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Showing posts with label muslim women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label muslim women. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Some of my tweet from March 26 - 31























































































Posted by MariaS at 16:32 0 comments
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Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Some of my tweets ... December 20 - 31















































Posted by MariaS at 16:58 0 comments
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Sunday, December 18, 2016

Some News, views and opinion from the Alternative Media ... week ending Sunday Dec 18


From InfomationClearingHouse (video)
Duterte Says 'Bye Bye America' 
We Don't Need Your Money
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told the United States on Saturday to prepare for repeal of an agreement on deployment of troops and equipment for exercises, declaring "bye-bye America", and we don't need your money....

From RT
‘They slaughtered my family & told me to go’: 
Heart-wrenching stories of Aleppo orphans (EXCLUSIVE)

As Aleppo has been almost entirely liberated from militants by the Syrian Army, the daunting task of rebuilding people’s lives lies ahead. RT’s Lizzie Phelan met with orphaned children from the city whose harrowing stories epitomize the horrors of war.

Over the past few days, some 100,000 civilians, including 40,000 children, have left eastern Aleppo, according to the Russian Reconciliation Center.

The UN says one in four children have been affected by the Syrian war. In Aleppo, that figure appears a gross understatement, Phelan reports.

Children such as Moussa, who is around eight, Jamil, 14, and Asma – around the same age – shared their chilling experience of watching their parents and siblings killed by terrorists before their eyes while they had to flee the fighting on their own.

“My father was killed five days ago,” says the tearful Asma, who’s been left to fend for herself with her five younger brothers and sisters. The Red Crescent picked them up as it did countless other children from what was the rebel-held Aleppo. Dirty, hungry and too traumatized to talk about their ordeal, they were dropped off at an orphanage a few days ago....

From KurdishDaily
Turkish police and soldiers execute more than 400 people in 2016

AKP’s police and soldiers have captured more than 400 Kurds alive and executed them during the genocidal attacks of 2016. The number of people executed by the police and the army under enemy law just this year has surpassed 400 according to data from the Human Rights Association (Insan Haklari Dernegi – IHD).
A small sample from AKP’s political murders are as follows:

Sêvê Demir, Pakize Nayir and Fatma Uyar were murdered by state forces in Sirnak’s Silopi district on the evening of January 4. It was later found out that the person murdered alongside with the female politicians was Islam Atak (20).

In Van’s Edremit district, 12 HPG members were executed on January 10 in a house raid by the special operations units with the claim that “there was a clash”. Access to the file and autopsy reports on the massacre was barred.

In Mardin’s Kiziltepe district, 4 people lost their lives when special operations police opened fire on a vehicle in Turgut Özal neighborhood on January 12. Witness accounts say the vehicle with the license plate 63 F 1579 was in motion when suddenly it was raked by the police armored vehicles. After the attack, 4 unidentified persons were killed in the vehicle and dozens of bullet holes were seen on the vehicle. Later it was found out that one of the people who were executed was DBP administrator Cengiz Erdem, brother of Aydin Erdem who was murdered by the police in a student protest in Amed in 2009.

In Van, a young man named Nadir Tezgel was executed during a raid by the special operations units on January 21.....

Jing Cao at Bloomberg
IBM Lays Out Plans to Hire 25,000 in U.S.
Ahead of Trump Meeting
IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty said she plans to hire about 25,000 people in the U.S. and invest $1 billion over the next four years, laying out her vision for filling technology jobs in America on the eve of a meeting of industry leaders with President-elect Donald Trump....

From VoltaireNet
Yet again Washington allows Palmyra 
to be occupied by Daesh
Once again, Daesh has seized Palmyra following a surprise attack in the period 9 - 12 December 2016.

The “High Representative” of the “Syrian Opposition”, Riad Hijab, has denounced the forces of the Syrian “regime” who pounce on “unarmed civilians” at Aleppo but “jump ship like rats when confronted by the jihadists of the Islamic State at Palmyra.” The reality is a very different story.

In a synchronized [manoeuvre], 5,000 jihadists arrived at Rakka and Mosul to catch in a vice, the thousands of Syrian soldiers defending the city. The Syrian Arab Army had barely enough time to evacuate the civilians and to destroy its arsenal before retreating.

The United States has pushed Daesh to invade the Sunni part of Iraq in June 2014, in order to cut land communications between Tehran and Damascus, the final stage in the “Silk Route”. Once Mosul (Iraq) has been taken, Daesh moved on to Palmyra (Syria) in May 2015. Its troops had then crossed the border under the watch of the US forces who had not intervened and had not even sounded an alert. However, the town had been liberated in March 2016.....

From KurdishQuestion
A bomb blast targeting a bus carrying dozens of soldiers 
in Turkey's central Kayseri province at 08:45 local time has injured and killed several according to reports.

An immediate broadcast ban was issued by the Turkish government.

According to eye-witness reports a car ploughed into the bus, exploding immediately.

Reuters has said the bus, carrying off duty soldiers and civilians was hit by a car laden bomb outside Kayseri University.

Other reports say the bus was carrying special forces soldiers going on leave.

Andrea Germanos at CommonDreams
Amid Finger Pointing at Russia,
US Brings Tanks Back to Cold War Depot
'We need to take action,' says President Obama

As President Barack Obama vows that the United States will take "action" in response to the allegations that Russia interfered with the November election, the U.S. army has started to bring tanks back to a Cold War site in the Netherlands as a show of its "commitment to deterrence in Europe."

The U.S. and Dutch military reopened the Eygelshoven site on Thursday. It will contain "strategically prepositioned critical war stock" including M1 Abrams Tanks and M109 Paladin Self-Propelled Howitzers.....

Depravity has another name "Art" given to it by those who want to make depravity seem normal behaviour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLbFugaFyAA

From ConsortiumNews
As the hysteria about Russia’s alleged interference 
in the U.S. election grows, a key mystery is why U.S. intelligence would rely on “circumstantial evidence” when it has the capability for hard evidence, say U.S. intelligence veterans.

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
MEMORANDUM
Allegations of Hacking Election Are Baseless
A New York Times report on Monday alluding to “overwhelming circumstantial evidence” leading the CIA to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin “deployed computer hackers with the goal of tipping the election to Donald J. Trump” is, sadly, evidence-free. This is no surprise, because harder evidence of a technical nature points to an inside leak, not hacking – by Russians or anyone else
Monday’s Washington Post reports that Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has joined other senators in calling for a bipartisan investigation of suspected cyber-intrusion by Russia. Reading our short memo could save the Senate from endemic partisanship, expense and unnecessary delay.

In what follows, we draw on decades of senior-level experience – with emphasis on cyber-intelligence and security – to cut through uninformed, largely partisan fog. Far from hiding behind anonymity, we are proud to speak out with the hope of gaining an audience appropriate to what we merit – given our long labors in government and other areas of technology. And corny though it may sound these days, our ethos as intelligence professionals remains, simply, to tell it like it is – without fear or favor.

We have gone through the various claims about hacking. For us, it is child’s play to dismiss them. The email disclosures in question are the result of a leak, not a hack. Here’s the difference between leaking and hacking:

Leak: When someone physically takes data out of an organization and .....

From RT
‘Lies are their agenda’:
Canadian journalist blasts MSM Syria coverage at UN event (VIDEO)
 Western mainstream media’s coverage of the Syrian war is “compromised” as their local sources are “not credible” and, in the case of Aleppo, not even there, a Canadian journalist said in an emotional speech at the UN.

“I’ve been many times to Homs, to Maaloula, to Latakia and Tartus [in Syria] and again, Aleppo, four times. And people’s support of their government is absolutely true. Whatever you hear in the corporate media is completely opposite,” Eva Bartlett, a Canadian journalist and rights activist, told a press conference arranged by the Syrian mission to the UN.

“And, on that note, what you hear in the corporate media, and I will name them – BBC, Guardian, the New York Times etc. – on Aleppo is also the opposite of reality,” she added. The mainstream media narrative, she argued, is meant to mislead the public about what is really happening in Syria by demonizing President Bashar Assad’s government and altering the facts on Russia’s support for Damascus.......




Alex Christoforou at TheDuran
Watch Stephen Colbert spread fake news,
 blast Rex Tillerson, and expose his bigotry towards Russian people
If Stephen Colbert made fun of any other culture in such a manner, it would be blasted as racism and bigotry.

.......Colbert uses that power to spread his liberal religion on to the masses. It’s a religion that has Hillary Clinton as savior, Trump as the devil, and all Russians as lower than life, bumbling Soviet fools, controlled by a strong man dictator.

Colbert seems to always ignore that his liberal ideology has destroyed millions of lives in Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Syria…while his savior knowingly rigged the primary election against Bernie Sanders, and is now ready to lie about Russian hackers in order to create a constitutional crisis in the USA.

Never mind the small little fact that the RNC was never hacked, that Craig Murray and Julian Assange have both met the individual who leaked the Podesta emails, and that the FBI refuses to corroborate the CIA’s “Russia election hack” story because of lack of evidence.

Evidence and fact are like kryptonite to liberal minds. Its all about holier than thou values, that today’s hollywood forces upon you at gun point......

Alice Salles at AntiMedia
Someone Has Officially Called the CIA’s Bluff over Russia

The scapegoating of Russia is now so widespread, Dirty Wars author and investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill took to The Intercept to call the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on its bluff.

In the article, “Obama Must Declassify Evidence Of Russian Hacking,” Scahill and Jon Schwartz called out U.S. intelligence agencies for their record of deceit, asserting that the American people are not going to simply “take their word for it.”

“U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly demonstrated that they regularly both lie and get things horribly wrong,” the article argues. But when it comes to the CIA’s case against Russia’s alleged interference with the latest U.S. presidential elections, it’s impossible to claim the hearsay is based on facts if evidence is not made available to support the agency’s claims.

Nevertheless, Scahill and Schwartz argue, it’s possible that Russia may have pulled some strings. But even if the Kremlin had its reasons and acted on them, America is the country with the long history of election meddling — not Russia.

Take Hillary Clinton’s comments on the Palestinian elections, for instance. A leaked audio recording from 2006 revealed then-senator Clinton advocated doing “something to determine who was going to win” in Palestine’s elections. And yet here she is, hoping to use the “Russia did it” talking point to give censorship a boost. The CIA has its own history of meddling in foreign elections.

In order to give Barack Obama’s administration that extra push to release any “proof” the CIA has that the 2016 U.S. elections were “rigged,” the Intercept’s duo encouraged feds or whistleblowers to use the publication’s secure drop link, where a “patriotic whistleblower” within the U.S. intelligence community may drop the leak that proves Russia is behind President-elect Donald Trump’s win. “[W]e will verify its legitimacy and publish it,” they added.......

Ok...she is a bad girl, she lied.  But what about the parents. They shaved off her hair and eyebrows as punishment?  They need to face some sort of punishment for that abuse.  It's more than possible the teen lied because she wanted to stop wearing the hijab and this made-up incident was to make her parents see that wearing the headwear was dangerous for Muslim girls.




Isabella Mackie at VICE
The ongoing Yemeni civil war
has pushed the country closer to collapse and to the brink of famine. New figures released by children’s charity UNICEF show that more than 462,000 children there are coping with severe acute malnutrition and are at risk of starvation — a staggering 200 percent increase since 2014 — and 2.2. million children require urgent care.

“Malnutrition in Yemen is at an all-time high and increasing,” said Dr. Meritxell Relano, a UNICEF representative in Yemen. “The state of health of children in the Middle East’s poorest country has never been as catastrophic as it is today.”....





From WitnessIraq
9th Circuit hears oral argument in Saleh v. Bush, et al.

San Francisco, Calif. — December 12, 2016 was a historic day, marking the first time that a U.S. court heard argument related to the actions of senior Bush-era officials who were responsible for the planning and waging of the Iraq War.

Circuit court judges Andrew Hurwitz and Susan Graber and District Court judge Richard Boulware (sitting by designation on the 9th Circuit), heard argument that the immunity granted to former President George W. Bush and other officials by the federal district court related to their conduct in waging the Iraq War should be overturned. This immunity was provided in December 2014, resulting in the current appeal.

The judges spent most of oral argument focusing on the nature of the domestic immunity, questioning both counsel for the Iraqi plaintiff, Sundus Saleh, as well as counsel for the United States about where immunity ends for government officials.

The judges will issue their opinion as to whether the immunity should be overturned in the coming weeks.....




Junaid Ghoto at GlobalResearch
The Myth of India 
as an Upcoming Asian Economic Powerhouse. Rising Poverty and Social Inequality
A common myth around the world is that, India is developing country at a very rapid pace and going to be a powerhouse in Asia soon. Some even argue we should learn from them and some argue independence should have never happened and we would have been a better off with India rather than independent. And even some pessimist especially Pakistani and Bangladeshi people regret the independence in 1947 and common chorus can be heard “look where India has reached today and where we are”.

Regret or not, but it is important to see where India stands today, the idea to write regarding this is to differentiate the illusion from fact and give reason so the sane understanding follows. A nation is called developing not because of its population, or defense budget, but how good the people fare in that country; it is about the human development and economic growth which include improving education and health by having less people as possible under the poverty line and high incomes per capita of citizen in the country, this will come when the state will have a sound economic system.

India is no doubt one of the biggest democracy in the world; because it has the highest population, Simple! (China highly populist, and officially “communist”). India is the second biggest nation in the world in terms of population and seventh largest in terms of area. According to the IMF as of 2015, the Indian economically nominally worth US$ 2.182 trillion, it, it’s the eleventh largest economy in terms of market exchange rates at US$ 8.027 trillion, third largest by PPP, with an annual GDP growth of last decade’s 5.8%.[1]...
Posted by MariaS at 21:45 0 comments
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Sunday, March 13, 2016

Egyptian lawmakers' "No niqab for you" sounds like heavenly music


Some dictators can be tolerated with a wide smile.  Sisi of Egypt is one of them.  If the Egyptian women are so very illiterate, they definitely deserved to be dragged out of their caves.

From Quartz:
Egyptian lawmakers want to ban Muslim women from covering their faces

Egyptian lawmakers are pushing for a ban on the niqab, a veil worn by women that covers most of one’s face, in what has become a fight over personal liberties and the government’s attempt to control religion in Egyptian society.

The pro-government Egypt Support Coalition, a group of lawmakers within parliament, told local media that it is drafting a bill to present to parliament that bars Muslim women from wearing the veil in public places or in state institutions. “We seek to spread moderate Islam,” Amna Nuseir, a member of the group told Gulf News. “The niqab is not an Islamic duty.”

The niqab, a symbol of rising Islamic conservatism to some, has been a source of tension for years. Authorities ruled that American University’s satellite campus in Cairo could not ban women from wearing the veil in 2007. But in 2009, Egypt’s oldest university, al-Azhar, banned women from wearing the niqab in classrooms and dormitories. Other universities prohibited women from wearing the veil during exams on the grounds that it could facilitate cheating.

A recent ban on the niqab at Cairo University was expanded this month to include female staff at the school’s teaching hospitals and medical departments. In October, university officials said female teachers were not allowed to wear the veil while lecturing. Upscale venues in Cairo have barred women wearing the niqab from entering on security grounds, claiming that it obscures one’s identity.....

Posted by MariaS at 15:41 0 comments
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Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Allah's headchopper in Moscow


Islam drives people mad, PERIOD.  Just as the sun is responsible for the climate change we are experiencing, so also is Islam responsible for insanity.  I am not giving a pass to Christianity and Judaism either.  All three religions, if you fanatically follow their tenets, you are a nutcase, and should be put away before bringing harm to your fellow beings.

From RT
‘Allah ordered me’ to kill child: Beheading nanny appears smiling in court
 The nanny accused of beheading a four-year-old girl in Moscow and waving her severed head outside a Metro station told journalists before a court hearing that ‘Allah ordered’ her to murder the child.

Gulchekhra Bobokulova from Uzbekistan appeared in court on Wednesday over the gruesome murder of the girl in her care. She was detained on Monday near Oktyabrskoye Polye Metro station in northwestern Moscow, where she was waving the child’s severed head and shouting “Allahu Akbar, I am a terrorist, I am a suicide bomber.”...

Posted by MariaS at 14:42 0 comments
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Monday, November 23, 2015

Paging Immigration Canada ... Single men AND single women should not be accepted as refugees ...


unless you want to shoulder the blame for Canadians getting killed violently in the near future by single jihadi women.

Go to the link below and read the entire article and  see for yourselves how plenty of young Syrian women have also become as sociopathic as the headchopping  jihadis they married one after another.
 
The author has interviewed just three women who managed to "escape" from Raqqa, the capital of the jihadi army.  There must be hundreds, if not thousands of this kind of jihadi wives in the mix of refugees now making their way to the West as legitimate refugees.
 
Immigration departments accepting refugees will have to be very, very careful that even young couples, those without kids,  are vetted again and again and again and again.  Women like the ones whose lives have been changed to jihadi norms and practices will probably make their way to the West with willing males (who might be ISIS-affliated or might not be).  If these women could stomach the jihadi lifestyle in Syria and even enjoy it most of the time,   chances are they will be harboring a kind of Stockholm-like syndrome deep within their psyches and within a few short years over here, could even wish for those days with nostalgia and longing.  Damaged goods can do plenty of damage.

Azadeh Moaveni writing at NYTimes
ISIS Women and Enforcers in Syria Recount Collaboration, Anguish and Escape

SOUTHERN TURKEY — Dua had only been working for two months with the Khansaa Brigade, the all-female morality police of the Islamic State, when her friends were brought to the station to be whipped.
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The police had hauled in two women she had known since childhood, a mother and her teenage daughter, both distraught. Their abayas, flowing black robes, had been deemed too form-fitting.

When the mother saw Dua, she rushed over and begged her to intercede. The room felt stuffy as Dua weighed what to do.

“Their abayas really were very tight. I told her it was their own fault; they had come out wearing the wrong thing,” she said. “They were unhappy with that.”

Dua sat back down and watched as the other officers took the women into a back room to be whipped. When they removed their face-concealing niqabs, her friends were also found to be wearing makeup. It was 20 lashes for the abaya offense, five for the makeup, and another five for not being meek enough when detained........

Posted by MariaS at 16:51 0 comments
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Tuesday, October 20, 2015

On my visit to Turkey before it too stumbles into a civil war ....


which seems to be written in the cards unless Erdogan disappears for good.

I visited a few spots in Turkey and parts of Europe near Turkey early this month.  The Ankara bombing took 


place just a day after we left Izmir after visiting Istanbul and Ephesus. 

In Izmir province we visited the world famous the house believed  to have been the abode of the Virgin Mary after she travelled with John the Apostle to Anatolia.  A little chapel is built on the site where people believe she lived after Christ's death ... but then there are stories of Mary having visited Jordan and Syria.  Not to belittle the religious fervour felt by my fellow Christians on seeing the  supposed dwelling, but I tend to take everything to do with religions, all religions, with a sackful of salt.  All the same, the place is up on a steep hill and in beautiful surroundings.


 
  Story has it that Paul being one of the most zealous promoters of Christianity decided to travel to Anatolia to preach to the thousands of Jews residing in those parts hoping for conversions.  His strategy was to use Mary's motherhood and femininity as a pull because people in those areas were accustomed to goddesses more than gods.

Suffice to say that Paul managed to convert a great many people.  A large part of present day Turkey used to be Greece before the Ottomans conquered city after city, town after town of this historic part of the world.
Here's more  on the subject.
 


The Greek and Roman influence in present day Turkey is seen and felt especially in Ephesus (ruins of the Celsus Library,   Temple of Hadrian,Ephesus, ) and of course at the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

There's just too much to do, see and absorb in Turkey.  The few areas we visited had so much history, it was totally overwhelming. 

I was amazed too with the Turkish women.  Strikingly beautiful and not a single one in a niqab.  Many of the conservative ladies wear colorful hijabs but mitigate the head coverings with tonnes of makeup on their faces. The longest eyelash extensions I have ever seen were on Turkish and Kurdish women in fashionable Istanbul. Good for them!!   


I was told by a young lady that if I happen to see a niqab or burkha, I would be looking at Saudis and not Turkish women. The Istanbul bazaars seem to have become  a magnet for Saudi shoppers.  I saw even matronly Turkish women well into their 70s and 80s wearing fashionable tight fitting garments and sporting highlights in their hair.  Fantastic!!

We visited the Blue Mosque and also the Topkapi Palace among many other "must see" edifices.

At the Blue Mosque we removed our shoes and carried them in a plastic bag (provided at the doorway) and covered our heads with a scarf.  If one does not have a scarf, the mosque provides.  A family mem of mine insisted on wearing a sleeveless top and a skimpy scarf which got a hijab wearing monitor of the mosque approach her to get her to cover her shoulders but she pretended not to understand the monitor and ignored the request. Hah!  This kind of required covering for head and shoulders is also the done thing at some churches in Italy (more on that in a later post).

All in all, Turkey is a beautiful place.  I only wish the Ephesus part of Turkey was still in Greece's hands as nothing there says "Islam" or "Muslim".  I also felt  pain to see that the Hagia Sophia, although now recognized as a historic site and a museum, is in an Islamic land and one never knows what is in store for the 2nd best Christian cathedral in the world.  

 All pics above are from my camera.
Posted by MariaS at 20:19 0 comments
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Saturday, September 26, 2015

The total pandering by all three main leaders vying for control of Canada ....


is truly vomit-inducing.

For the first time since my eligibility to vote in Canadian elections,  I won't be going to the voting booths for this election.  If there was an independent running in my riding, then I would have been able to throw in at least a protest vote.  But no such luck.

Harper turned out to be a total disappointment and I have gone off the Cons like so many others who used to be in the Cons camp.
 
Harper and his Cons are constantly on their knees slurping away for the pro-Israel, Jewish and Ukrainian vote and the Conservative party of Canada under Harper has become a warmongering party. They played a large part in the coup in the Ukraine which has since seen thousands of ethnic Russian civilians,including kids and the elderly in eastern Ukraine, killed by missiles dropped on their houses for no other reason then that the Ukrainians don't like Russian speaking citizens.  They have been giving logistic support to the "opposition" to Assad, the same "opposition" that later morphed into ISIS, and that support from the Conservative govt of Canada has been an ongoing project  from way back 2012.  Why did the Harper conservatives venture into the Syrian and Ukrainian traps?  The answer is crystal clear.  It is the Israeli influence they are under ... nothing else, nothing less.
They didn't then and don't now, put Canada first, just like the Canadian Bibi-bots who support them.  These dual-passport holders care more for the welfare of  Israel than bother to have any concern for what they have let happen to EU and hence in a few short months to North America (think refugees from the MidEast wars ... if you want me to make it any more clear).

As for the NDP and Lib leaders, they are both airheads and  very much ignorant about even the basic Islamic norms and Muslim culture.  Both leaders are under the impression that the niqab is a religious garb and as such Muslim women if they so desire to, they can wear those fucking masks.  Canada in the hands of either one of these two is going to be a haven for  illiterate Muslims just like the kind these two are now pandering to. Even the Supreme Court of Canada is illiterate about Islam.  

Intelligent and progressive Muslims know that niqab should be banned in Canada, but those kind of  Muslims are in their minority. 

Hopefully, some of us will learn to live with the incoming Muslim hordes or keep our silence.  There's nothing much any of us can do now to prevent the sequence of events unfolding.

I am off on a vacation very soon.  Will be back just in time to watch the election fiasco.  No matter which party wins the election, we are all losers.
Posted by MariaS at 00:05 0 comments
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Thursday, July 23, 2015

Afghanistan: Yes! Let Afghan women fight it out and come out victorious


Will the Afghan women manage in getting equality and justice for themselves if the Western powers stay on as "moral fibre" until 2024?  Maybe, maybe not.  Some women are definitely taking full advantage as they should.

From WorldMic
Meet the Badass Afghan Politician Who Ran Against Her Husband and Won

Shukria Barakzai has endured a miscarriage from Taliban attacks, a secretly polygamous husband, street beatings by extremists, an aggressive opposition campaign from that same husband and multiple assassination attempts. Just one of these would stop most normal people in their tracks.

But Barakzai is not normal people. She is a feminist politician reshaping the social and political landscape of Afghanistan.

Entering political life was not a decision she made, but rather one that her circumstances made for her, Barakzai told Mic. Understanding the role she wanted to play and the person she wanted to be in Afghan society demanded her civic participation — and civic participation demanded a confrontation of the issues she faced in her personal life.


Equal rights: While Barakzai was lobbying for women's rights, her husband, whom she described as previously being her "best friend," took a second wife without telling her. "I don't know if I should say that it was the most bad accident of my life or another wake-up call, because I was and I am against polygamy," Barakzai said. She found out about the second wife not from her husband himself, but through rumors.

At the time, she happened to be battling her male colleagues on the Constitutional Drafting Committee for equal treatment of women under the law. The irony of her personal life only added to the humiliation.

But she kept up the campaign, and when the 2005 parliamentary elections came along and women were allowed to participate, Barakzai ran for office in part to effect change for gender equality — a campaign that included the promise to outlaw misogynistic practices like polygamy. But her husband was one of many male competitors who challenged her for the parliamentary seat.

"He was a multimillionaire at that time. [He] spent half a million U.S. dollars, [with] big pollsters, and I was like a poor woman with one microphone, with a loudspeaker. I did a street campaign," Barakzai told Mic, recounting her political race a decade ago. "Even today it's not an easy job for any woman to [be using] a loudspeaker and walking on the street and asking for democracy and explaining the election and asking men and women to vote for a woman."

But it worked. .........
Posted by MariaS at 17:52 0 comments
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