BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

More Afghan women are choosing suicide to escape the violence and brutality of their daily lives, says a new human-rights report prepared by Canada's Foreign Affairs Department. The 2008 annual assessment paints a grim picture of a country where violence against women and girls is common, despite rising public awareness among Afghans and international condemnation. "Self-immolation is being used by increasing numbers of Afghan women to escape their dire circumstances and women constitute the majority of Afghan suicides," said the report, completed in November 2009. The document was obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act. The director of a burn unit at a hospital in the relatively peaceful province of Herat reported that in 2008 more than 80 women tried to kill themselves by setting themselves on fire, many of them in the early 20s. Many of those women died, the report said. The frank evaluation of the plight of women was written against the bac...

From THE REAL BARACK OBAMA Klein: Women stoned protesting sex-every-four-days law. ‘Death to the slaves of the Christians,’ yells rowdy crowd pelting rocks Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images for The New York Times Hundreds of Afghan women were reportedly pelted with stones today while protesting a law that gives husbands the right to demand sex with a wife every four days unless she is ill or would be physically harmed by intercourse, Aaron Klein, Jerusalem bureau chief at World Net Daily , reports. The law, passed last month, would legalize marital rape, according to critics. It also requires a wife to seek her husband’s permission to go outside in public. “We don’t want Taliban law,” said one female protester, referring to the fundamentalist Islamist movement that governed Afghanistan until the U.S. invasion following the 9-11 attacks. The law only applies to Shiite families in Afghanistan, who comprise about 10 to 20 percent of the country’s 30 million strong population. The law state...

What a country! And Barfy thinks we can TALK to these neaderthals? New Afghanistan law allows men to demand sex from wife every 4 days by Helen Kennedy A new Afghan law saying Shiite men can demand sex from their wives every four days and keep them indoors indefinitely is causing an uproar. Hillary Clinton's State Department is trying to force a repeal of a law more restrictive than even the old Taliban regime. "We're very concerned about these reports with regard to the legislation," said State Department spokesman Robert Wood. The passage of what some call "legalized rape" means American women have died fighting in Afghanistan to give men there the right to subjugate women. Clinton and Afghan President Hamid Karzai met privately Tuesday at The Hague, but Wood could not say if she pressed him to reverse the law he just signed. "She may have. I don't know," Wood said. "President Karzai is certainly well-aware of our views with regard to t...

Oh yes -- our tax dollars HARD at work: From THE CONFLUENCE: WASHINGTON (AFP) - CIA agents are offering the potency drug Viagra and other gifts to win over Afghan warlords in the US-led war against Taliban insurgents, the Washington Post reported on Friday. Alright, why does the CIA hate Afghani women and goats so much they have to hand over viagra to warlords? "Whatever it takes to make friends and influence people — whether it’s building a school or handing out Viagra,” one CIA operative who has worked in Afghanistan was quoted as saying. The aging chieftains often have up to four wives and are open to the Viagra pill as a way to “put them back in an authoritative position,” said another official... Life is now much more HARD in the Afghani resistance. It seems giving out birthcontrol to hapless burkha-clad women is a problem, but giving viagra to their nasty old husbands is strategy to win the war on terrorism. If most of these old dudes have at least four wives a...

'Un-Islamic' Afghan radio station burned 2 poppy eradication police also killed; 100 slain in 2007, officials say Arsonists set fire Friday to a radio station near Kabul accused of being un-Islamic, and two poppy eradication policemen were killed in Afghanistan's southwest, officials said. Four gunmen broke into the offices of Radio Zafar before dawn, tied up two security guards and then set the station's equipment ablaze, said Paghman district police chief Abdul Razaq. The station's director, Najibullah Nassir, said militants have accused Radio Zafar of being morally corrupt and un-Islamic. Its programming includes shows on Islam, sports, news and music. The station has 16 employees, including two female journalists. The Afghan media have flourished since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, but journalists often face threats from militants and warlords for airing critical stories, playing music or employing women. Also Friday, a three-hour clash broke out in southwest...

Freeing Afghan Women Will Take More Than Allowing Them to Take off Their Burqua Michele Toomey, PhD The graphic pictures of Afghan women walking around covered and hindered by their burqua is so painful to see, but as they become free to take them off, that may be pain that we don't see. They have not only been forced to be hidden, they have grown accustomed to it and to the violence directed at them as women. What will exposure feel like? Will it feel freeing or frightening? I would like to address the prospect of fear. These women have been raped, beaten, and even shot, at a moments notice and at a man's whim. They have known slavery and captivity, all because they are women. Now they are going to uncover for all the men to see. How safe is that going to feel? How freeing does that seem? For some, probably not freeing at all, only more frightening at the prospect of such exposure. If we really do care about the plight of Afghan women, we had better provide them with psycholo...

Is it racist to condemn fanaticism? (Listen up Jimmy Carter, Nancy Pelosi and those Democrats who don't get that you can NOT talk to these fanatics: " Our abject refusal to judge between civilisation and barbarism, and between enlightened rationalism and theocratic fundamentalism, endangers and condemns the victims of Islamic tyranny. " You rule Dr. Chesler! ) How my eyes were opened to the barbarity of Islam By Phyllis Chesler Once I was held captive in Kabul. I was the bride of a charming, seductive and Westernised Afghan Muslim whom I met at an American college. The purdah I experienced was relatively posh but the sequestered all-female life was not my cup of chai — nor was the male hostility to veiled, partly veiled and unveiled women in public. When we landed in Kabul, an airport official smoothly confiscated my US passport. “Don’t worry, it’s just a formality,” my husband assured me. I never saw that passport again. I later learnt that this was routinely done to ...