Discussion of All Things Political

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AFGHANISTAN AND USA

Let Malalai Joya speak

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GRITtv: Malalai Joya: Raise Your Voice (1/2)
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GRITtv: Malalai Joya: Raise Your Voice (2/2)
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Why is the U.S. afraid of Malalai Joya?Khury Petersen-Smith writes about Malalai Joya and her struggle to speak out.

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Announcing Spring 2011 U.S. National Tour for Malalai Joya








Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

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Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan(RAWA)News


Patriotic and Revolutionary songs of RAWA

2009:Grit TV: A Voice from RAWA: Zoya on Afghanistan (Part1/2)

Grit TV: A Voice from RAWA: Zoya on Afghanistan (Part2/2)

Rethink Afghanistan War (Part 5): Women of Afghanistan

CAMBODIA

Women in Garment Factories Help Cambodia Out of Poverty

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LIBERIA


Liberia: "We're Already At War..."

West Africa: Ghana Shares Cocoa Know-How With Liberia

Liberia: Government Moves to Tackle Reproductive Health Issues As Liberia Observes International Women's Day

INDIA


President Patil comes to footballer's rescue

Sportswoman thanks Prez for help

Taj in danger from dry Yamuna, delegation tells president

ZIMBABWE

via:delux_vivens

LITHUANIA

AP interview: Lithuania's 'Steel Magnolia' defends maverick approach to foreign policy

COSTA RICA


Costa Rica creates 2.47 million acre marine park

Heavy fighting continued on Monday in Abidjan amid an ongoing power struggle between forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo, Cote d'Ivoire's incumbent president, and those backing his political rival Alassane Ouattara.

Pro-Ouattara fighters were reported to have moved into the Yopougon neighbourhood held by Gbagbo loyalists. Gun battles raged near the home of army chief of staff Phillipe Mangou who has remained loyal to Gbagbo since November's presidential elections. Ouattara is internationally recognised as the winner of that vote.

The state-run RTI television station denied local reports that Mangou's house had been attacked. A spokesman for the pro-Gbagbo army, Col. Hilaire Gohourou, confirmed that the battle in Yopougon was ongoing, but refused to give any further details.MORE

When I write about U.S. foreign policy in places like Haiti or Honduras, I often get responses from people who find it difficult to believe that the U.S. government would care enough about these countries to try and control or topple their governments. These are small, poor countries with little in the way of resources or markets. Why should Washington policy-makers care who runs them?

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Why do they care so much about who runs these poor countries? As any good chess player knows, pawns matter. The loss of a couple of pawns at the beginning of the game can often make a difference between a win or a loss. They are looking at these countries mostly in straight power terms. Governments that are in agreement with maximizing U.S. power in the world, they like. Those who have other goals -- not necessarily antagonistic to the United States -- they don't like.

Not surprisingly, the Obama Administration's closest allies in the hemisphere are right-wing governments such as Colombia or Panama, even though President Obama himself is not a right-wing politician. This highlights the continuity of the politics of control. The victory of the Right in Chile last week, the first time that it has won an election in half a century, was a significant victory for the U.S. government. If Lula de Silva's Workers' Party were to lose the presidential election in Brazil this fall, that would really be a huge win for the State Department. While U.S. officials under both Bush and Obama have maintained a friendly posture toward Brazil, it is obvious that they deeply resent the changes in Brazilian foreign policy that have allied it with other social democratic governments in the hemisphere, and its independent foreign policy stances with regard to the Middle East, Iran, and elsewhere.Read on for a taste of what teh US has been getting up to in Latin America and teh Caribbean recentlyMORE

The "Corporations of Interest"

Drawing from published news articles, EFF has compiled a list of seven corporations that are reportedly selling surveillance technology to the Chinese government and related entities. We're designating them "corporations of interest".
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1. Cisco: Cisco's deep involvement in the building of China's Golden Shield Project has been admitted by the company. Cisco's involvement has even already been raised before Congress, including the fact that Cisco engineers gave a presentation acknowledging the repressive uses for their technology that quoted their Chinese government buyers as saying that Cisco's products could be used to "combat 'Falun Gong' evil religion and other hostiles." The UK's Guardian reports that Cisco provides over 60% of all routers, switches, and network gear to China and estimates that Cisco makes $500 million annually from China.


2. Nortel: Rolling Stone and The Guardian report that Nortel has sold hardware to aid the Golden Shield Project for surveillance and censorship purposes, including working with Tsinghua University to develop speech recognition software to monitor telephone conversations.

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Nearly four years since the Constitutional Court decriminalized abortion in certain cases, women still face challenges to receive the procedure as many doctors and even judges have improperly declared themselves conscientious objectors.

In May 2006, the court lifted a ban on abortion in the case that the mother´s life or mental or physical health is in jeopardy, if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest, or if the child has fetal malformations.

Ariadna Tovar, a lawyer with Women´s Link Worldwide, a gender equality advocacy group, says doctors or the health care providers they work for have collectively declared themselves conscientious objectors to the procedure.

Judges are doing the same, she says.
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Members of the Women's Form of Karonga after the meeting./Credit:Jessie Boylan/IPS
LAGO DISTRICT, Mozambique, Nov 6 (IPS) - As if they were going to the races, Emma Musako and Monica Mhango showed up in their finest outfits to attend a meeting on the health, social and environmental impacts of uranium mining. They came because they, like the other attendees, no longer want to remain uninformed citizens.

Last month in the dusty lakeshore town of Karonga in northern Malawi, some 80 people met to discuss issues concerning the Kayelekera Uranium Mine (KUM) which lies 52 km north east of Karonga.

"Before we came to this meeting," said Musako, a strong willed mother of 10 and member of the Women’s Forum of Karonga, "we weren’t sure what this ‘uranium’ was; we thought maybe it was the name of a person."

Organised by the Citizens for Justice (CFJ), the meeting had representatives from Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), non-governmental organisations (NGOs), churches, communities and universities; and concluded with a clear strategy and action plan as to how the new civil society ‘movement’ would proceed.

The meeting allowed for opinions to be voiced and for concerns to be raised - everyone had the opportunity to have their say.

"The government is you and me, we are supposed to take control," said a university representative.

"We are citizens of Malawi, we all have constitutional rights to be protected and safe. Our government is a signatory to international laws… they must protect us," said a workers rights campaigner. MORE