Category Archives: Feminism

NeverEnding Story: Cool Announcement: Language and Silence by Svetlana Marisova, Free on Kindle for the NEXT 4 DAYS!

Svetlana Marisova (March 17, 1990 – September 7, 2011) was born the only child of a family who knew social and religious persecution in post-Soviet Russia. The family moved to New Zealand in 2004. In her later teens she responded to a perceived call to the cloistered life of contemplative prayer. A diagnosis of terminal brain cancer in late 2009 curtailed the way she was able to live out this vocation. Over the remaining two years of her life she wrapped her past and present in even greater cloistered mystery while she tried to come to terms with her future. Fascinated by language as much as she was by the interior silence of contemplation, she gravitated to the combination of both that she could find in writing haiku. In a similar paradoxical manner she hid herself from the world while she reached out to it through the anonymity of human interaction via the social networking complexities of the internet. In cyber-companionship with Ted van Zutphen she worked out her identity as girl/woman, nun/social butterfly, contemplative/wordsmith as together they wrote and studied haiku via digital communications. Her work has appeared in a number of online and print journals, anthologies and books.

via NeverEnding Story: Cool Announcement: Language and Silence by Svetlana Marisova, Free on Kindle for the NEXT 4 DAYS!.

Anja Niedringhaus | IRAQ – 10 years, 100 viewpoints – 2003-2013

RIP – Anja was killed this past Thursday by an Afghan policeman.

A recorded interview with her and her experience in Iraq.

Anja Niedringhaus is a German photo journalist who began her career at the European Pressphoto Agency in Frankfurt. Later she began working for the AP as a reporter and war correspondent starting in Yugoslavia in 1992, and then later in Afghanistan. In 2005 Anja was one of the few photographers on hand for the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq. In 2005 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her moving photographs from the Iraq War. She currently works for AP in Kabul.

via Anja Niedringhaus | IRAQ – 10 years, 100 viewpoints – 2003-2013.

Italian Doctors Abort a Law – Inter Press Service

Two out of three doctors in Italy are ‘conscientious objectors’ to abortion, according to new data. The Italian Ministry of Health reveals that in 2011, 69.3 percent of doctors refused to carry out abortions, with peaks of over 85 percent in some regions.

In the face of such numbers, the ruling of the European Committee of Social Rights of the Council of Europe against Italy earlier this month over a complaint for violating the right to protection of health came as no surprise.

“Many doctors object simply because they have nothing to gain from doing this extra work.”

“The Italian situation really worries us, and this is why we filed the complaint,” Irene Donadio, advocacy officer at the International Planned Parenthood Federation European Network (IPPF_EN) told IPS. “We believe that there is a problem with the functioning and application of the abortion law, which, in fact, would be a good law but is often violated.

“We acknowledge the fact that the right to conscientious objection is included in the same law, but the right of women to access a service that is legal and fundamental for their health needs to be respected as much as this right.”

via Italian Doctors Abort a Law – Inter Press Service.

CENSORED NEWS: US Senators push to terminate portion of Arapaho’s Wind River land

A new push by U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., to

terminate a portion of the Wind River Reservation should appall and worry Native

American people everywhere, Northern Arapaho leaders said Tuesday.

Draft legislation by Enzi, and supported by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., would eliminate

the reservation status of a significant portion of Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone

homeland in central Wyoming.

“It’s chilling to see this kind of attack on Indian Country in 2014,” said Northern Arapaho

Business Council Chairman Darrell O’Neal.

The bill is a response to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to treat the

Wind River tribes as a state under the Clean Air Act. A detailed legal analysis in the EPA

decision concluded that the town of Riverton is part of the Wind River Reservation, a

position the tribes have always held.

via CENSORED NEWS: US Senators push to terminate portion of Arapaho’s Wind River land.

Hobby Lobby Invested In Numerous Abortion And Contraception Products While Claiming Religious Objection

According to the Green family, interfering with an already fertilized egg is tantamount to abortion—an act unacceptable to the family and one they refuse to participate in no matter what the Affordable Care Act may require .

However, it turns out that the owners of Hobby Lobby do not appear to have any problem with profiting from the companies that manufacture the very products that so grievously offend their religious principles.

The following is a summation of the companies manufacturing these products that are held by the Hobby Lobby employee retirement plan, as set forth by Ms. Redden’s remarkable reporting:

These companies include Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which makes Plan B and ParaGard, a copper IUD, and Actavis ACT +1.64%, which makes a generic version of Plan B and distributes Ella. Other holdings in the mutual funds selected by Hobby Lobby include Pfizer PFE -0.53%, the maker of Cytotec and Prostin E2, which are used to induce abortions; Bayer , which manufactures the hormonal IUDs Skyla and Mirena; AstraZeneca AZN +0.77%, which has an Indian subsidiary that manufactures Prostodin, Cerviprime, and Partocin, three drugs commonly used in abortions; and Forest Laboratories, which makes Cervidil, a drug used to induce abortions. Several funds in the Hobby Lobby retirement plan also invested in Aetna AET +0.11% and Humana, two health insurance companies that cover surgical abortions, abortion drugs, and emergency contraception in many of the health care policies they sell.

via Hobby Lobby Invested In Numerous Abortion And Contraception Products While Claiming Religious Objection.

Hobby Lobby’s retirement plan invests in contraception companies

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which makes Plan B and ParaGard, a copper IUD, and Actavis, which makes a generic version of Plan B and distributes Ella. Other holdings in the mutual funds selected by Hobby Lobby include Pfizer, the maker of Cytotec and Prostin E2, which are used to induce abortions; Bayer, which manufactures the hormonal IUDs Skyla andMirena; AstraZeneca, which has an Indian subsidiary that manufactures Prostodin, Cerviprime, and Partocin, three drugs commonly used in abortions; and Forest Laboratories, which makes Cervidil, a drug used to induce abortions. Several funds in the Hobby Lobby retirement plan also invested in Aetna and Humana, two health insurance companies that cover surgical abortions, abortion drugs, and emergency contraception in many of the health care policies they sell.

via Hobby Lobby’s retirement plan invests in contraception companies.

A Call for Universal Access to Safe, Legal Abortion – Inter Press Service

Lawmakers and civil society leaders from over 30 countries are calling for universal access to safe, legal abortion.

The declaration, released in Washington on Wednesday, comes in the context of a 20-year review by the United Nations of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. That landmark conference called for safe access to abortions in countries where the procedure was legal, while Wednesday’s declaration calls for the decriminalisation of abortion in all countries.

“What we know now is that law changes social attitudes.” — Nepali MP Arzu Rana Deuba

The declaration also anticipates the post-2015 development agenda. Advocates are calling to expand the discussion on women’s health to include abortion rights when determining the next round of global development goals, following the expiration of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs).

via A Call for Universal Access to Safe, Legal Abortion – Inter Press Service.

Zhu Zhu Cries For Animals To Ban China’s Cruel Cosmetics Animal Testing – Look to the Stars

The animal-loving film star, announced this week as a Be Cruelty-Free China Ambassador, joins international celebrities including Sir Paul McCartney and Leona Lewis, in speaking up for cosmetics with compassion on behalf of the global Be Cruelty-Free campaign.

Zhu Zhu’s Be Cruelty-Free photo campaign launched in Beijing, features the actress crying whilst cradling a rabbit, one of the most commonly used animals in cosmetics testing. An estimated 300,000 rabbits, mice and other animals are used in cosmetics testing each year in China. They have chemicals dripped in their eyes, spread on their shaved skin or force fed to them in massive, lethal doses. No pain relief is given.

via Zhu Zhu Cries For Animals To Ban China’s Cruel Cosmetics Animal Testing – Look to the Stars.