Schoolgirls in Afghanistan Continue to Face Threats, Attacks
Girls are threatened, brutally attacked, and killed each day in Afghanistan simply for going to school. Schools are torched or bombed, and teachers are also targeted. This article (while calling Shariah-adherent terrorists “conservative”) does include meaningful ways in which you can take action to help girls stay in school, and to help these schools stay in operation.
Fifty-nine Afghan schoolgirls and 14 teachers were hospitalized this morning after an apparent gas poisoning, CNN reported. The attack occurred at a girls' high school in Kabul.
Ultra-conservative elements in Afghan society oppose female education and have a history of setting fire to girls' schools, threatening teachers and attacking students. Some even earn money for doing so. Although these extremists aim to terrify girls back into isolation and ignorance, many young women refuse be intimidated.
In 2001, only 1 million Afghans were enrolled in school, all of them boys, The New York Times reported. Today, approximately 7 million Afghan children attend school, of which 2.6 million are girls. However, schools for girls still remain closed in Taliban strongholds, particularly in southern and eastern Afghanistan.
“The ‘Basij babies’ program suggests that some in the Islamic republic believe that children should be indoctrinated not at elementary schools but even before that -- as soon as they're born, in order to prevent them from turning into potential critics or independent individuals who want to decide about the way they live themselves and not based on the rules set by the Iranian establishment.”
A female commander of the pro-government Basij militia, Zohreh Abbasi, has said that her unit has introduced a special program that allows baby girls to be registered as members of the force and receive training.
Abbasi, who heads the Hossein Haj Mousaee unit, said that in the past six years 23 baby girls had been trained as Basij members through "Koranic, cultural, educational, and military" classes.
"In this regard Basij mothers register their baby girls 40 days after they were born at the Hossein Haj Mousaee unit by presenting documents and IDs," Abbasi was quoted as saying by Iranian news websites.
She said 420 women are currently members of the Hossein Haj Mousaee Basij unit. She added that two babies have recently been born and that work is under way to prepare a dossiers for the new "Basij babies" and enroll them in the special program.
SIOA Lawsuit Against NYC: Bloomberg's MTA Refuses to Allow 911 Images: Bans Ground Zero Bus Campaign
“Mr. Mayor and your colleagues at the MTA and the Landmark Commission: New Yorkers will not forget 9-11 and we will not be cowed into submission or silence. You might not want to hear our voices, but the federal courts will require you to listen. You claim the mantle of the Constitution as a basis for supporting a Shariah-Islamist mosque at Ground Zero, yet the MTA—a government agency of the City—cavalierly denies “infidels” freedom of speech. Enough is enough.”
Today we filed a lawsuit against the city of New York.
The city has refused to run my SIOA "Preservation of Ground Zero" bus campaign.
It seems that Mayor Bloomberg invokes certain freedoms when it serves his 2012 agenda. Doing away with term limits wasn't enough (which is why we are still suffering under his no-salt, no-transfat regime). He is now widening his ayatollah-like power grab to imposing blasphemy laws (Islamic sharia laws) on the secular marketplace. Bloomberg's frenzied Ground Zero mosque push may have inspired Al-Azhar clerics to oppose the Ground Zero Mosque, calling it a "a zionist plot."
Last month, I signed a contract with CBS Outdoor to run a "Preservation of Ground Zero" bus ad campaign. The campaign was paid for in full.
Iranian Facing Stoning Speaks: 'It's Because I'm a Woman'
"The answer is quite simple, it's because I'm a woman, it's because they think they can do anything to women in this country. It's because for them adultery is worse than murder – but not all kinds of adultery: an adulterous man might not even be imprisoned but an adulterous women is the end of the world for them. It's because I'm in a country where its women do not have the right to divorce their husbands and are deprived of their basic rights."
In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, the woman whose sentence of death by stoning triggered an international outcry has accused the Iranian authorities of lying about the charges against her to pave the way to execute her in secret.
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, 43, was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery but it was commuted to hanging after an international outcry. Her initial sentence was for "having an illicit relationship outside marriage" but Iranian officials have claimed that she was also found guilty of murdering her husband and should still face death by stoning.
The Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage or SPEECH Act, passed by both the House and Senate and awaiting President Obama’s signature, prevents lawsuits brought against American writers in foreign courts from limiting free speech in America. “It protects authors, journalists, and publishers by preventing U.S. federal courts from acknowledging or enforcing a judgment in a foreign libel suit that goes against the First Amendment... The bill also empowers authors and publishers to clear their names by showing that a foreign judgment is not in line with American law, even when the foreign plaintiff has not tried to enforce the judgment in the United States.”
The Epoch Times
August 5, 2010
By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld
Washington, D.C.
A bill to protect authors, journalists, and publishers from “libel tourism” recently passed both houses of Congress. The bill, known as the SPEECH Act, prevents lawsuits brought against American writers in foreign courts from limiting free speech in America. The Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage or SPEECH Act passed the Senate and House in July.
Libel tourism refers to bringing a defamation lawsuit in a foreign country that is unrelated to the published material and where protection of free speech is weaker than in the United States. The goal is usually to silence or intimidate the journalist or author. Recent defamation lawsuits in the U.K. and Canada brought against American authors spurred legislators to take action.
Director of the American Center for Democracy Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, who documents and publishes terrorist organization’s funding sources, has been campaigning for protection from the judgments of foreign courts. After she exposed how Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz funded al-Qaeda, Hamas, and other terrorist organizations in her 2003 book "Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It," Mahfouz sued her for libel in London.
