part of them. He didn’t throw stones and wasn’t standing next to the stone throwers.
There was really no reason to fire at them. The Dutch girl standing next to him was not hurt. It only injured him, like a bullet.
AMERICAN CITIZEN CRITICALLY INJURED AFTER BEING SHOT IN THE HEAD BY ISRAELI FORCES IN NI’LIN
The link to watch for this story:
http://palsolidarity.org/2009/03/5324
For Immediate Release
13th March 2009, Ni’lin Village--An American citizen has been critically injured in the village of Ni’lin after Israeli forces shot him in the head with a tear-gas canister.
Tristan Anderson from California USA, 37 years old, has been taken to Israeli hospital Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. Anderson is unconscious and has been bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth. He sustained a large hole in his forehead where he was struck by the canister. He is currently being operated on.
Tristan was shot by the new tear-gas canisters that can be shot up to 500m. I ran over as I saw someone had been shot, while the Israeli forces continued to fire tear-gas at us. When an ambulance came, the Israeli soldiers refused to allow the ambulance through the checkpoint just outside the village. After 5 minutes of arguing with the soldiers, the ambulance passed.
The Israeli army began using to use a high velocity tear gas canister in December 2008. The black canister, labeled in Hebrew as “40mm bullet special/long range,” can shoot over 400 meters. The gas canister does not make a noise when fired or emit a smoke tail. A combination of the canister’s high velocity and silence is extremely dangerous and has caused numerous injuries, including a Palestinian male whose leg was broken in January 2009.
Please Contact: Adam Taylor (English), ISM Media Office +972 8503948
Sasha Solanas (English), ISM Media Office - +972 549032981
Woody Berch (English), at Tel Hashomer hospital +972 548053082
Tristan Anderson
Tristan Anderson was shot as Israeli forces attacked a demonstration against the construction of the annexation wall through the village of Ni’lin’s land. Another resident from Ni’lin was shot in the leg with live ammunition.
Four Ni’lin residents have been killed during demonstrations against the confiscation of their land.
Ahmed Mousa (10) was shot in the forehead with live ammunition on 29th July 2008. The following day, Yousef Amira (17) was shot twice with rubber-coated steel bullets, leaving him brain dead. He died a week later on 4 August 2008. Arafat Rateb Khawaje (22), was the third Ni’lin resident to be killed by Israeli forces. He was shot in the back with live ammunition on 28 December 2008. That same day, Mohammed Khawaje (20), was shot in the head with live ammunition, leaving him brain dead. He died three days in a Ramallah hospital.
Residents in the village of Ni’lin have been demonstrating against the construction of the Apartheid Wall, deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004. Ni’lin will lose approximately 2500 dunums of agricultural land when the construction of the Wall is completed. Ni’lin was 57,000 dunums in 1948, reduced to 33,000 dunums in 1967, currently is 10,000 dunums and will be 7,500 dunums after the construction of the Wall.
Updates:
Orly Levi, a spokeswoman at the Tel Hashomer hospital, tells Ha’aretz:
He’s in critical condition, anesthetized and on a ventilator and undergoing imaging tests,” She described Anderson’s condition as life-threatening.
Israeli activist Jonathan Pollack told Ynet:
… the firing incident took place inside the village and not next to the fence. There were clashes in the earlier hours, but he wasn’t part of them. He didn’t throw stones and wasn’t standing next to the stone throwers.
There was really no reason to fire at them. The Dutch girl standing next to him was not hurt. It only injured him, like a bullet.
13 March 2009
Anyone Going to Paris?
Gwyneth Paltrow has a new website where she and her friends dedicate each week to another fun subject. This past week was GO, and the subject of interest was Paris! So if you are planning a trip to Paris check out all the little places mentioned. Also, if you'd like to check out Ms. Paltrow's new site click here.
Paris
When I was ten years old, my father and I took a trip to Paris, leaving my younger brother and mother in London where she was filming a movie. My dad believed in one-on-one time with us, and sometimes that extended to a weekend away. We stayed at a great hotel and he said I could order whatever I wanted for breakfast (French fries). We went to the Pompidou museum, the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre - the usual spots. It was pretty great. On the plane back to London he asked me if I knew why we had gone, just he and I, to Paris for the weekend. I said no, but I felt so lucky for the trip. He said, “I wanted you to see Paris for the first time with a man who would always love you, no matter what.” From that time on, Paris was and continues to be very special to me. I lived there for five months in 1994 and I have made many trips back. These are the places in Paris I stay and eat and toast my dad.
Love,
Gwyneth Paltrow
Places to Eatl’Ami Louis
32, rue du Vertbois
3e
+33 1 48 87 77 48
There are two schools of thought regarding l’Ami Louis: one is that it is an overpriced place for tourists and the other is that it is one of the best, most venerable bistros in Paris. I am firmly in the school of the latter. It is small and wood paneled with an ancient oven and a sicko wine list. Every time I go, I see a former French president or the like, and I leave so full that I walk back to the hotel.Le Voltaire
27, Quai Voltaire
7e
+33 1 42 61 17 49
Le Voltaire is a lovely place on the river with a lighter type of French fare (grapefruit and avocado salad). It is one of my favorite spots to go for lunch. Market
15, Avenue Matignon
8e
+33 1 56 43 40 90
www.jean-georges.com
From superchef Jean-Georges, this restaurant serves Asian/nouvelle French cuisine done wonderfully and served in a clean, contemporary space.Kinugawa
9, rue du Mont-Thabor
1e
+33 1 42 60 65 07
http://kinugawa-hanawa.com
After a couple of days in Paris when I need to lay off the butter and goose fat, I head to Kinugawa for a Japanese lunch. After a lovely bowl of miso soup, some beautiful sashimi and a seaweed salad, I am ready to partake in all things French once more.T’CHA La Maison de Thé
6, rue du Pont de Lodi
6e
+33 1 43 29 61 31
This is a little teahouse off the beaten track in the sixth arrondissement. It is a great place for a light lunch or a perfect cup of sencha.Da Mimmo
39, Boulevard Magenta
10e
+33 1 42 06 44 47
www.damimmo.fr
I was told about Da Mimmo a few years ago by one of my coolest, most in-the-know friends. It is rustic Italian, super simple, super good. There is a massive display of the day’s fresh antipasti in the center of the room and that’s the best part of the dinner. No tourists here.Le Duc
243 Boulevard Raspail
14e
+33 1 43 20 96 30
http://leduc.abemadi.com
Don’t let the nautically themed room put you off. The seafood is fresh and wonderful.Mariage Frères
13, rue des Grands-Augustins
6e
+33 1 40 51 82 50
www.mariagefreres.com
I absolutely adore this tearoom and shop. It’s perfect for afternoon tea and beautiful objects for the home. Don’t miss the famous Mariage Frères candles (the Darjeeling one is my fave).Cinq-Mars
51, rue Verneuil
7e
+33 1 45 44 69 13
This place is the cozy, affordable, locals-only restaurant you always search for but never find when traveling. The food is simple but well prepared and it’s a nice break from the big, loud brasseries.Joséphine Chez Dumonet
117, rue du Cherche-Midi
6e
+33 1 45 48 52 40
This old-school bistro is one of my favorite places. The room is quite plain and unimpressive if you are looking to be dazzled but it has a wonderful feeling and it is very authentic. I love the duck confit...and watching all of the regulars. Restaurant Hélène Darroze
4, rue d’Assas
6e
+33 1 42 22 00 11
www.helenedarroze.com
Hélène Darroze is one of the few women to ever be awarded two Michelin stars. And these stars are well deserved. The food is terrific. And the room is quiet, calm and elegant.Brasserie Balzac
49, rue des Ecoles
5e
+33 1 43 54 13 67
Balzac is a great old brasserie with excellent service (the waiters have been there forever but are not pissed off, they retain a dry sense of humor). The food is good, classic brasserie fare and it’s a great spot for Sunday lunch or late dinner.Rose Bakery
30, rue Debelleyme
3e
+33 1 49 96 54 01
My friend Elena just got back from Paris and she had the most delicious meal at Rose Bakery. They have organic produce, fresh tarts, quiches and a sweet waitstaff.Lina’s Café
22, rue des Saints-Peres
7e
+33 1 40 20 42 78
www.linascafe.fr
Lina’s is a chain but you wouldn’t know it, biting into their famous turkey club. Fresh and delicious, it’s the perfect inexpensive meal to have while walking through the streets of Paris.Places to Stay Ritz Paris
15 Place Vendôme
1e
+33 1 43 16 30 30
www.ritzparis.com
Although I occasionally try the “new” spot or an old-new spot, I always keep coming back to the Ritz. The place is just beautiful and the service is pretty flawless for France. Yes, it costs an arm and a leg, but it’s worth it. Hotel Montalembert
3, rue de Montalembert
7e
+33 1 45 49 68 68
www.montalembert.com
This hotel is very small (as are the rooms) but it is clean and modern and tucked away in a great area off Boulevard Saint-Germain. You don’t feel like a tourist in the way you do when you stay at one of the grande dame hotels. When I shot a film in Paris, my dad stayed here with our black Labrador for weeks - it was our home away from home. They were incredibly gracious and welcoming. Room 81 has a view of the Eiffel Tower. Hôtel Particulier Montmartre
23, Avenue Junot
Pavillon D
8e
+33 1 53 41 81 40
http://hotel-particulier-montmartre.com/fr
This once grand mansion turned five-room chic hotel was recommended to me by a discerning travel journalist. He had just gone to the opening and said it was really special and worth checking out. Each room is distinctly decorated by various artists. I’ve never stayed in Montmartre, but I love the idea of being in that area of Paris. Hotel Saint Vincent
5 rue du Pré aux Clercs
7e
+33 1 42 61 01 51
www.hotelsaintvincentparis.com
Another spot in Saint Germain, this small boutique hotel is a great deal in an otherwise overpriced area. I have friends that have stayed here and rave about the intimate, clean rooms and ideal location.
Paris
When I was ten years old, my father and I took a trip to Paris, leaving my younger brother and mother in London where she was filming a movie. My dad believed in one-on-one time with us, and sometimes that extended to a weekend away. We stayed at a great hotel and he said I could order whatever I wanted for breakfast (French fries). We went to the Pompidou museum, the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre - the usual spots. It was pretty great. On the plane back to London he asked me if I knew why we had gone, just he and I, to Paris for the weekend. I said no, but I felt so lucky for the trip. He said, “I wanted you to see Paris for the first time with a man who would always love you, no matter what.” From that time on, Paris was and continues to be very special to me. I lived there for five months in 1994 and I have made many trips back. These are the places in Paris I stay and eat and toast my dad.
Love,
Gwyneth Paltrow
Places to Eatl’Ami Louis
32, rue du Vertbois
3e
+33 1 48 87 77 48
There are two schools of thought regarding l’Ami Louis: one is that it is an overpriced place for tourists and the other is that it is one of the best, most venerable bistros in Paris. I am firmly in the school of the latter. It is small and wood paneled with an ancient oven and a sicko wine list. Every time I go, I see a former French president or the like, and I leave so full that I walk back to the hotel.Le Voltaire
27, Quai Voltaire
7e
+33 1 42 61 17 49
Le Voltaire is a lovely place on the river with a lighter type of French fare (grapefruit and avocado salad). It is one of my favorite spots to go for lunch. Market
15, Avenue Matignon
8e
+33 1 56 43 40 90
www.jean-georges.com
From superchef Jean-Georges, this restaurant serves Asian/nouvelle French cuisine done wonderfully and served in a clean, contemporary space.Kinugawa
9, rue du Mont-Thabor
1e
+33 1 42 60 65 07
http://kinugawa-hanawa.com
After a couple of days in Paris when I need to lay off the butter and goose fat, I head to Kinugawa for a Japanese lunch. After a lovely bowl of miso soup, some beautiful sashimi and a seaweed salad, I am ready to partake in all things French once more.T’CHA La Maison de Thé
6, rue du Pont de Lodi
6e
+33 1 43 29 61 31
This is a little teahouse off the beaten track in the sixth arrondissement. It is a great place for a light lunch or a perfect cup of sencha.Da Mimmo
39, Boulevard Magenta
10e
+33 1 42 06 44 47
www.damimmo.fr
I was told about Da Mimmo a few years ago by one of my coolest, most in-the-know friends. It is rustic Italian, super simple, super good. There is a massive display of the day’s fresh antipasti in the center of the room and that’s the best part of the dinner. No tourists here.Le Duc
243 Boulevard Raspail
14e
+33 1 43 20 96 30
http://leduc.abemadi.com
Don’t let the nautically themed room put you off. The seafood is fresh and wonderful.Mariage Frères
13, rue des Grands-Augustins
6e
+33 1 40 51 82 50
www.mariagefreres.com
I absolutely adore this tearoom and shop. It’s perfect for afternoon tea and beautiful objects for the home. Don’t miss the famous Mariage Frères candles (the Darjeeling one is my fave).Cinq-Mars
51, rue Verneuil
7e
+33 1 45 44 69 13
This place is the cozy, affordable, locals-only restaurant you always search for but never find when traveling. The food is simple but well prepared and it’s a nice break from the big, loud brasseries.Joséphine Chez Dumonet
117, rue du Cherche-Midi
6e
+33 1 45 48 52 40
This old-school bistro is one of my favorite places. The room is quite plain and unimpressive if you are looking to be dazzled but it has a wonderful feeling and it is very authentic. I love the duck confit...and watching all of the regulars. Restaurant Hélène Darroze
4, rue d’Assas
6e
+33 1 42 22 00 11
www.helenedarroze.com
Hélène Darroze is one of the few women to ever be awarded two Michelin stars. And these stars are well deserved. The food is terrific. And the room is quiet, calm and elegant.Brasserie Balzac
49, rue des Ecoles
5e
+33 1 43 54 13 67
Balzac is a great old brasserie with excellent service (the waiters have been there forever but are not pissed off, they retain a dry sense of humor). The food is good, classic brasserie fare and it’s a great spot for Sunday lunch or late dinner.Rose Bakery
30, rue Debelleyme
3e
+33 1 49 96 54 01
My friend Elena just got back from Paris and she had the most delicious meal at Rose Bakery. They have organic produce, fresh tarts, quiches and a sweet waitstaff.Lina’s Café
22, rue des Saints-Peres
7e
+33 1 40 20 42 78
www.linascafe.fr
Lina’s is a chain but you wouldn’t know it, biting into their famous turkey club. Fresh and delicious, it’s the perfect inexpensive meal to have while walking through the streets of Paris.Places to Stay Ritz Paris
15 Place Vendôme
1e
+33 1 43 16 30 30
www.ritzparis.com
Although I occasionally try the “new” spot or an old-new spot, I always keep coming back to the Ritz. The place is just beautiful and the service is pretty flawless for France. Yes, it costs an arm and a leg, but it’s worth it. Hotel Montalembert
3, rue de Montalembert
7e
+33 1 45 49 68 68
www.montalembert.com
This hotel is very small (as are the rooms) but it is clean and modern and tucked away in a great area off Boulevard Saint-Germain. You don’t feel like a tourist in the way you do when you stay at one of the grande dame hotels. When I shot a film in Paris, my dad stayed here with our black Labrador for weeks - it was our home away from home. They were incredibly gracious and welcoming. Room 81 has a view of the Eiffel Tower. Hôtel Particulier Montmartre
23, Avenue Junot
Pavillon D
8e
+33 1 53 41 81 40
http://hotel-particulier-montmartre.com/fr
This once grand mansion turned five-room chic hotel was recommended to me by a discerning travel journalist. He had just gone to the opening and said it was really special and worth checking out. Each room is distinctly decorated by various artists. I’ve never stayed in Montmartre, but I love the idea of being in that area of Paris. Hotel Saint Vincent
5 rue du Pré aux Clercs
7e
+33 1 42 61 01 51
www.hotelsaintvincentparis.com
Another spot in Saint Germain, this small boutique hotel is a great deal in an otherwise overpriced area. I have friends that have stayed here and rave about the intimate, clean rooms and ideal location.
Amendment 629 Defeated!!
The days of gratuitous attacks on Palestinians, Arabs, or Muslims appear to be on the wane.
Tuesday, the Senate debated three amendments to the Fiscal 2009 Budget, offered by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the first of which (Amendment 629) read: "None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be made available to resettle Palestinians from Gaza into the United States."
There was much head-scratching when the amendment first appeared. Why was it offered, and what was it about? Well, there have been reports on some fringe websites claiming that President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order that would allocate $20.3 million dollars to settle hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza into the U.S - and reached such a frenzy that the internet rumor debunking site snopes.com devoted a page to demonstrating the absurd nature of this claim. (We at AAI spent five minutes on Google and did the same.)
Undeterred, Senator Kyl brought that amendment to the floor yesterday, along with two other anti-Palestinian amendments - one sought to hold up U.S. assistance to Gaza on the pretense of keeping it from Hamas (Amendment 631), and the other dealt with Egypt and arms smuggling into Gaza (Amendment 630). Kyl ran into stiff opposition on all fronts, and it certainly appeared to be organized.
First, Senator John Kerry (D-MA), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, rose first to speak against Amendments 629 and 630. Noting that he had recently been in Gaza, Egypt and Israel, Kerry called the amendment on Egypt "frankly, not helpful." But it was for the bizarre anti-settlement amendment that he showed true scorn, stating that it "assumes that every resident of Gaza, regardless of age, background, political opinion or any other distinguishing characteristic, is pro-Hamas and ineligible for consideration for resettlement in the United States, even if they are lucky enough to escape from Gaza." He then added, "This amendment, therefore, is not only unnecessary but it would establish for the first time since the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act a law that discriminates against a particular nationality in a particular geographic region."
Kyl then stated that he had written the amendment in "response to a news story," but that he had since been told by the State Department that the story was false, and that he intended "tomorrow to withdraw it." That, however, did not end the debate. [Kyl did in fact withdraw the Amendment today, still claiming that it had been prompted by a "flurry of news stories."
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) rose in a tag-team with Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH). Speaking first, Leahy called Amendment 630 a "public slap in the face...of an ally," and the went on to state:
"[T]he omnibus bill already explicitly authorizes assistance provided to Egypt 'for border security programs and activities in the Sinai.' That was language put in by the distinguished ranking Republican member on the Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Gregg, precisely for the purpose of the Kyl amendment--to enable those funds to be used to help police the border and reduce the smuggling into Gaza. ...I am more interested not in what makes great talking points, but in stopping the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. That is why Senator Gregg put the language into the foreign aid bill in the first place."
Leahy, however, saved his scorn for the Amendment 629. His remarks are worth quoting at length:
"Frankly, it is unnecessary and for the United States, a Nation of immigrants, it goes against everything we stand for.
"We don't resettle anybody from Gaza, nor do we resettle anybody from Gaza who is living in the U.N. refugee camps in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, or Jordan. The amendment is a solution looking for a problem. If a Palestinian from Gaza gets to a place like Italy, or somewhere in Europe, the amendment would prevent the State Department from even considering that person for resettlement to the United States. We would have to tell them sorry, you can't come in, because you are from a place that has terrorists.
"I think back to my family who came to Vermont about 150 years ago. On my father's side, they were Irish. If we had a law like this in place then, it is questionable whether they could have entered this country. If the Irish were fighting to keep their land, if they were fighting to keep their rights, if they were fighting for the ability to vote, and they lived in what is now the Republic of Ireland, they were considered terrorists. We have gone back through the record and found when they left Ireland, even though they had been offered free room and board for the rest of their lives. They were very small rooms, with bars on the windows, and they didn't know that the rest of their lives would come very soon. But they left for Canada, the United States, or Australia.
"I was thinking about the birthday party for Senator Kennedy the other night at the Kennedy Center. There were a number of Irish-Americans there who could speak about their roots, when their families came here, and why they had to leave Ireland to come here. They were hunted because they fought to practice their own religion. They were hunted because they spoke Irish. They were hunted because they wanted to keep their land. They were hunted because they would not renounce their religion. Thank goodness the United States had open arms for them.
"...I hope we don't start doing things that label whole groups of people as terrorists, no matter who they are as individuals."
Leahy concluded by speaking against Amendment 630, noting that two sections of the Budget bill already precluded any assistance to Hamas, and asked of the Kyl amendment, "Do we get extra political points for doing this?" He then tagged his partner and yielded the floor.
Senator Gregg said, "I want to associate myself with the Senator's concern," adding that the Budget resolution itself "made it unalterably clear no money that goes into Gaza can be used for Hamas." He then spoke to the other two Kyl amendments, noting that "on the issue of resettlement of Palestinian refugees, there may be many we would want to come to the United States--maybe physicists and other folks. This blanket approach that nobody can enter the country is really over the top and far too broad a brush to paint on the entire population of an area. ...Thirdly, the issue of the language relative to Egypt concerns me,... There is an ongoing, good-faith effort, as I understand it, by the Government of Egypt to police those borders, using our resources to some degree. Further, Egypt ...is one of our key allies in the sense that it has always been reasonably supportive of what we have tried to do. I think we have a responsibility to be equally supportive of them..."
Final results:
Amendment 629 was withdrawn.
Amendment 630 was defeated 61-34
Amendment 631 was defeated 56-39
Tuesday, the Senate debated three amendments to the Fiscal 2009 Budget, offered by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the first of which (Amendment 629) read: "None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be made available to resettle Palestinians from Gaza into the United States."
There was much head-scratching when the amendment first appeared. Why was it offered, and what was it about? Well, there have been reports on some fringe websites claiming that President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order that would allocate $20.3 million dollars to settle hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza into the U.S - and reached such a frenzy that the internet rumor debunking site snopes.com devoted a page to demonstrating the absurd nature of this claim. (We at AAI spent five minutes on Google and did the same.)
Undeterred, Senator Kyl brought that amendment to the floor yesterday, along with two other anti-Palestinian amendments - one sought to hold up U.S. assistance to Gaza on the pretense of keeping it from Hamas (Amendment 631), and the other dealt with Egypt and arms smuggling into Gaza (Amendment 630). Kyl ran into stiff opposition on all fronts, and it certainly appeared to be organized.
First, Senator John Kerry (D-MA), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, rose first to speak against Amendments 629 and 630. Noting that he had recently been in Gaza, Egypt and Israel, Kerry called the amendment on Egypt "frankly, not helpful." But it was for the bizarre anti-settlement amendment that he showed true scorn, stating that it "assumes that every resident of Gaza, regardless of age, background, political opinion or any other distinguishing characteristic, is pro-Hamas and ineligible for consideration for resettlement in the United States, even if they are lucky enough to escape from Gaza." He then added, "This amendment, therefore, is not only unnecessary but it would establish for the first time since the passage of the 1980 Refugee Act a law that discriminates against a particular nationality in a particular geographic region."
Kyl then stated that he had written the amendment in "response to a news story," but that he had since been told by the State Department that the story was false, and that he intended "tomorrow to withdraw it." That, however, did not end the debate. [Kyl did in fact withdraw the Amendment today, still claiming that it had been prompted by a "flurry of news stories."
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) rose in a tag-team with Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH). Speaking first, Leahy called Amendment 630 a "public slap in the face...of an ally," and the went on to state:
"[T]he omnibus bill already explicitly authorizes assistance provided to Egypt 'for border security programs and activities in the Sinai.' That was language put in by the distinguished ranking Republican member on the Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Gregg, precisely for the purpose of the Kyl amendment--to enable those funds to be used to help police the border and reduce the smuggling into Gaza. ...I am more interested not in what makes great talking points, but in stopping the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. That is why Senator Gregg put the language into the foreign aid bill in the first place."
Leahy, however, saved his scorn for the Amendment 629. His remarks are worth quoting at length:
"Frankly, it is unnecessary and for the United States, a Nation of immigrants, it goes against everything we stand for.
"We don't resettle anybody from Gaza, nor do we resettle anybody from Gaza who is living in the U.N. refugee camps in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, or Jordan. The amendment is a solution looking for a problem. If a Palestinian from Gaza gets to a place like Italy, or somewhere in Europe, the amendment would prevent the State Department from even considering that person for resettlement to the United States. We would have to tell them sorry, you can't come in, because you are from a place that has terrorists.
"I think back to my family who came to Vermont about 150 years ago. On my father's side, they were Irish. If we had a law like this in place then, it is questionable whether they could have entered this country. If the Irish were fighting to keep their land, if they were fighting to keep their rights, if they were fighting for the ability to vote, and they lived in what is now the Republic of Ireland, they were considered terrorists. We have gone back through the record and found when they left Ireland, even though they had been offered free room and board for the rest of their lives. They were very small rooms, with bars on the windows, and they didn't know that the rest of their lives would come very soon. But they left for Canada, the United States, or Australia.
"I was thinking about the birthday party for Senator Kennedy the other night at the Kennedy Center. There were a number of Irish-Americans there who could speak about their roots, when their families came here, and why they had to leave Ireland to come here. They were hunted because they fought to practice their own religion. They were hunted because they spoke Irish. They were hunted because they wanted to keep their land. They were hunted because they would not renounce their religion. Thank goodness the United States had open arms for them.
"...I hope we don't start doing things that label whole groups of people as terrorists, no matter who they are as individuals."
Leahy concluded by speaking against Amendment 630, noting that two sections of the Budget bill already precluded any assistance to Hamas, and asked of the Kyl amendment, "Do we get extra political points for doing this?" He then tagged his partner and yielded the floor.
Senator Gregg said, "I want to associate myself with the Senator's concern," adding that the Budget resolution itself "made it unalterably clear no money that goes into Gaza can be used for Hamas." He then spoke to the other two Kyl amendments, noting that "on the issue of resettlement of Palestinian refugees, there may be many we would want to come to the United States--maybe physicists and other folks. This blanket approach that nobody can enter the country is really over the top and far too broad a brush to paint on the entire population of an area. ...Thirdly, the issue of the language relative to Egypt concerns me,... There is an ongoing, good-faith effort, as I understand it, by the Government of Egypt to police those borders, using our resources to some degree. Further, Egypt ...is one of our key allies in the sense that it has always been reasonably supportive of what we have tried to do. I think we have a responsibility to be equally supportive of them..."
Final results:
Amendment 629 was withdrawn.
Amendment 630 was defeated 61-34
Amendment 631 was defeated 56-39
11 March 2009
09 March 2009
Senate Will Vote Tonight!! No Discrimination Against Palestinian Refugees in Gaza
The Senate will vote tonight on Senator Kyl's amendment. The late breaking nature of the amendment means even just a few letters faxed to some key Senators could determine the outcome of this vote.
Add your name to our letter opposing the Kyl amendment and we'll fax it automatically to your Senators' offices.
Background Information
The recent fighting between Israel and Palestinian armed groups (including Hamas) left at least1300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead. In addition, schools, universities, mosques and thousands of homes in Gaza were destroyed. In surveying the damages in Gaza, Amnesty International researcher Donatella Rovera said "there is no camera lens wide enough to capture the destruction," adding that Gaza looked like a "moonscape."
The conflict only exacerbated the dismal conditions that were set in place well before the fighting broke out between Israel and Hamas. Hospitals faced severe electrical and supply shortages and some hospitals were only able to function for a few hours a day. Of the estimated 5,000 wounded Palestinians, many have not been able to seek proper medical attention because the facilities in Gaza are inadequate and often the wounded were prevented from entering Egypt or Israel for treatment. Amnesty International also reported that schools have not been able to fully operate because they have not received the paper needed to print textbooks. Employment continues to be a problem with the blockade affecting many factories and other factories being destroyed during the recent conflict. According to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, unemployment in Gaza reached 45% in June 2008, the highest in the world.
The US has taken an important step in pledging $900 million in humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. But some of the aid, such as basic foods supplies like pasta, are still prevented by Israel from entering Gaza, a fact that Senator John Kerry mentioned during his visit to Gaza. Many of the containers of aid are sitting in cargo trucks but because of strict Israeli blockades, Palestinians in Gaza often cannot even access to US funded aid that awaits them just at the border.
The United States is a party to the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. All countries that are party to the Convention or its Protocol are obliged to consider claims for refuge without discrimination. The US provides world leadership on refugee issues by refusing to discriminate on the basis of nationality, ethnicity or religion when determining who will be admitted as a refugee. Indeed, the goal of the 1980 Refugee Act sought to assure greater equity in the protection of refugees by repealing the previous law's discriminatory treatment of refugees. Contrary to 30 years of extending protection to refugees on the basis of need, the Kyl amendment seeks to discriminate against an entire group based on nationality alone. Any refugee deemed in need of third country resettlement who meets the criteria of the US refugee program and the security protocols of the Department of Homeland Security should have access to our program irrespective of his or her nationality, ethnicity, or religion.
The Obama administration has taken admirable steps to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including dispatching Middle East envoy George Mitchell on the second day of the new administration. US refugee policy should reflect this positive commitment by refusing to discriminate against Palestinian refugees from Gaza, and considering for resettlement any refugee deemed in need who meets the criteria of the US refugee program and security protocols of the Department of Homeland Security, irrespective of his or her nationality, ethnicity, or religion.
Add your name to our letter opposing the Kyl amendment and we'll fax it automatically to your Senators' offices.
Add your name to our letter opposing the Kyl amendment and we'll fax it automatically to your Senators' offices.
Background Information
The recent fighting between Israel and Palestinian armed groups (including Hamas) left at least1300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead. In addition, schools, universities, mosques and thousands of homes in Gaza were destroyed. In surveying the damages in Gaza, Amnesty International researcher Donatella Rovera said "there is no camera lens wide enough to capture the destruction," adding that Gaza looked like a "moonscape."
The conflict only exacerbated the dismal conditions that were set in place well before the fighting broke out between Israel and Hamas. Hospitals faced severe electrical and supply shortages and some hospitals were only able to function for a few hours a day. Of the estimated 5,000 wounded Palestinians, many have not been able to seek proper medical attention because the facilities in Gaza are inadequate and often the wounded were prevented from entering Egypt or Israel for treatment. Amnesty International also reported that schools have not been able to fully operate because they have not received the paper needed to print textbooks. Employment continues to be a problem with the blockade affecting many factories and other factories being destroyed during the recent conflict. According to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, unemployment in Gaza reached 45% in June 2008, the highest in the world.
The US has taken an important step in pledging $900 million in humanitarian aid to Palestinians in Gaza. But some of the aid, such as basic foods supplies like pasta, are still prevented by Israel from entering Gaza, a fact that Senator John Kerry mentioned during his visit to Gaza. Many of the containers of aid are sitting in cargo trucks but because of strict Israeli blockades, Palestinians in Gaza often cannot even access to US funded aid that awaits them just at the border.
The United States is a party to the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. All countries that are party to the Convention or its Protocol are obliged to consider claims for refuge without discrimination. The US provides world leadership on refugee issues by refusing to discriminate on the basis of nationality, ethnicity or religion when determining who will be admitted as a refugee. Indeed, the goal of the 1980 Refugee Act sought to assure greater equity in the protection of refugees by repealing the previous law's discriminatory treatment of refugees. Contrary to 30 years of extending protection to refugees on the basis of need, the Kyl amendment seeks to discriminate against an entire group based on nationality alone. Any refugee deemed in need of third country resettlement who meets the criteria of the US refugee program and the security protocols of the Department of Homeland Security should have access to our program irrespective of his or her nationality, ethnicity, or religion.
The Obama administration has taken admirable steps to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including dispatching Middle East envoy George Mitchell on the second day of the new administration. US refugee policy should reflect this positive commitment by refusing to discriminate against Palestinian refugees from Gaza, and considering for resettlement any refugee deemed in need who meets the criteria of the US refugee program and security protocols of the Department of Homeland Security, irrespective of his or her nationality, ethnicity, or religion.
Add your name to our letter opposing the Kyl amendment and we'll fax it automatically to your Senators' offices.
08 March 2009
Happy International Women's Day!
This International Women's Day, V-Day is shining an international spotlight on the women and girls of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Today we honor all the activists and women in grassroots women's groups in the DRC - and around the world - who have been fighting for freedom and peace for years. V-Day's efforts in the Congo follow the path these brave women have created and joins with their struggle to realize our common mission to end the subjugation and violence that women have been enduring for centuries. We stand with them as they fight to end the economic war for mineral resources that is being fought on their bodies.
The women and girls of the DRC represent the passion, dedication and courage of the women for which International Women's Day was created. We celebrate the recent victories for women in the DRC: the public "Breaking The Silence" events where women in Goma and Bukavu for the first time stood up in front of their communities and government officials to speak out against their rapes and the impact of violence on their lives; and the historic march through the streets of Bukavu where women took back their lives and their voices to denounce the rampant violence against women in their country.
We are also reminded however of the work ahead of us. We are reminded of the busloads of women arriving daily at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu. We are reminded of the girls as young as 8 months old and the women as old as 80 who are raped, sometimes beyond repair. We are reminded of the Doctors and nurses who spend every day caring for and healing women who have literally been torn apart.
The women and girls of the DRC represent the passion, dedication and courage of the women for which International Women's Day was created. We celebrate the recent victories for women in the DRC: the public "Breaking The Silence" events where women in Goma and Bukavu for the first time stood up in front of their communities and government officials to speak out against their rapes and the impact of violence on their lives; and the historic march through the streets of Bukavu where women took back their lives and their voices to denounce the rampant violence against women in their country.
We are also reminded however of the work ahead of us. We are reminded of the busloads of women arriving daily at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu. We are reminded of the girls as young as 8 months old and the women as old as 80 who are raped, sometimes beyond repair. We are reminded of the Doctors and nurses who spend every day caring for and healing women who have literally been torn apart.
06 March 2009
War Stories, Cultural Bridge-Building and Sustainability
Chris Turner
February 24, 2009 9:30 AM
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009453.html
Field Notes of an Accidental Eco-Tourist, Part 4: Holiday Reading
I will say this, right off the top, for the Houston airport: it has excellent shopping. Houston was my transit point en route to Costa Rica back in December, and I took advantage of my twelve-hour layover to stock up on some holiday reading. This consisted mostly of spy novels and glossy magazines, but I also decided on a couple of "important books" for the serious side of the docket. Still, I intentionally chose two titles that seemed utterly unrelated to climate and sustainability issues, two books I figured couldn’t possibly push my mind back onto its work track. They were Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War and Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke. A frontline reporter’s account of America’s current military morass and a National Book Award winner offering a fictive window on the last one – nothing at all to do, surely, with building a new kind of social order resilient enough to weather the storms of the Anthropocene Epoch.
Wrong, obviously. The key lessons of Saigon and Baghdad turn out to be all kinds of relevant to the sustainability movement – cautionary tales, in a sense, of how to lose hearts and minds in a change-the-world campaign.
First, though, a bit of background on the titles in question. Now, it’s become all but cliché to suggest that the Bush Administration’s disastrous nation-building invasion of Iraq was a kind of desert-camo remake of the Vietnam War tragedy, but I was amazed, reading The Forever War and Tree of Smoke back to back, by just how fully the themes paralleled each other.
The main narrative arc in Tree of Smoke traces the Southeast Asian careers of a rogue CIA agent named Colonel Sands and his studious, principled nephew, Skip, as they try to inject a new way of thinking into the American military. The Colonel and his nephew have come to realize that democracy is not something that can be airlifted in and that unconventional wars are won not by superior firepower but essentially by superior empathy. The Colonel lectures repeatedly on the need to learn the Vietnamese people’s myths, to “tell their stories and sing their songs,” to first understand who these people are before presuming to tell them how to live. It spoils nothing for those who haven’t yet read the novel, I’m guessing, if I note simply that the empathetic Sands approach is doomed to be trampled underfoot by the domino-theorizing Cold Warriors of America’s Vietnam-Era military.
Skip ahead a generation, and The Forever War finds another pack of ideologues airlifting another army of hundreds of thousands into another nation whose songs and stories are as alien to your average American soldier (or strategist) as Vietnam’s were. Filkins’ tale begins in Taliban-era Afghanistan before moving on for an extended stay in Baghdad and a hyper-realistic march through Fallujah. Throughout, Filkins describes a startlingly consistent deficiency in local intelligence among the American military ranks – a near-total absence of Arab-speaking translators, the utter inability of decision-makers to notice (as he eventually does) that the Iraqis, whether friendly or hostile, invariably tell one set of stories to the Americans and an entirely different one among themselves. In one particularly troubling series of scenes immediately after the fall of Baghdad, an Iraqi doctor turns a mob of would-be looters away from his hospital doors with a single warning shot, while elsewhere in the anarchic city an entire platoon of U.S. Marines conducts impotent precision drill in front of another looting party, awaiting an order that never comes to secure critical nearby government buildings. Ignorant seemingly of even the basic instinctual sense of how to control the country they’d conquered, the American military engaged in little more than a pantomime of order.
“You had to accept your ignorance,” Filkins writes of his sojourn in Iraq; “it was the beginning of whatever wisdom you could hope to muster.”
This statement could serve as the one-line thesis for both books, and reading them together on an accidental eco-tourist’s holiday, it struck me as a powerful lesson to keep in mind as the sustainability movement marches forward. There is a sense, among those of us working toward a new, sustainable world order resilient enough to survive in the Anthropocene, that we are beginning anew. Abandoning a ruined social order, casting off outmoded ideologies. “Starting from zero,” as the artists and thinkers of Europe’s modernist vanguard used to say. Sure, we enthuse about green retrofits and revel in the inherited livability of old walkable downtowns, but there is ultimately – and I would argue necessarily – a sort of fundamental reboot at the core of the sustainability project. Small, incremental changes aren’t going to cut it. The thing needs re-engineering from the ground up.
I’m thinking, for example, of the Outquisition idea we talk about often here, which is predicated on the idea that there is a wide stratum of industrial society whose way of life is in dramatic and inexorable decline. It’s a solid argument and a fine way to begin structuring the process of renewal, but it needs to be carefully entwined with Filkins’ point about accepting your ignorance and Johnson’s doomed protagonists’ belief in the primacy of myth, song and story. Take the crusade, indeed, to the ruins of the unsustainable, but remember that there is still a culture there – a sacred thing to some no matter how outmoded or doomed it might seem – and it will not change dramatically at the behest of anyone who can’t speak its language.
I’m thinking of a conversation I had with Adam Werbach awhile back about his work with Wal-Mart – a bold headfirst leap into the ruins of the unsustainable if ever there was one. Werbach’s first job as a Wal-Mart consultant has been to conduct sustainability training seminars for the company’s legions of employees, to get them thinking about and embracing the core principles of sustainability. When Werbach, formerly the old-guard environmental movement’s self-appointed wunderkind, first started that controversial gig, he reckoned he was the green redeemer, come to liberate the poor working stiffs from their big-box prisons. He soon learned otherwise, and he took to structuring his seminars not as lectures but as dialogues that began with a simple question: What does sustainability mean to you?
Werbach was, in a sense, asking these people for their songs and stories, and then beginning to weave his own agenda into what he was told. It’s the right starting line for any nation-building exercise, sustainable or otherwise.
Chris Turner is the author of The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need, a global tour of the state of the art in sustainable living. He lives in Calgary. He keeps a poorly maintained blog and can be reached by email at cturner [at] globeandmail [dot] com.
Click Here To Read Part 3: Real Sustainable Tourism In Embryo
Click Here To Read Part 2: The Moai Of Costa Rica’s Central Pacific
Click Here To Read Part 1: Does Eco-Tourism Matter?
February 24, 2009 9:30 AM
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009453.html
Field Notes of an Accidental Eco-Tourist, Part 4: Holiday Reading
I will say this, right off the top, for the Houston airport: it has excellent shopping. Houston was my transit point en route to Costa Rica back in December, and I took advantage of my twelve-hour layover to stock up on some holiday reading. This consisted mostly of spy novels and glossy magazines, but I also decided on a couple of "important books" for the serious side of the docket. Still, I intentionally chose two titles that seemed utterly unrelated to climate and sustainability issues, two books I figured couldn’t possibly push my mind back onto its work track. They were Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War and Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke. A frontline reporter’s account of America’s current military morass and a National Book Award winner offering a fictive window on the last one – nothing at all to do, surely, with building a new kind of social order resilient enough to weather the storms of the Anthropocene Epoch.
Wrong, obviously. The key lessons of Saigon and Baghdad turn out to be all kinds of relevant to the sustainability movement – cautionary tales, in a sense, of how to lose hearts and minds in a change-the-world campaign.
First, though, a bit of background on the titles in question. Now, it’s become all but cliché to suggest that the Bush Administration’s disastrous nation-building invasion of Iraq was a kind of desert-camo remake of the Vietnam War tragedy, but I was amazed, reading The Forever War and Tree of Smoke back to back, by just how fully the themes paralleled each other.
The main narrative arc in Tree of Smoke traces the Southeast Asian careers of a rogue CIA agent named Colonel Sands and his studious, principled nephew, Skip, as they try to inject a new way of thinking into the American military. The Colonel and his nephew have come to realize that democracy is not something that can be airlifted in and that unconventional wars are won not by superior firepower but essentially by superior empathy. The Colonel lectures repeatedly on the need to learn the Vietnamese people’s myths, to “tell their stories and sing their songs,” to first understand who these people are before presuming to tell them how to live. It spoils nothing for those who haven’t yet read the novel, I’m guessing, if I note simply that the empathetic Sands approach is doomed to be trampled underfoot by the domino-theorizing Cold Warriors of America’s Vietnam-Era military.
Skip ahead a generation, and The Forever War finds another pack of ideologues airlifting another army of hundreds of thousands into another nation whose songs and stories are as alien to your average American soldier (or strategist) as Vietnam’s were. Filkins’ tale begins in Taliban-era Afghanistan before moving on for an extended stay in Baghdad and a hyper-realistic march through Fallujah. Throughout, Filkins describes a startlingly consistent deficiency in local intelligence among the American military ranks – a near-total absence of Arab-speaking translators, the utter inability of decision-makers to notice (as he eventually does) that the Iraqis, whether friendly or hostile, invariably tell one set of stories to the Americans and an entirely different one among themselves. In one particularly troubling series of scenes immediately after the fall of Baghdad, an Iraqi doctor turns a mob of would-be looters away from his hospital doors with a single warning shot, while elsewhere in the anarchic city an entire platoon of U.S. Marines conducts impotent precision drill in front of another looting party, awaiting an order that never comes to secure critical nearby government buildings. Ignorant seemingly of even the basic instinctual sense of how to control the country they’d conquered, the American military engaged in little more than a pantomime of order.
“You had to accept your ignorance,” Filkins writes of his sojourn in Iraq; “it was the beginning of whatever wisdom you could hope to muster.”
This statement could serve as the one-line thesis for both books, and reading them together on an accidental eco-tourist’s holiday, it struck me as a powerful lesson to keep in mind as the sustainability movement marches forward. There is a sense, among those of us working toward a new, sustainable world order resilient enough to survive in the Anthropocene, that we are beginning anew. Abandoning a ruined social order, casting off outmoded ideologies. “Starting from zero,” as the artists and thinkers of Europe’s modernist vanguard used to say. Sure, we enthuse about green retrofits and revel in the inherited livability of old walkable downtowns, but there is ultimately – and I would argue necessarily – a sort of fundamental reboot at the core of the sustainability project. Small, incremental changes aren’t going to cut it. The thing needs re-engineering from the ground up.
I’m thinking, for example, of the Outquisition idea we talk about often here, which is predicated on the idea that there is a wide stratum of industrial society whose way of life is in dramatic and inexorable decline. It’s a solid argument and a fine way to begin structuring the process of renewal, but it needs to be carefully entwined with Filkins’ point about accepting your ignorance and Johnson’s doomed protagonists’ belief in the primacy of myth, song and story. Take the crusade, indeed, to the ruins of the unsustainable, but remember that there is still a culture there – a sacred thing to some no matter how outmoded or doomed it might seem – and it will not change dramatically at the behest of anyone who can’t speak its language.
I’m thinking of a conversation I had with Adam Werbach awhile back about his work with Wal-Mart – a bold headfirst leap into the ruins of the unsustainable if ever there was one. Werbach’s first job as a Wal-Mart consultant has been to conduct sustainability training seminars for the company’s legions of employees, to get them thinking about and embracing the core principles of sustainability. When Werbach, formerly the old-guard environmental movement’s self-appointed wunderkind, first started that controversial gig, he reckoned he was the green redeemer, come to liberate the poor working stiffs from their big-box prisons. He soon learned otherwise, and he took to structuring his seminars not as lectures but as dialogues that began with a simple question: What does sustainability mean to you?
Werbach was, in a sense, asking these people for their songs and stories, and then beginning to weave his own agenda into what he was told. It’s the right starting line for any nation-building exercise, sustainable or otherwise.
Chris Turner is the author of The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need, a global tour of the state of the art in sustainable living. He lives in Calgary. He keeps a poorly maintained blog and can be reached by email at cturner [at] globeandmail [dot] com.
Click Here To Read Part 3: Real Sustainable Tourism In Embryo
Click Here To Read Part 2: The Moai Of Costa Rica’s Central Pacific
Click Here To Read Part 1: Does Eco-Tourism Matter?
10 Things You Should Know About Obama's Plan
Want to see what change looks like? Real change?
Well, here it is. Last week, President Obama unveiled his budget—his blueprint for America—and it's ambitious, amazing, and unapologetically progressive. As Paul Krugman said, it will set America on a "fundamentally new course."1
President Obama called his budget "a threat to the status quo," and trust me, the status quo noticed. Oil companies, big banks and insurance companies are already mobilizing to stop it.2
Unfortunately, most folks don't realize how far-reaching and progressive the plan is—that's where we all come in.
Here are 10 really incredible things about Obama's plan. Check them out and then send them on to your friends and family so that millions of people will have the information they need to fight to make this vision a reality.
10 things you should know about Obama's plan (but probably don't)
The plan:
Makes a $634 billion down payment on fixing health care that will go a long way toward paying for a more efficient, more affordable health care system that covers every single American.3
Reduces taxes for 95% of working Americans. And if your family makes less than $250,000, your taxes won't go up one dime.4
Invests more than $100 billion in clean energy technology, creating millions of green jobs that can never be outsourced.5
Brings our troops home from Iraq on a firm timetable, finally bringing the war to a close—and freeing up almost ten billion dollars a month for domestic priorities.6
Reverses growing income inequality. The plan lets the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire and focuses on strengthening the middle class.7
Closes multi-billion-dollar tax loopholes for big oil companies. 8
Increases grants to help families pay for college—the largest increase ever.9
Halves the deficit by 2013. President Obama inherited a legacy of huge deficits and an economy in shambles, but his plan brings the deficit under control as soon as the economy begins to recover.10
Dramatically increases funding for the SEC and the CFTC—the agencies that police Wall Street.11
Tells it straight. For years, budgets have used accounting tricks to hide the real costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts, and too many other programs. Obama's budget gets rid of the smokescreens and lays out what America's priorities are, what they cost, and how we're going to pay for them.12
This is the change we voted for. President Obama has done his part, now we need to do ours.
Well, here it is. Last week, President Obama unveiled his budget—his blueprint for America—and it's ambitious, amazing, and unapologetically progressive. As Paul Krugman said, it will set America on a "fundamentally new course."1
President Obama called his budget "a threat to the status quo," and trust me, the status quo noticed. Oil companies, big banks and insurance companies are already mobilizing to stop it.2
Unfortunately, most folks don't realize how far-reaching and progressive the plan is—that's where we all come in.
Here are 10 really incredible things about Obama's plan. Check them out and then send them on to your friends and family so that millions of people will have the information they need to fight to make this vision a reality.
10 things you should know about Obama's plan (but probably don't)
The plan:
Makes a $634 billion down payment on fixing health care that will go a long way toward paying for a more efficient, more affordable health care system that covers every single American.3
Reduces taxes for 95% of working Americans. And if your family makes less than $250,000, your taxes won't go up one dime.4
Invests more than $100 billion in clean energy technology, creating millions of green jobs that can never be outsourced.5
Brings our troops home from Iraq on a firm timetable, finally bringing the war to a close—and freeing up almost ten billion dollars a month for domestic priorities.6
Reverses growing income inequality. The plan lets the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire and focuses on strengthening the middle class.7
Closes multi-billion-dollar tax loopholes for big oil companies. 8
Increases grants to help families pay for college—the largest increase ever.9
Halves the deficit by 2013. President Obama inherited a legacy of huge deficits and an economy in shambles, but his plan brings the deficit under control as soon as the economy begins to recover.10
Dramatically increases funding for the SEC and the CFTC—the agencies that police Wall Street.11
Tells it straight. For years, budgets have used accounting tricks to hide the real costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts, and too many other programs. Obama's budget gets rid of the smokescreens and lays out what America's priorities are, what they cost, and how we're going to pay for them.12
This is the change we voted for. President Obama has done his part, now we need to do ours.
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