Women from Bolivia’s impoverished indigenous community have taken over a traditionally male stronghold, wrestling. “Of course, we’re fighters,” they explain. “What else could we be after all those centuries of oppression and discrimination?”
Radio Netherlands Worldwide for more
RADIO NETHERLANDS WORLDWIDE
The circumcision of boys is reportedly almost always unnecessary and medically risky. The Royal Dutch Medical Society (KNMG) has published recommendations advising doctors to discourage parents from having their sons circumcised. Jewish and Islamic organisations have reacted angrily.
The KNMG would really like to ban the circumcision of boys altogether, but the organisation feels a legal ban would only lead to circumcision going underground, increasing the risks.
Dialogue
More than 46,000 Dutch doctors and trainee doctors are members of the society. They call circumcision for non-medical reasons “an infringement of a child’s right to autonomy and the right to bodily integrity”. And they say there are unnecessary risks.
Radio Netherlands Worldwide for more
by DECLAN WALSH
The virtual conspiracy of silence after the murder of 94 Ahmadis in Pakistan exposes the oppression suffered by the sect
In the national parliament, three brave female MPs crossed party lines to propose a resolution condemning the attacks, in the face of massive indifference. The motion passed, just.
The silence that followed the Ahmadi killings was broken last week by a tsunami of outrage at the Israeli commando raids on boats headed for Gaza. Commentators and politicians fulminated at the treatment of the Palestinians – a minority that suffers state-sanctioned, religiously driven discrimination. Nobody got the irony.
It makes one realise how small the constituency of true liberals is in Pakistan – not Pervez Musharraf-style liberals, who drink whisky and attend fashion shows, but people who believe the state should cherish all citizens equally. That, after all, was the publicly expressed desire of Pakistan’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, 63 years ago. Today it lies in tatters.
Guardian for more
(Submitted by Robin Khundkar)
by NUSRAT ARA
It is Sunday noon. I am standing outside the only functional cinema in all of Indian administered Kashmir.
Located in the city of Srinagar, the shabby Neelam Cinema sits quiet. It looks more like a war torn military post, with coils of razor wire and bunkers, than a cinema. A paramilitary guard looks out from a bunker above as we approach the tin door. “No film today,” he says. “Go back.”
Women’s International Perspective for more
EARTH
It may seem that there has been an unusual amount of volcanic activity lately, with major eruptions occurring in Iceland, Guatemala and Ecuador. But is it really unusual, and are the eruptions connected?
The short answer to both questions is no.
At any one time, there are numerous volcanoes erupting in the world — the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program lists 17 on any given day in their most recent report. These volcanoes are located in a variety of tectonic settings, from hot spots to subduction zones, and they are all erupting for different reasons. But the eruptions are almost never related, even if the volcanoes are geographically close to each other.
Earth for more
by NURIT PELED-ELHANAN
When I asked the people who invited me here why didn’t they invite a Palestinian woman, the answer was that it would make the discussion too localized. I don’t know what is non-localized violence. Racism and discrimination may be theoretical concepts and universal phenomena but their impact is always local, and real. Pain is local, humiliation, sexual abuse, torture and death, are all very local, and so are the scars.
…
We are all the victims of mental, psychological and cultural violence that turn us to one homogenic group of bereaved or potentiallybereaved mothers. Western mothers who are taught to believe their uterus is a national asset just like they are taught to believe that the Muslim uterus is an international threat. They are educated not to cry out: `I gave him birth, I breast fed him, he is mine, and I will not let him be the one whose life is cheaper than oil, whose future is less worth than a piece of land.`
Peace for Palestine for more
(Submitted by reader)
by GHASSAN HAGE
(“Sometimes when there is a surfeit of information and disinformation and everybody has something to say, there emerges a gem so clear and brilliant that says it all. It does not need any explanation.” Sonja Karkar, editor,
Australians for Palestine)
Long ago, I was made to understand that Palestine was not Palestine;
I was also informed that Palestinians were not Palestinians;
They also explained to me that ethnic cleansing was not ethnic cleansing.
And when naive old me saw freedom fighters
they patiently showed me that they were not freedom fighters,
Continue reading “I don’t write poems but, in any case, poems are not poems”
by NIKOS RAPTIS
Also, what I never learned through the official Greek educational system is why the Ottomans lasted in Greece for four centuries. Here is an explanation: “Much of the land was held by [Christian!] monasteries and absentee landlords, and as the Turkish conquerors ‘liberated’ it and turned it over to the destitute peasants they were hailed as deliverers.” [Lewis, p. 13]. Then when the Turks left, after 1821, the Christian monasteries grabbed back the land. To this day a great part of the choicest Greek land belongs to the monasteries. A few miles from my place there is the “Monastery of Pendeli” at the foot of the Pendeli mountain. The mountain that offered the Greeks the marble to build the Parthenon. Now, this monastery started selling [!!!] the land to the Greeks [!] after the Second World War. The owned surface was and is vast. Also, the money earned by the representatives of God on earth was and is vast. As a matter of fact one of the main economic scandals of the present economic crisis in Greece is the “Vatopedi” scandal. “Vatopedi”, of course, is a monastery in northern Greece.
Z Net for more
EUROPEAN WOMEN’S LOBBY
Did you know…?
In every age group, more women are living in poverty than men and face a much higher risk of poverty in situations of separation, divorce or death of their partner.
One third of single?parent families in Europe, most of which are headed by women, are living in poverty.
The employment rate for women aged 55-64 is 36.8%, 18.2 percentage points lower than men in the same category.
European women are four times more likely to work part-time, more likely to have fixed term contracts and are more often part of the informal economy characterised by the absence of working contracts.
The employment rate of women with children under the age of 12 drops by 11.5% whereas it increases by 7% for men in the same situation.
Women in seven European countries earn 20% less than their male counterparts.
European Women’s Lobby for more