Africa

Good news!

Lawmakers from 27 African countries gathered in Dakar this week for a two-day conference to push for a UN ban on female genital mutilation as a breach of human rights. International activists joined UN envoys and the African Union in Senegal to "promote the adoption of a resolution that explicitly bans female genital mutilation as a practice that is contrary to human rights".  

Currently, more than 130 million women and girls worldwide have undergone female genital cutting, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Often carried out for deep-seated religious or cultural reasons, FGM can lead to infection, urinary tract problems, mental trauma, sterility or severe complications during pregnancy, childbirth and sexual dysfunction. It is mostly performed on girls younger than 15.

Bad News!

We need to stand firm against the multicultural appeasers in our government and our culture, who seek to make concessions that work against us. A case to make this point can be found in a story that ran in the New York Times early this month. It seems a few appeasers sit on the American Academy of Pediatrics, and these appeasers are working overtime to make us more tolerant of Female Genital Mutilation. They of course play semantic games to avoid the terminology and stick to calling it Female Genital Circumcision.

It has been written that Obama doesn’t like Britain, because his father and grandfather were jailed by the Brits during the 1950’s in Kenya’s Struggle for Independence. Obama shared that his grandfather was jailed for "more than six months" in his Dreams from My Father, but he provided no details about the event. Other accounts relate that his Kenyan grandfather was also tortured. Obama’s Granny Sarah (Mrs. Sarah Onyango) says her husband recounted his torture to her. She even gave details of the ordeal to reporters during Obama’s run for the presidency. Although Obama has wisely never discussed his feelings, there have been indications that Britain is not on his Favs List.

When Obama took over the Oval Office and officially called it his own, he quickly had a bust of Winston Churchill, photo right, removed. The MOFO website says it was because Churchill had a history of saying things like: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal division of blessings, while the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal division of misery.”  A case can be made that It might have something to do with philosophical differences, but I think it is more likely that Churchill  has less happy memories for Obama than for Americans who celebrate his wartime leadership. It was during Churchill's second term of office that Britain suppressed Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion and allegedly tortured Hussein Onyango Obama, the President's grandfather.

My daughter forwarded this email update from Eve Ensler of V-Day. Eve's message is pertinent to Partizane, so I'm posting it here.

Congo Update From Eve

Dear Friends,
It is almost 4AM and I am awake in Bukavu. I find myself filled with so many images of the recent days here. I think being in the Congo, one is forced to hold the extreme duality of this century in almost every breath and image. I find myself alternatively believing we are at the beginning of real change and revolution and simultaneously at the end of all possibility.

I am there in Kinshasa where 5 brave women survivors break the silence in front of 500 people -- members of Parliament, Senators, activists. There, as they tell their stories, Janet limping to the microphone on a cane as she vividly tells of how they ripped her legs over her head so violently when they raped her they made her permanently handicapped. I listen to the women form words around such cruelty and am simultaneously crushed by the horror and how easily one becomes accustomed to atrocity. How 500 people politely listen to such crimes against women's bodies and do not stand, scream, rush into the streets demanding justice.