The War against Iraqi women

By Zeina Zaatari

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Iraqi women's organizations and international observers point to an
escalating war against women in Iraq, aided by the widespread chaos and
lawlessness under United States occupation. In addition to violence by
American troops inside and outside of prisons, women in Iraq face daily
violence from militants under the guise of religion and "liberation."

In Iraq's second largest city, Basra, a stronghold of conservative Shiite
groups, as many as 133 women were killed last year for violating "Islamic
teachings" and in so-called "honor killings," according to the United
Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The methods
are brutal evidence of a backlash by previously subdued tribal forces
that have
been unleashed by the occupation: women strangled and beheaded, and their
hands, arms and legs chopped off.

I've just tossed off this little list... Anyone else want to try/comment?

THE BEST BOOKS I’VE EVER READ

My journey as a Christian, lover/husband, father, and pastor/teacher/
evangelist has covered different terrains during threescore and ten
years. Here’s a rough chronological journey listing books that...

Here's an imaginary interview with Jesus about homosexuality, posted
sporadically on these newsgroups over the past dozen years. Some of the
statistics/aetiology issues need updating, but generally I'd still
affirm this general stance. (Expect in response 'corrective' - that's
the softest word - opinions from others either to my ideological/
theological left or right :-)

Rowland Croucher

****

Interviewer: Jesus, you had a reputation for hanging around with those
on the edges/margins of society. But some of my homosexual friends and
clients wonder why you said nothing about homosexuality, even though it
was rife back then. We're in a 'bi' bar in San Francisco... why are you
here?

# Jesus: Hi! I was invited by a friend. Remember when Matthew threw a
party for his mafia-type mates? I was enjoying myself before the
religious leaders gate-crashed it.

More... http://jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/12135.htm

--

Shalom/Salaam/Pax! Rowland Croucher

History’s Worst Decisions (Stephen Weir, 2005), History’s Greatest
Scandals (Ed Wright et. al, 2006), (Murdoch Books/Pier 9).

If you want to occupy part of your holidays – as I have just done –
reading about history’s idiots/ idiotics, you can’t go past these two
250-page volumes.

But first, a quiz to test your knowledge of some Very Important Trivia:

(Greatest Scandals): 1. America’s ‘worst president’, who according to e
e cummings was ‘the only man, woman or child who could write a simple
declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors’.

2. Another US president who was ‘an introvert in an extrovert’s job’ who
spent his last night in office drinking, sobbing and praying.

3. He said ‘power is the ultimate aphrodisiac’.

4. Among her lingerie she had a bullet-proof bra.

5. This statement got into Bartlett’s ‘Familiar Quotations’: ‘If “is”
means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is
none, that was a completely true statement.’

6. When she died at 67 tales persisted that she’d been crushed by a
horse while attempting to have sex.

7. ‘Demons made me do it but Oral Roberts cast them out over the phone’.