polly7
polly7's JournalIn Kabul, Widows and Orphans Move Up
By Kathy Kelly
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
Kabul -- Yesterday, four young Afghan Peace Volunteer members, Zainab, Umalbanin, Abdulhai, and Ali, guided Martha and me along narrow, primitive roads and crumbling stairs, ascending a mountain slope on the outskirts of Kabul. The icy, rutted roads twisted and turned. I asked if we could pause as my heart was hammering and I needed to catch my breath. Looking down, we saw a breathtaking view of Kabul. Above us, women in bright clothing were navigating the treacherous roads with heavy water containers on their heads or shoulders. I marveled at their strength and tenacity. Yes, they make this trip every morning, Umalbanin said, as she helped me regain my balance after I had slipped on the ice.
About ten minutes later, we arrived at the home of Khoreb, a widow who helped us realize why so many widows and orphans live in the highest ranges of the mountain. Landlords rent one-room homes at the cheapest rates when they are at this isolating height; many of the homes are poorly constructed and have no pipes for running water. This means the occupants, most often women, must fetch water from the bottom of the hill each and every morning. A year ago, piped water began to reach some of the homes, but that only meant the landlords charged higher rent, so women had to move higher up the mountain for housing they can afford. It only made their daily water-carrying longer and more arduous.
Khorebs home, like that of each family we visited, was neatly kept. She had formerly shared the one-room dwelling with only her daughter. But when the one-room house next door was rendered unlivable by water damage from a storm, the family of eight that lived there had nowhere to go. On Khoreb's invitation, they now live in her room.
Throughout our visit, she and her daughters cracked open almond nuts, and they didn't throw away the shells: they saved them to feed them into a small heater; the nut shells are needed as fuel. They didn't snack on the almonds; the almonds were shelled for eventual sale in the market place. Cracking and selling almonds is their main source of income. The women have no brothers, sons, or husbands to help them.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/in-kabul-widows-and-orphans-move-up-by-kathy-kelly
Make A Donation To Haiti By Reading And Speaking Up About It
By Joe Emersberger
Source: Haiti Analysis
Sunday, January 06, 2013
An impressive, and growing, body of work explains how the "international community" (the USA and a handful of allies) worked with the Haitian elite to make a murderous and very successful assault on Haitian democracy as the twenty-first century began. It is an assault that continues today as the generosity that millions of people around the world displayed towards Haitians after an earthquake has been scandalously wasted and even used to bolster the Haitian and foreign elites who run Haiti. Peter Hallward's "Damming the Flood" thoroughly refutes the lies that were sold, and are still sold, about the "international community's" role in Haiti since 2000. Unfortunately, Hallward's book was written before the 2010 earthquake that killed perhaps as many as 250,000 Haitians, and before Wikileaks' release of US embassy cables. Thankfully, two new books about Haiti - Justin Podur's "Haiti's New Dictatorship" and Jeb Sprague "Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti" - update and greatly expand on Hallwards work.
The very ugly story these books tell begins in the year 2000 when free and fair elections in Haiti that were widely smeared as "fraudulent" or "deeply flawed". There were legislative and presidential elections in 2000 that resulted in a landslide victory for Jean Bertrand Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas party. A murderous, low intensity terrorist campaign based in the Dominican Republic gathered momentum against Haiti's government between 2000 to 2004. Deadly hit and run attacks plagued Haiti while the "international community" and the human rights industry looked the other way. As terrorists assailed Haiti throughout these years, the "international community" implemented extremely harsh economic sanctions against Haiti's democratically elected government. At the same time, tens of millions of dollars in assistance flowed to Aristides political opponents many of whom were financing terrorists as Sprague shows in detail. Legitimate attempts by the Haitian government to defend itself against terrorists were denounced as "human rights abuses". NGO's like Human Rights Watch, Reporters without Borders, and Amnesty International did a lot to make the sanctions seem reasonable by putting out shoddily researched statements that were heavily influenced by a well-connected anti-Aristide minority in Haiti. The Dominican Republic based paramilitaries inflicted a great deal of damage but were probably incapable of overthrowing Aristides government. They were ultimately upstaged on February 29 of 2004 by troops from the USA, France and Canada. US troops shipped Aristide off to the Central African Republic in the middle of the night while Canadian troops guarded Haitis international airport. The US and its allies easily brushed off calls for the UN to formally investigate Aristide's claim that he was kidnapped. US troops who were soon replaced by troops from Brazil, China and various other countries - MINUSTAH as the UN "peacekeeping" force in Haiti is called.
A dictatorship under Gerard Latortue (from 2004 to 2006) presided over the murder of thousands of Fanmi Lavalas partisans - at least 4000 murders according to the only scientific study done to investigate the matter. The perpetrators were mainly paramilitary groups and the Haitian police which was quickly revamped (under close US supervision) to include hundreds of the terrorists formerly based in the Dominican Republic. The UN troops (MINUSTAH) perpetrated some massacres of unarmed protestors and bystanders. However, most of the dirty work was done by the revamped Haitian police and their paramilitary allies with MINUSTAH acting in a supporting role.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/make-a-donation-to-haiti-by-reading-and-speaking-up-about-it-by-joe-emersberger-1
Anger After New Delhi Rape Victim Dies
By Andre Vltchek
Saturday, January 05, 2013
And Economic systems influence culture and social values. An economics of commodification creates a culture of commodification, where everything has a price, and nothing has value The growing culture of rape is a social externality of economic reforms. We need to institutionalize social audits of the neo-liberal policies, which are a central instrument of patriarchy in our times.
There is also an archaic feudalist system; there is the disgraceful caste system, there is religious lunacy: all having a detrimental effect on shaping both social values, and culture.
There is also ignorance, the result of a chronic lack of learning and education, as India is home to the greatest number of illiterate people anywhere on earth.
And there is sexual oppression, associated elsewhere with the 19th century, or much earlier days; there are feudal sexual master-slave relations, extreme prohibitions on sexuality, medieval guilt that religions attach to sexuality, unnatural men to women ratios (result of aborting female fetuses and killing baby-girls); all that adding fuel to already unstable, explosive conditions in the society.
The primary victims of this state of affairs are, of course, Indian women.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/anger-after-new-delhi-rape-victim-dies-by-andre-vltchek
India’s Superhospitals And Superbugs
By Sonia Shah
Source: Le Monde Diplomatique
Saturday, January 05, 2013
We should set our own house in order
But questions on the ethics of providing sophisticated medical care for foreigners while many ordinary Indians lack access to basic health services go unanswered (4). We should set our own house in order rather than cater to foreigners, said New Delhi surgeon Samiran Nundy, a prominent critic of the privatisation of healthcare in India. India spends around 1% of its GDP on public health, one of the lowest rates in the world. Fewer than half of Indias children are fully immunised, and a million Indians die every year from treatable tuberculosis and preventable diarrhoeas. Medical expenses drive nearly 40 million Indians into poverty every year (5).
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/india-s-superhospitals-and-superbugs-by-sonia-shah
Addressing global warming: Earth’s New Year’s resolution
BY REBECCA SOLNIT, TOMDISPATCH.COM
WEDNESDAY, DEC 26, 2012 08:33 AM CCST
Excerpts:
For millions of years, this world has been a great gift to nearly everything living on it, a planet whose atmosphere, temperature, air, water, seasons, and weather were precisely calibrated to allow us the big us, including forests and oceans, species large and small to flourish. (Or rather, it was we who were calibrated to its generous, even bounteous, terms.) And that gift is now being destroyed for the benefit of a few members of a single species.
In eastern Texas, for instance, extraordinary acts of civil disobedience have been going on continuously since August, including three blockaders who this month crawled inside a length of the three-foot-in-diameter pipeline and refused to leave. People have been using their bodies, getting in the way of heavy equipment, and going to jail in an effort to prevent the pipeline from being built. A lot of them are the same kind of robust young people who kept the Occupy encampments going earlier in 2012, but great-grandmothers, old men, and middle-aged people like me have been crucial players, too.
Full Article: http://www.salon.com/2012/12/26/addressing_global_warming_earths_new_years_resolution/
Criminal Injustice: Idle No More, The Prison System And Indigenous People In Canada
By Matt Moir
Source: rabble.ca
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
Ostensibly, the movement spearheaded by Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence is about the protection of First Nations' treaty rights. At its core, though, might be something more profound, perhaps best described as a demand for all of us in this country to re-think the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians. The relationship is, of course, an uneven one, though it might be far more uneven than most of us in this country care to acknowledge.
Against this backdrop, policy makers and average Canadians alike would be well advised to ring in the New Year by considering the lessons Michelle Alexander highlights in her important book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindedness. The context is American, but the lessons may hit closer to home. In the book, Alexander writes the following in regards to African-Americans and the United States' criminal justice system:
"It is fair to say that we have witnessed an evolution in the United States from a racial caste system based entirely on exploitation (slavery), to one based largely on subordination (Jim Crow), to one defined by marginalization (mass incarceration). While marginalization may sound far preferable to exploitation, it may prove to be even more dangerous. Extreme marginalization, as we have seen throughout world history, poses the risk of extermination."
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/criminal-injustice-idle-no-more-the-prison-system-and-indigenous-people-in-canada-by-matt-moir
Idle No More
By Winona LaDuke
Source: LA Progressive
Wednesday, January 02, 2013
Flash mob protests with traditional dancing and drumming have erupted in dozens of shopping malls across North America, marches and highway blockades by aboriginal groups from across Canada and their supporters have emerged from as far away as New Zealand and the Middle East.
This weekend, hundreds of Native people and their supporters held a flash mob round dance with hand drum singing at the Mall of America near Minneapolis, again as a part of the Idle No More protest movement. This quickly emerging wave of Native activism on environmental and human rights issues has spread like a wildfire across the continent.
Idle No More is Canadian for, Thats Enough BS, Were Coming Out to Stop You or something like that. Spence is the leader of Attawapiskat First Nation a remote Cree community from James Bay, Ontario. The communitys on-reserve 1,549 residents (a third of whom are under 19) have weathered quite a bit: the fur trade, residential schools, a status as non-treaty Indians, and limited access to modern conveniences like toilets, or maybe electricity. Conditions like these are all too commonplace in the north, but they have become exacerbated in the past five years with the advent of a huge diamond mine.
Full Article: http://www.zcommunications.org/idle-no-more-by-winona-laduke
Sick, Sick Cambodian Stories
By Andre Vltchek
Tuesday, January 01, 2013
Make sure that the kids are suffering from malnutrition, that their bellies are swollen, hair unnaturally light-colored, and tears rolling down their cheeks. And when the children begin bringing home loads of money, prevent them from recovering. Whenever in doubt, there is UNICEF in Phnom Penh, as well as many NGOs: they will coach you on how to prevent your children from malnutrition; so do exactly the opposite and you will never be poor.
But I know I will. I cannot resist Cambodian stories, as most Malaysians cant resist love songs and horror movies.
Full article: http://www.zcommunications.org/sick-sick-cambodian-stories-by-andre-vltchek
Turning Point In India, Triumph In Philippines For The Rights Of Women
Turning Point In India, Triumph In Philippines For The Rights Of Women
By Walden Bello
Source: China Post
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Key provisions of the new law include, among others, the provision of free or cheap contraceptives to poor couples, institutionalization of sex education for students from the sixth grade up, the establishment of maternal care facilities in state-run hospitals, and provision of reproductive health counseling and treatment for women in all hospitals, including those suffering from postabortion complications, while ensuring respect for the rights of health professionals who cannot offer these services owing to religious belief.
The passage of the RH bill was seen widely as an enormous debacle for the Catholic Church, to which some 80 percent of the population nominally belongs. For 14 years, the Church hierarchy had thrown everything, including the proverbial kitchen sink, at the campaign to have the bill enacted into law. How did the RH advocates manage to beat an institution that has been a massive force in Philippine society for nearly 500 years?
more ....
http://www.zcommunications.org/turning-point-in-india-triumph-in-philippines-for-the-rights-of-women-by-walden-bello
Violent Economic Reforms, and the Growing Violence against Women
By Vandana Shiva
Sunday, December 30, 2012
The production boundary is a political creation that, in its workings, excludes regenerative and renewable production cycles from the area of production. Hence, all women who produce for their families, children, community, society, are treated as non-productive and economically inactive. When economies are confined to the market place, economic self sufficiency is perceived as economic deficiency. The devaluation of womens work, and of work done in subsistence economies of the South, is the natural outcome of a production boundary constructed by capitalist patriarchy.
I have repeatedly stressed that the rape of the Earth and rape of women are intimately linked, both metaphorically in shaping worldviews, and materially in shaping womens everyday lives. The deepening economic vulnerability of women makes them more vulnerable to all forms of violence, including sexual assault, as we found out during a series of public hearings on the impact of economic reforms on women organized by the National commission on Women and the Research Foundation for Science,Technology and Ecology.
more: http://www.zcommunications.org/violent-economic-reforms-and-the-growing-violence-against-women-by-vandana-shiva
Violent Economic “Reforms”, and the Growing Violence against Women
By Vandana Shiva
Sunday, December 30, 2012
http://www.zcommunications.org/violent-economic-reforms-and-the-growing-violence-against-women-by-vandana-shiva
The production boundary is a political creation that, in its workings, excludes regenerative and renewable production cycles from the area of production. Hence, all women who produce for their families, children, community, society, are treated as non-productive and economically inactive. When economies are confined to the market place, economic self sufficiency is perceived as economic deficiency. The devaluation of womens work, and of work done in subsistence economies of the South, is the natural outcome of a production boundary constructed by capitalist patriarchy.
I have repeatedly stressed that the rape of the Earth and rape of women are intimately linked, both metaphorically in shaping worldviews, and materially in shaping womens everyday lives. The deepening economic vulnerability of women makes them more vulnerable to all forms of violence, including sexual assault, as we found out during a series of public hearings on the impact of economic reforms on women organized by the National commission on Women and the Research Foundation for Science,Technology and Ecology.
I love this woman.
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Gender: Do not displayHometown: Saskatchewan
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