HiddenMysteries: A woman's week of Independence

Layla Anwar

Today is supposedly International Women's day.
Has anyone stopped to think what this title means exactly?
Have you noticed how they have days for just about everything and everyone...

Mothers day, Fathers day, Friendship day, Lovers day, Workers day, Siblings day, Non smokers day, Vegetarians day, Army day, Independence day, Pets day...And you can just add about anything you want and call it a day.

Have you also noticed how in essays and articles, "they" refer to "women, children and other minorities".

What does it mean "other minorities"? And why should women be lumped with "other minorities"?

Last time I checked, women outnumbered men worldwide. We are indeed well over half of the world's population.

And sometimes when I read those silly articles that refer to women as a minority, I need to pinch me to remind myself that we in fact constitute way above a minority. We are in fact the majority.

What a wonderful way to keep us in a minority mentality and relegate our issues to a secondary position...Ever so reminiscent of being second class.

You see this is where the problem lies. A problem of perception and the use of words...
Take another example - "Empowering women"...

What does that mean empowering women? Why do they need to empower us?
We already have power, we are just not allowed to use it...

The question is not "how" to empower women but "who" took our powers away?
Ask the right question, you will get the right answer.

I certainly don't need anyone to empower me. It is there alright. I dont need some social science consultant getting over 500 dollars a day, to write a treatise on my empowerment.

What I need is that he stops speaking in my name and gets his ass out of my way along with his bosses, his lawmakers, his historians, his politicians, his academics, his clerics...

I think what women need to do is "remove" (I leave you to define the word in a way that is most fitting for you) whomsoever opposes their power...

And whilst at it they need to stop accepting bullshit from men...
Any kind of bullshit...

And only then can women move away from being "victims" to being captains of their own ships, mistresses of their fate and sail through...

And I did not say there will be no storms...

But it does start on the inside. First as personal awareness and asking the right questions...Always ask the right question. And don't beat yourself over the head if you screw up...And by the way, reading women's magazines and crappy romance stories "a l'eau de rose" will not cut it.

Of course you may argue that this is all very nice for bourgeois women what about the impoverished ones? Sorry to disappoint you, but the principle is the same.

The power is already there...deep inside and it manifests itself in a thousand of ways...

Grab what is already there and there is plenty of it.
And no, you don't need a Phd to do that.

My grandmother could not read and write but she was powerful...
However she was not allowed to exercise her power the way she felt it to be right...
And who stood in her way?

Men and their laws.

But of course, you are not like these men... And since you care about women so much and today is my day, this is what I suggest to you. We shall exchange roles for a week.
I declare today "International women's week of Independence... from men."

And I invite you to experience it first hand the Iraqi way, the way it is applied in the "new Iraq."
By the way, any similarities to other countries are purely coincidental.

So what do you say? Are you game?
Now, wait a second, don't get me wrong please...
I love the opposite sex...in due measure that is...
So let us start.

For a whole week, you men, are to do as told :

You shall not venture outside the home alone and without permission.

You shall cook, clean, do the laundry, look after the kids, manage a meager budget, do without water and electricity and please if you have any physical complaints, keep them to yourself, no time and no money to see a doctor...

At the end of the day, you are too look good, fresh and wear a pleasant smile and at night you are expected to be enrapturedly amorous with no reservations...

And no, I do not wish to hear about your psychosomatic headaches, back pains and erectility problems.

If you are to venture outside, the conditions are very clear. You are to cover up and when I say cover up, I mean total ninja /tent style cover up.

I don't like those half- assed veils. And no, your tripping on your chador is not my business...I only care about your protection dear.

I do not wish to see any tight trousers, short sleeves shirts and strands of hair showing...

I don't want the neighbors to think I have a loose man around the house...

My honor is to be safeguarded at all times...

Needless to say, mingling with other men and sitting in cafes without my permission is out of the question...What will people say or think about my standing in the community ?

And since you are nothing but an extension of my massive inflated spoiled ego, if you do not abide by my laws, I shall impose you on another man.

He can either be a temporary lover sought out through a temporary marriage contract (quite common in the new liberated Iraq) or matter of factly, another husband whom you will have to learn to cohabit with...

After all I am the woman here and the provider. So shut up and bear it.

And since, by the authority bestowed upon me, I am the natural representative of God on earth, I will not only control your body and the way you dress ...

Did you not hear what I just said ?
Cover this strand of hair now!
Loose man that you are!
Why do you insist on behaving like a slut?
Have you no shame?
Or are you just after your vain, earthly desires?...

That is it, be good so I can always approve of you and be pleased with you...

Sit straight when am talking to you and uncross your legs and keep them tightly closed... and don't interrupt...

As I was saying, since I am God's representative on earth, I also decree that you no longer have any political, legal or economic rights...Yes you heard me right.

What do you need them for? Everything you need is provided for, you are a father, you have your children ... and your natural place...

What did I just hear? In the old regime? Did you say the old regime?

You are longing for the "dictator" huh? You throw away this new sophisticated democracy american - iranian style and you long for the "tyrant"?

Take him away for interrogation, torture him, rape him, drill him and bring him back...

So what do you say now? Are you still longing for the old times when you had rights?

Take it as a warning, next time I catch you rebelling in any way, shape or form, you will be hanged in public from your balls for obstructing public law and order and for terrorising our new found freedom.

Dissent is not allowed in our new democracy...Maliki, Al Hakim and Muqtada Sadr style...a very sophisticated democracy imposed by Teheran and Washington D.C.

And if per chance you are caught fighting for your so called rights and gathering in public places, you shall be taken like your Iranian neighbors and imprisonned and preferably flagellated.

Am I clear now?

Do as I tell you and stop this frown and grimacing in my face, it brings bad luck.

Cheer up you are liberated...Good boy.

Now sing and dance for me and celebrate your manhood in the new Iraq. It is your day after all.

Yalla do it now. I only have a few days left before the week is over.

And please hurry up, before a "sophisticated" Iranian Fatwa bearing an Iraqi stamp - with Sistani's, Hakim's and chubby Muqtada's face (and his drill boys) - on it , lands on my head...

Or what do you think, should I seriously consider seeking political asylum in Siberia?

Do come and visit me there, same time next year and we can celebrate together, my womanhood in exile...on International women's day.

Postscript: I would like to extend my admiration and thanks to several women here. I cannot name all of them but will leave you with a few ...

Paola Pisi , editor of Uruknet.info. I am yet to see someone as principled and as tirelessly dedicated to the Iraqi cause as Paola. A very rare woman indeed.

Sinfo Fernandez from rebelion.org. for taking time and energy to translate some of my posts into spanish in solidarity with the Iraqi people.

K.K. my far away friend who loves Iraq more than the Iraqis themselves.

Ladybird from Roads to Iraq- who is always making sure that her blog is updated with new fresh info from Iraq.

Barabie and Janice for their "chutzpah"...

and last but not least...my dearest of all T- she knows who she is, my mom for always sticking to Truth, and my wonderful grandmothers (bless their souls) who knew it all...

There are many more but will not be able to mention their names since I did not get "clearance"...

Some are online and some are offline.

Thank you all and in Solidarity.

*******************************************

Women's lives unraveling in Iraq
Mithre J. Sandrasagra, IPS

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) — Amid the chaos and violence of U.S.-occupied Iraq, the significance of widespread gender-based violence has been largely overlooked, according to a groundbreaking report released here by MADRE, an internationally active women's human rights organization.

Iraqi women are enduring unprecedented levels of assault in the public sphere, including widespread abductions, public beatings, death threats, sexual assaults, honor killings, domestic abuse, torture in detention, beheadings, shootings and public hangings, said the report titled "Promising Democracy, Imposing Theocracy: Gender-Based Violence and the U.S. War on Iraq".

"Women are not only being targeted because they are members of the civilian population, women — in particular those who are perceived to pose a challenge to the political aspirations of their attackers — have increasingly been targeted simply because they are women," said Houzan Mahmoud, a representative of the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), at a panel discussion here that coincided with the report's launch.

"Before the U.S. occupation, Iraq was a dictatorship, it was not perfect, but there was security, women could go to work, could go out," Mahmoud told IPS.

"What little protections for women there were before the occupation are now gone," she stressed.

Mahmoud's work with the non-governmental organization OWFI to foster women's rights and help victims of abuse has resulted in the jihadist group Ansar al-Islam placing a "fatwa" on her. They have called for her death.

The report documents the use of systematic gender-based violence by Iraqi Islamists, brought to power by the U.S. overthrow of Iraq's secular Ba'ath regime, and highlights the role of the U.S. in fomenting the human rights crisis confronting Iraqi women today.

"Contrary to its rhetoric and its legal obligations under the Hague and Geneva Conventions, the (George W.) Bush administration has refused to protect women's human rights in Iraq. In fact, it has decisively traded women's rights for cooperation from the Islamists whom it boosted to power," said Yifat Susskind , MADRE communications director and author of the report.

Like religious fundamentalists in the U.S. and elsewhere, Iraq's Islamists see the subordination of women as a top priority — both a microcosm and a precondition of the social order they wish to establish. As in Iran, Algeria, and Afghanistan, a campaign of violence against women was the first salvo in the Islamists' war to establish a theocracy in Iraq, the report says.

The U.N. and the internationally recognized human rights watchdog Amnesty International have documented that attacks on women began just weeks after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

U.S. authorities took no steps to stop the violence, and soon the attacks spread, according to Mahmoud.

Following the incidents of abuse and torture at the U.S.-managed Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, "to date only 11 junior U.S. soldiers have been prosecuted," according to Jennifer Green, senior staff attorney at the New York based Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR).

The U.S. has set the example that "there will be no high-level accountability for actions in detention facilities," Green stressed.

Within a year after the U.S. occupation, Islamists were killing Iraqi artists, intellectuals, professionals, ethnic and religious minorities, lesbians and gays, according to the report.

"Today there is a virtual witch hunt for gays, lesbians and trans-gendered people," according to Susskind.

"Gender-based violence extends beyond women to anyone who the Islamists perceive as not conforming to their agenda," she explained.

However, women, who are seen as the carriers of group identity, have remained in the cross-hairs of Iraq's warring sectarian militias, according to the report.

Iraqi women's organizations report that militias "are taking revenge on each other by raping women," and targeting Christian women with rape and assassination as part of a broader attack on that community.

Women have been systematically attacked by theocratic militias on both sides of the sectarian divide, but the most widespread violence has been committed by the Shi'a militias affiliated with the U.S.-backed government — the Badr Brigade and Mahdi Army, according to Susskind.

These groups have waged their campaign of terror against women with weapons, training, and money provided by the U.S. under a policy called the "Salvador Option," according to MADRE.

The "Salvador Option" is a reference to the military assistance program of the 1980s, initiated under Jimmy Carter and subsequently pursued by the Ronald Reagan administration, in which the U.S. trained and materially supported the Salvadoran military in its counter-insurgency campaign against popularly supported FMLN guerrillas.

Over 75,000 Salvadorans — primarily civilians — died during the 1980s as a result of state repression of the FMLN guerillas and their sympathizers, according to the U.N.

Ironically, after the impending withdrawal of Britain from Iraq, El Salvador will be one of the U.S.'s major partners in the occupation, with about 400 soldiers in the country.

Unfortunately, neither the mainstream press, the alternative media, nor the anti-war movement has identified the connections between the attack on Iraqi women and the spiraling violence that has culminated in civil war, according to MADRE.

But, violence against women is not incidental to Iraq's mounting civilian death toll and civil war — it is a key to understanding the wider crisis. Indeed, the twin crises plaguing Iraqi civilians — gender based violence and civil war — are deeply intertwined, the report said.

For example, in the legal arena, the same provisions of the U.S.-brokered constitution that codify gender discrimination — Articles 39 and 41 — also lay the groundwork for sectarian violence. These articles establish separate laws on the basis of sex and religious affiliation, according to the report.

Speakers at the launch stressed that the report's re-telling of the Iraq war from the perspective of Iraqi women illuminates the strong links between women's human rights and democratic rights — two things they allege the U.S. is ignoring in Iraq.

http://www.uruknet.info

Did you see her and want her so bad, that young, forbidden fruit? Did she once smile nervously at the checkpoint, and you thought it was just for you? Did you come on strong the next time around, flash a little money maybe, or lay a syrupy line on her that you got from a phrasebook? What did she do? recoil? Look away? Look disgusted? Look blank? What did she do to bring on the big hurt from a big, tough man like you?

So you planned it all out. You cased the house, you reconnoitred. You got your buddies in on it? or were they in from the start, did they make a play too, were they too turned away by this haughty Arab bitch, this piece of trash from a shitheap town in a shitheap country filled with nothing but lazy, lying, murdering towelheads? Somebody like that thinks they're too good to give it up to you? You liberated her goddamned country, for Christ's sake, and now she won't even put out? That dog won't hunt. Hell no. You and your pals had to teach her a lesson. You had the power, you had the guns, you were Americans; who was going to stop you?

So you set up the mission. You knew how to do it. How many houses had you raided before? Dozens, hundreds? who the hell knows? Who the hell cares? You went in and got her, you did what you wanted to her. You shoved the other hajjis into the next room, put a gun on them, then got down to business. Did your buds take a turn? Everybody get a taste? Or maybe you'd already ruined her before they got a chance? beat her, tore her, pounded her into goo? Who the hell knows? Who the hell cares? At some point, she just wasn't worth it anymore. No fight left in her. Laid there like a limp rag. Passed out maybe.

So you took out your gun, you took out your power, you took out the thing that makes you an American? a real person, a human being --- instead of a walking piece of shit like everyone else in that godforsaken hellhole of a country, you took it out and you shot her in the head. One shot, clean kill. Did you say anything? Crack a joke? "Not tonight, honey, I've got a headache." Or did you just stand there and curse her, puking your self-righteous rage all over her dead body?

Who took charge after that? Was it you, or one of the others? It all started moving so fast, like a dream had been broken? or maybe this was the dream? Maybe it was all a dream, the whole fucking thing, from day one, all of it nothing, happening to nobody, going on nowhere, never. But the smell was real, you couldn't get away from it, that wet smell, meat and guts in a slime of blood. It filled your nose, filled up your whole head behind your face, it lined your throat, coated your skin. And if the smell was real, then the whole thing?.

Move, fast, now! The hajjis in the other room: no witnesses, goddamn it! Who's this, the mother? Head shot, head shot, down. Who's this old bastard? Father, brother? Who cares? Head shot, head shot, in the face, down. And what's this? Oh for Christ's sake, how old is she? Six? Seven? Eight? What are you going to do, wait till she grows up and comes looking for your ass? Catch her, goddamn it, just shoot, shoot! Down.

Now burn the other one. Yeah, the bitch in the other room. Set her on fire and get the hell out. Report terrorist activity. The Sunni bastards in the area. Secure the perimeter. Get your fucking story straight and keep your fucking mouth shut. We're home free. Home free?.

***
Is that how it went down? Does it still feel good? They got two of your brothers from the same platoon later, chopped off their heads. Reckon that was payback? Now the squealers are coming out. It's in the goddamned papers. The brass are going to throw you to the dogs. They can be big men, they can rape whole countries, kill tens of thousands -- but just let some grunt try to get a little on the retail side, and all hell breaks loose. It just ain't fair.

Well, buddy, what can we say? You should have your fun last year, when there wasn't an election. Nobody would have paid a blind bit of notice. And you should have called in an airstrike, not that half-assed burning job? nothing buries evidence like a 500-pound bomb.

The only thing now is to get a good military lawyer. The ones they got working for those Gitmo goobers seem like top-notch shysters? they just beat Bush at the Supreme Court, so try to get one of them. Then just hunker down. If you can string it out long enough, Bush's media brigades can start working the refs for you, muddying the waters, smearing your accusers, providing the proper context, invoking 9/11. (And speaking of 9/11, isn't that what it's really all about? Isn't that what you were really doing when you raped that girl and shot her in the head and burned her body and killed her family? defending our country from those who attacked us on that tragic day? What you did was justice, damn it, not a crime! Just like the whole war.) Meanwhile, Rummy will pull the insider strings to water things down to a wrist-slap somewhere along the line? after the elections.

So don't sweat it, brother. You and your pals might be home free yet.
_____________________

UPDATE: Ex-GI Charged in Slaying of 4 and Rape in Iraq. (NYT) Uh-oh. Too late for at least one of the marauders; he was already de-mobbed, and is now in the hands of civilian prosecutors. Uncle Rummy's gonna have to cut you loose, compadre. Sure, he's signed direct orders for the deaths of thousands of civilians every bit as innocent as that family you massacred -- but then, he's an Ivy League man, a corporate chieftain, a respected public servant, and you are just another hick from the sticks. Let this be a lesson to all the cannon fodder out there: don't get above your raising, don't emulate your betters. Law is for the lowly, not the great and good.

Excerpt: Federal prosecutors said today that an American soldier killed an Iraqi man, two women and a little girl in their home the night of March 12 after the soldier and his comrades plotted to rape one of the women while drinking at a traffic checkpoint a short distance away. The prosecutors charged the suspect, Steven D. Green, 21, with shooting the four victims to death. They said he and others raped one of the women...

Prosecutors said the defendant was discharged from the Army "due to a personality disorder" before the March 12 incident came to light. An affidavit filed in connection with the charges raises the possibility that others will be charged, since the document states that "members" of the 101st Airborne Division killed the Iraqis and that "the same individuals" raped and killed one of the women. The others were not identified by name.

The affidavit, by an F.B.I. special agent, Gregor J. Ahlers, said details of the crime emerged during a "combat stress debriefing" on June 20. Private Green and at least three others planned the rape and told another soldier to monitor the radio while they went to the house near Mahmudiya, south of Baghdad, according to the affidavit. Some of the participants changed out of their uniforms before going to the house and had blood on their clothes when they returned, the affidavit said.

After the murder-and-rape rampage, the affidavit states, the soldiers burned their clothes and told the comrade who had been left to monitor the radio that "this is never to be discussed again."

Chris Floyd
www.worldproutassembly.org

ONWARD KHRISTIAN SOLDIERS...
MARCHING OFF TO WAR...
RAPING WOMEN INFIDELS...
IN HONOR OF THEIR LORD

PRAIZE JEEZUS

Bush is the Decider... He decided these Khristian Soldiers could rape.

A woman's week of Independence

Saturday, March 10 2007 @ 01:27 PM CST