Month: March 2010

Decision Making

35% of Members of the European PARLIAMENT are women.
23% of members of national parliaments are women.
33% of the members of the college of Commissioners are women.
22% of members of national governments are women.
3% of the Presidents of the largest publicly quoted companies are women.
The top 300 European companies have an average of 9.7% of women on their BOARDS.
5-15% of high-tech business is owned by women.
In 16 European countries, men occupy more than 90% of university headships.
9.3% of those in top management positions in the telecommunications industry are women.

Poverty

In every age group, more women are living in poverty than men. On average, 17% of women and 15% of men in the EU are at risk of poverty. Despite relative prosperity, this poverty rate has not decreased over the last five years.
The highest at risk of poverty rate for women in the EU is in Lithuania (27%); the lowest is in the Czech Republic (10%).
One third (33%) of SINGLE-PARENT families in Europe, 80-90% of which are headed by women, are living in poverty.
Women have a higher life expectancy but lower savings and security than men in their old age. They consequently form the majority of the ELDERLY poor. 21% of women above the age of 65 (compared 18% of men) are at risk of poverty.
Women face a much higher risk of poverty in situations of separation, DIVORCE or death of their partner: estimates in Belgium reveal that the individualised risk of poverty would be 36% for women against 11% for men, if the individualised income of women and men is taken into consideration against the current measurement of global/accumulated household income.
52% of women living alone in Cyprus are at risk of poverty; 54% for women over the age of 65 years are at risk of poverty.
In France, the numbers of HOMELESS women have increased from 14% in 1999 to 20% in 2008.
63% of women fleeing domestic violence in the UK are at risk of poverty.

European Women’s Lobby for more

by B. R. Gowani

(Internal Revenue Service complex into which Joseph Andrew Stack crashed his plane. AP Photo/Jack Plunkett)

Big brother’s wrongs, he couldn’t ignore
So with a bang, he made heard his roar

IRS: take my pound of flesh and sleep well
And enjoy the charred premise’s offensive smell

For Joe stack, US capitalism was a bane
So into IRS building, he flew his plane

An innocent man working there lost his life
So did Joe, protesting the injustices rife

For Floyd, it’s a dreary, disjointed tirade
Though the facts listed are sharp as blade

The establishment cannot say the T word
Cause that’s reserved for the Muslim herd

But it has got the message loud and clear
And so decided to save its filthy rear

The reliable eastern sources have said
The US doesn’t want this menace to spread

So it’s going to require pilots’ brain scan
To learn if any of them has any terror plan

At airports Muslims experience distress
But now the pilots will pass thru this mess

IRS notice: no one will pay taxes this year
As twelve months needed to get lost gear

B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com

by LIZ FEKETE

In Germany, an anti-racist academic faces prosecution for questioning whether court negligence could have been a contributory factor in the case of Marwa al-Sherbini, who was stabbed to death in a Dresden courtroom in July 2009.

Some of Germany’s foremost academics, journalists, peace campaigners, trades unionists and politicians have formed the Action Group Against Racism and for Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom (Aktionsbündnis gegen Rassismus und für Meinungs-und Wissenschaftsfreiheit). The Alliance is concerned about the implications for academic freedom posed by the prosecution of Dr Sabine Schiffer, Director of the Institute for Media Responsibility in Erlangen. Dr Schiffer is accused of slandering a police officer; she has been summonsed to appear before Erlangen Municipal Court on 24 March and, if convicted, could face a 6,000 Euros fine or two months imprisonment.
Marwa al-Sherbini: the questions continue

Marwa al-Sherbini, a 31-year-old pharmacist from Egypt, was three months pregnant when she was murdered by Alexandre Wiens, a German citizen of Russian descent, who was known to be a xenophobe and neo-nazi sympathiser. Marwa al-Sherbini was appearing as a witness against Wiens in a case that arose from an incident in a local playground in which he racially abused her and called her an ‘Islamist whore’ on account of wearing the headscarf. She was giving her testimony in the Dresden Superior Court when Wiens lept up and stabbed her sixteen times, shouting ‘you have no right to live’. In the chaos that followed, Marwa al-Sherbini’s husband, Elwi Ali Oka was shot and seriously wounded by a police officer who mistook him for the assailant. The officer was initially suspended but an internal police inquiry cleared him of any wrongdoing. It is this police officer who has launched the action against Dr Schiffer whom he accuses of slander.

The background to the prosecution lies in attempts by German academics and some media voices to raise further question about the killing, and to ask, in particular, whether the criminal justice system bears some responsibility for the tragic death. As one of Germany’s foremost experts on issues of media racism, Dr Sabine Schiffer had also questioned whether media portrayals of Muslims could have influenced the police officer who shot and seriously wounded Elwi Ali Oka. It is for publicly airing her views that Dr Schiffer faces prosecution.

Institute of Race Relations for more

Brussels — Legal advice stating that European vessels have no justification to fish off Western Sahara – a territory occupied by Morocco – has provoked a row between the main political institutions in Brussels.

Under the terms of a 2005 fishing agreement between the European Union (EU) and Morocco, boats may operate in Western Sahara, provided their activity benefits the indigenous Sahrawi people. But a new paper written by lawyers advising the European Parliament has found that there is no evidence of Sahrawis being aided due to the accord’s implementation, which began in 2007.

The paper advocates that efforts should be made to find an “amicable settlement” under which the Sahrawis can actually derive benefits from the agreement. But if no such settlement is forthcoming, it urges that European boats should be forbidden from entering a 200 nautical mile zone off Western Sahara.

Despite these findings, the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, is refusing to concede that the agreement has been problematic. An EU fisheries official said the Commission is “convinced” the deal is “indirectly and directly benefiting the Western Sahara region.”

All Africa for more

by VIRIGINIA HAUSSEGGER

f all my women friends – with a few exceptions – lived in Malaysia, and we happened to be Muslim, we’d all be badly battered and bruised. Our bodies would be red raw from constant thrashing. I wonder if we’d wear those lashing marks with pride. Or would the pain and humiliation of official caning eventually break our spirit, and reduce us to a pitiful submission?

The humiliation certainly got to 32 year old Kartika Shukarno. Last year when the former model and mother of two, was sentenced to a flogging for the crime of drinking a beer in a nightclub, she asked them to get on with it. As the judge in the Syariah High Court read out her sentence – six strokes of the rotan and a three year jail term or hefty fine – he explained the caning would make the accused “repent and serves as a lesson to Muslims”. Kartika bowed her head, kept calm, and after withdrawing her appeal said, “I will accept this earthly punishment, let Allah decide my punishment in the hereafter”.

Which raises an interesting point about Allah and his own interpretation of the Quran. Given so much of the foul treatment meted out to Muslim women is argued as justifiable according to the Quran, one can only wonder which of the myriad scholarly interpretations Allah himself might rely on.

There is Islamic scholarship that interprets verses of the Quran and cites various Hadith to argue that Allah preached respect for females, and equality between men and women. And then there are those scholars who interpret the sacred text as prescribing all manner of evils against women: so that they can be beaten by their husbands; shrouded in cloth; starved of food; forbidden to work, laugh or love whomever they choose. And even flogged for drinking a beer.

But it’s not just beer drinking that would make many of the women I know cop a flogging every weekend –if they lived in Malaysia. It’s sex. Two weeks ago the Malaysian government announced that three women have been imprisoned and caned for having sex out of wedlock.

Given just about every woman I know – again with a few exceptions – had a sexual encounter before marriage, we’d all qualify for a caning. It’s no wonder then that the Muslim editor of Malaysia’s The Star Online wrote in his editorial that news of the flogging would mean foreigners “are inevitably going to equate us with the Taliban. And who can blame them?”

Sydney Morning Herald for more

by GARETH PORTER

WASHINGTON, Feb 28, 2010 (IPS) – The refusal of Pakistani intelligence to turn over Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and as many as six other top Taliban figures to the United States or the Afghan government has dealt a serious blow to the Barack Obama administration’s hopes for Pakistani cooperation in weakening the Taliban.

It has left little doubt in the minds of U.S. officials that the Pakistani military intends to keep physical custody of the Taliban detainees in order to exert influence on both the pace of peace negotiations in Afghanistan and the ultimate terms of a settlement.

The Pakistani custody of Baradar and other Taliban leaders now appears to be more of a safe haven for the Afghan insurgents than a normal detention. At least some U.S. officials already accept the likelihood that the Pakistanis will allow the Taliban leaders to continue to maintain contact with other Taliban officials while in custody.

The primary evidence of the Pakistani military leadership’s intentions is the Pakistani refusal to allow the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to question Baradar in the days following his initial detention, as revealed by the New York Times on Feb. 18, and the Los Angeles Times the following day. The CIA was denied direct access to Baradar for “about two weeks”, according to the Los Angeles Times story.

That Pakistani refusal of access frustrated the CIA, which was eager to interrogate Baradar about details of the Taliban’s operations and finance. During those crucial two weeks, U.S. intelligence officials got no information that would lead them to the rest of the Taliban leadership.

U.S. intelligence officials doubt that they can get the truth from Baradar as long he is in Pakistani military custody, according to the Los Angeles Times.

During that two-week period, CIA Director Leon Panetta and other U.S. officials asked the Pakistani government and military leaders to transfer Baradar and other Taliban leaders to the U.S. detention centre at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in order to allow the U.S. military to interrogate him, according to the same report.

But Pakistani Interior Minister Rahman Malik flatly rejected that proposal Feb. 19. He announced that Baradar and two other high-ranking Taliban leaders arrested in February would not be handed over to the United States, and that Pakistani questioning of Baradar would continue in order to determine whether he had violated Pakistani law.

Inter Press Service for more

via 3 Quarks Daily

Economist

Fazle Hasan Abed has built one of the world’s most commercially-minded and successful NGOs

Smiling and dapper, Fazle Hasan Abed hardly seems like a revolutionary. A Bangladeshi educated in Britain, an admirer of Shakespeare and Joyce, and a former accountant at Shell, he is the son of a distinguished family: his maternal grandfather was a minister in the colonial government of Bengal; a great-uncle was the first Bengali to serve in the governor of Bengal’s executive council. This week he received a very traditional distinction of his own: a knighthood. Yet the organisation he founded, and for which his knighthood is a gong of respect, has probably done more than any single body to upend the traditions of misery and poverty in Bangladesh. Called BRAC, it is by most measures the largest, fastest-growing non-governmental organisation (NGO) in the world—and one of the most businesslike.

Although Mohammed Yunus won the Nobel peace prize in 2006 for helping the poor, his Grameen Bank was neither the first nor the largest microfinance lender in his native Bangladesh; BRAC was. Its microfinance operation disburses about $1 billion a year. But this is only part of what it does: it is also an internet-service provider; it has a university; its primary schools educate 11% of Bangladesh’s children. It runs feed mills, chicken farms, tea plantations and packaging factories. BRAC has shown that NGOs do not need to be small and that a little-known institution from a poor country can outgun famous Western charities. In a book on BRAC entitled “Freedom from Want”, Ian Smillie calls it “undoubtedly the largest and most variegated social experiment in the developing world. The spread of its work dwarfs any other private, government or non-profit enterprise in its impact on development.”

The Economist for more

(Submitted by reader)

by JOYCE GREY

Francistown — The Botswana government has been urged to find cheaper ways of dealing with the issue of Zimbabwean illegal immigrants.

Batswana interviewed likened the present state of affairs to a mad man who kept on pouring water into the drum and the water kept coming out at the other end. The Botswana government keeps taking Zimbabwean illegal immigrants to Ramokgwebana border gate for repatriation back to their country but the deportees keep crossing back into Botswana only to be repatriated again. This everyday exercise has seen the government spending millions of Pulas in what is said to be an effort to ensure their numbers in Botswana are controlled. According to the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs Acting Assistant Manager (Communications) Letso Mpho, 46, 472 illegal immigrants were arrested and repatriated countrywide last year. From Francistown and surrounding areas alone 27, 001 illegal immigrants, mostly Zimbabweans, were nabbed and taken home. The amount of money spent on the aliens for both food and transport countrywide was P594 397, 32. Francistown and its satellites accounted for P158 730,14. Illegals grabbed in Gaborone and surrounding areas made the Botswana government P153 337, 65 poorer. Asked whether there were any other alternatives to the current method, which is draining government coffers, especially in these recessionary times, Mpho was ambiguous in his response.

“We believe that with time the continuous repatriating of illegal immigrants whether they come back or not, one day they will see that they are not welcome.” He added that there is money budgeted for sending illegal immigrants back home and feeding them because the issue of illegal immigrants is one of the problems that the country has to address. That the statistics given above prove that more money being spent in deporting illegal immigrants is not helping to improve the country is indisputable. Illegals are costing the government in money, time and resources. They have become a legal responsibility to the government rather than a net benefit. They are taking taxpayers’ money away from those who are lawfully entitled to using it and they are putting a burden on the government. In that context, Mmegi took to the streets to gauge the opinion of some citizens as to what should be done about the situation. Themba Habana, a retired school headmaster, agreed that the repatriation exercise is wasteful, especially that those people keep coming back to seek economic opportunities.

“Botswana should copy the Unites States of America (US) idea of having a bureau where the immigrants can be registered and then whenever job opportunities arise they can be employed. They should be given permits, which restrict their movements to certain localities.

All Africa for more