Closed. The boat sank, the sharks won.

More LolCats

Now, please take a moment to consider all the women who have been, will be and are being, persecuted as Witches around the world. 

In Sisterhood and Solidarity,

SharkBait.

A phrase I heard in the news tonight, describing Hadijatou Mani and comparing her to Rosa Parks.

Sold into slavery aged 12 for the equivalent of £315, she was raped at age 13 and forced to bear her owners children, as well as doing domestic and agricultural work for the next 10 years. Now aged 24 Ms Mani has challenged the government of Niger and won.

Ms Mani says one of the reasons she has taken this court action is to secure her two children’s freedom and ensure they do not have to endure the same fate. 

A single voice shouting in the dark, and sometimes, just sometimes that voice is heard. 

“How could we have lived like this for so long? How could we have accepted this for so long?”

From Witchy’s Stairs, and before that it came from Amananta - Gratitude to you both, and do go and follow the links to the full story of women taking up arms and fighting for their freedom.

I’ve heard it said so many times that one person’s terrorist is another’s Freedom fighter. These women, the PKK and Ms Mani are fighting in their own way, and so are we, so am I. Running into the hills of England and becoming an outlaw in armed uprising is way off my personal agenda - unless you count words as weapons - but the passion is there, the anger is there and the enormity of the struggle we face is there. We can raise our voices and use our words as our weapons and we too can call our society to account.

In the news today…..

Killers try to clean up.

Two people accused of killing British student Meredith Kercher tried to clean up the victim’s blood, a lawyer claims.

The Leeds University student was spending a year abroad in the Umbrian town when she was killed. Her semi-naked body was found in her bedroom.

Prosecutors claim she died during a bungled sex game.

A funeral in Kabul.

[Gayle Williams’] sister Karen said her family forgave the killers and Gayle would have told them not to hold a grudge.

Reminds me of Agnes Humbert - another women working amongst conflict created by men but with so much generosity of spirit, such humanity, that she sees the individual rather than the uniform. 

Fritzl blames his mother - Born to rape

The Austrian father who allegedly imprisoned and abused his daughter for 24 years has said he was "born to rape", according to a leaked report.

The report by psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner says Joseph Fritzl’s mother humiliated him in childhood, creating his need to "possess a human being".

Hold on there - "Allegedly"???? I’m speechless. Allegedly? Oh and it’s all his mother’s fault? That’s it, blame a woman because it can’t possibly be his own responsibility. 

Concern grows for Esha Momeni.

Esha Momeni, who is from Los Angeles, was doing research into the status of women in Iran when she was arrested on 15 October.

According to her lawyer, Ms Momeni, 28, was pulled over for a traffic offence in the capital, Tehran.

She has been denied contact with any legal representation, allowed only one short phone call with her family and no reason for her continued detention has been given.

Then there are a series of assaults on women.

One in Blackpool.

What a bland little report. How diminishing is that? The whole tone is one of "Yeah, whatever, you’ll get over it." It’s so flat, have we really become so hardened to this that we don’t care any more?

One in Bradford.

Another loose report with no humanity.

Woman murdered in Scotland.

The remains of a woman were found in a burn near Dunlop, East Ayrshire. Police have not yet made an identification.

Officers said a post-mortem examination confirmed that the remains were female and that the death was now being treated as murder.

Police believe the body to be that of missing grandmother Anne Brown.

Then there’s yet another teacher convicted of viewing child porn. 

 ….4,000 images on his laptop of children aged as young as four being abused. Some were of the most severe level five….

I hope for a Sunday when I can go through the news and find something positive for the Sunday Shout.

 

Half Rape Crisis centres face closure threat

 

Its centres are the only source of support for the thousands of
victims who experience sexual violence in the UK every year, however
Rape Crisis is in the middle of its very own crisis, due to a severe
shortage of funding, according to a new survey by the organisation.

In a country where the conviction rate for rape stands at
a woeful 5.3%, as many as half the centres - which provide a crucial
support service for women with recent and historic experience of rape
and sexual assault - are facing closure.

Why is this still an issue? This is from an article in the Guardian in March 2008 - but it’s a never ending problem. (The cat pic is not from the Guardian, but from Lolcatz, with my caption.) 

What’s bugging me is that I’ve been hearing the same thing for year after year, both in the news and from people who work in Rape Crisis. Here in the UK we’ve gone from 68 centres in 1984 to 38 in 2008. Now, with a conviction rate of 5.3% of only 10% reported rape, as a country we are clearly sending a powerful message aren’t we. Don’t bother reporting it if you are unlucky enough to be raped, as there’s no support for you and even if you happen to find a Rape Crisis centre still open near you then the chances are it’ll only be available for limited hours and you’ll never see your rapist convicted anyway. It completely devalues the experience and life of a raped woman, denies her the healing and support she needs.

Sitting here shaking my head in disbelief at our national inhumanity. 

Just from the BBC news site.

Father held over body in the woods.

The father of a 19-year-old woman is being held by police on suspicion of murder after the remains of a skeleton were found in woodland.

Man kills wife over Facebook.

A man has been jailed for life for stabbing his wife to death over a posting she made on the social networking site Facebook.

On court on murder charge.

A man charged with murdering a 22-year-old woman whose body was found in a house in Buckinghamshire has appeared before magistrates.

Pro Choice or Anti Abortion - There’s a rally for you!

Pro-choice and anti-abortion campaigners have been holding rallies in support of, and in opposition to, an attempt to change the law on abortion.

Call for support for victims of human trafficking. 

The government has been urged to increase the level of support available for victims of human trafficking in Northern Ireland.

Teachers that slap girl’s bottom - Not Indecency!!

A teacher who slapped a pupil on her bottom and called her a "naughty girl" has been found guilty of professional misconduct, but can carry on teaching.

A small selection because I just feel ill after a while, there’s just so much of it - and that’s just one site and just the UK.I think I may try to remember to do a Sunday Papers kind of news selection every week.

Ah, feminism is no longer needed, patriarchy is a myth, yeah, and the Earth is flat….  Go safely folks, careful you don’t fall off the edge.

BBC - Today

A respected middle-aged art historian at one of Paris’s most illustrious museums, Agnès Humbert was an unlikely candidate for Resistance heroism. But amid the chaos and bitter ignominy of defeat her soul rebelled.

She leafleted, she stickered and she did what she could and she encouraged others to do the same. She fought the Nazi war machine with everything she had and then, when captured, she was forced to work for it instead.

But did she hate the German people? No, after the war ended she changed her direction again but carried on in the same vein. 

Agnès threw off her shackles to set up first-aid posts and soup kitchens for the armies of the dispossessed - including, at her express insistence, German civilians…..

…..arguing stoutly that indiscriminate persecution of the Germans would only encourage the rise of ‘another Hitler’.

Agnes believed in people as individuals. Although the masses can be swept along in politics and in fear, each person is an individual and should be valued as such. A individual that is part of a group should not be simply dismissed or labelled simply because of the actions of the group.

We do it all the time don’t we?  "You are a member of X Group, therefore you are bad/undesirable and I am unwilling to look at you/get to know you" It’s a generic but we all do it. We classify individuals by the groups they appear to belong to - even when that group membership is unproven. We see someone associating with a group, or a member of a group and we just lump them all in together, completely disregarding the individual. "Oh, you’ve commented on X’s blog therefore you must be her friend and have the same beliefs as her." It may be true but it may not and if we fail to engage with the individual then how will we ever know? If we can’t reach out and keep communications open then are we not alienating? If we can’t recognise and connect with the simple humanity of an individual, regardless of their difference from ourselves, then how can we call ourselves human?

Agnes Humbert’s memoirs, translated by Barbara Mellor, are published as Resistance: Memoirs of Occupied France by Bloomsbury.  

It is an unfortunate fact that rape and other forms of sexual violence are being used as a weapon of war in order to humiliate, punish, control, inflict terror and displace women and their communities. These rapes and other sexual violence amount to serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Thanks Sparkle. And thanks Simply Wondered.

Women and children are 80% of refugees and displaced people worldwide. International courts have recognized that rape is routinely used as a weapon of war (*1) and an estimated 50% of women seeking asylum in the UK are rape survivors (*2). Yet the UN Convention on Refugees which defines who is entitled to protection does not recognise the specific persecution of women. Each woman must battle against institutional sexism, and institutional racism if she is a woman of colour, forced to show how her case relates to the Convention.

Gender Guidelines, provided to the Home Office (*3) and immigration judges in the UK (*4) acknowledge how hard it may be for women to speak about rape, and give practical guidance about how to ensure women have a fair hearing. But officials have no statutory obligation to implement the Guidelines, and rape survivors seeking asylum are treated with disbelief and even hostility. Case law and international precedents are rarely referred to and frequently flouted. And while victims of torture are considered “vulnerable” people who should not be detained, many are detained, including rape survivors.

Even when women are believed, rape can be dismissed as “simple lust” or “random acts” by “unruly officers”, or women are told it is safe to live somewhere else in the country they fled – with no means of survival, except begging or prostitution.

Women are denied any support or even legal representation. As a result, many cases are closed and women fight for years to get justice. Trafficked women who escaped forced prostitution or other bonded labour, mothers of children conceived as a result of rape, under-age girls and other rape survivors, are left destitute and detained. Most are ultimately removed.

Sign the petition here.  Please, your voice is needed here, make your mark and make it count.

This is the 21st Century and we can treat so many previously untreatable medical conditions. It’s wonderful isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

In a way, yes, it’s fabulous that people I know aren’t dead thanks to medical intervention, that I’m not dead thanks to modern medical intervention.  But in some ways I’ve been thinking that the long term effects are unknown and so potentially dangerous.

Think about what we’re doing for a moment. Take theoretical woman A - she has a narrow pelvis and is pregnant. The baby is breech and there are complications. So the hospital performs an emergency caesarian and both Mum and baby are fine. But only a short time ago she would have likely died in childbirth and the baby would have died too. Tragic, but evolution in action really. So baby is a girl and has inherited mum’s narrow pelvis so when she comes to have children she could well have the same problems and the pattern repeats, and worsens because we have selected that narrow pelvis as a positive trait to be perpetuated and enhanced.

Take theoretical child B - who has a chronic illness and is essentially kept alive through a serious drug regime. This child lives a reasonably normal life, just has to have injections at regular intervals.  Again, just a short time ago that child would have died, or at least not produced children with the same condition.With IVF and fertility treatments we are producing children who should never have been born and we are undoing natural population controls as we smother the planet with our sheer numbers. We tear the planet apart and take what we think we need with no regard for the ecosystem on a local or global level.

Take this a few generations down the line and we are coping with a sick population with high levels of diabetes, of epilepsy, of heart disease, of hormonal imbalances, of growth problems, of such a huge range of disorders that our medical technology has to work harder and go further to cope and that just perpetuates the problem. How far are we prepared to go? What are we prepared to destroy in order to achieve this artificial longevity and sustained poor health?

We are supporting a weakened Human Species. We are affecting evolution and it’s not in a good way. And that’s just the damage we’re doing to ourselves. We are doing so much harm on a global level it’s unbelievable.

So, what happens when the oil runs out? When the drugs can’t be made and there’s no general anaesthetic for major operations, no internet. When the fuel is all gone and there is no plastic apart from that lying in landfill. Some predictions say within 4 years, some say 10, but it’s coming and it’ll happen sooner than you think.