The Daily Star – Politics – Iraqi women try to stay the course after an advocate’s killing By Annia Ciezadlo

KARBALA, IRAQ: Those in public roles often face death threats, assassination attempts. ‘We are all targets,’ says an outspoken feminist. ‘There are many activists, but they cannot speak out boldly against political Islam.’

For their new women’s center, the women of Karbala chose the name of a warrior: Zainab al-Hawraa. Sister of the Shiite martyr Imam Hussein, Zainab fought alongside him in 680 AD, saving his young son and his legacy for future generations.

When Fern Holland heard the story, she laughed and told the women, ”We want all Iraqi women to be just like her.”

Holland, a young lawyer from Oklahoma, was women’s rights coordinator of Iraq’s Shiite heartland for the Coalition Provisional Authority. She helped write the portion of the new constitution addressing women’s rights. To the women in Karbala, she was ”just like a sister.”

On March 9, after visiting the center, Holland and her deputy, Salwa Ourmashi, and coalition press officer Robert Zangas were killed, their car forced off the road and machine gunned. Investigators arrested six suspects, four with valid Iraqi police ID.

Coalition officials hesitate to conclude if the three civilians were targeted for promoting women’s rights….

Over the past few months, Iraqi women in public roles, especially those who work with the US or promote women’s rights, have been targets of death threats and assassination attempts. Many large international aid groups, including most of those with women’s programs, have already withdrawn international staff, and the few remaining women’s groups fear they will be next. …

[E]ven devout women who wear the veil aren’t safe: Raja Habib Khuzai, a Shiite member of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, received threats after opposing a measure that would have replaced Iraq’s civil personal status laws with Sharia law. …

Under Saddam Hussein, women enjoyed civil protections relatively advanced for the Arab world, a legacy of the pre-Baathist monarchy. But after the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, Hussein began courting Islamic hard-liners, segregating schools and decriminalizing polygamy and ”honor killings.”

After the 1991 Gulf War, women in Iraq’s Kurdish-controlled north passed laws protecting their rights, including one outlawing honor killings. But elsewhere, Saddam’s regimed clamped down on women, especially in the south, where Saddam executed tens of thousands of Shiites.

Today, women make up about two-thirds of southern Iraq’s population. Yet they are largely absent from public life.

We ‘liberated’ Afghanistan. They wrote a constitution that many Bush supporters have suggested is a shining example of what the world will be like after Duhbya finishes remaking it. Back in your burkas, girls! mjh

Women banned on Afghan province’s TV and radio

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) – An Afghan province has banned women from performing on television and radio, declaring female entertainers un-Islamic.

The ban in Nangahar, a southeastern province heavily patrolled by U.S.-led troops hunting for Islamic militants, took effect from Friday and also covers women presenters of news and other information, an official said on Saturday.

The decision echoes the strict imposition of sharia Islamic law imposed during the Taliban’s repressive five-year rule of Afghanistan when television was banned, women were forbidden from working and girls were kept out of schools. …

Diplomats said Nangahar’s ban would be seen as a setback for moderates in President Hamid Karzai’s government in their battle with conservatives opposed to liberalisation since the Taliban’s overthrow.

AFGHANISTAN: Local radio makes impact in conservative Kandahar

Established just two months ago with the support of the Washington-based Afghan Cultural Society (ACS), Azad Afghan has a more challenging task of promoting democracy in the conservative, male-dominated and poor security environment of the south.

While the station is well equipped, with funding for the next three years, according to Zeyarmal, they have yet to be able to attract female workers pending safety concerns for women heard on the media. ”There are no female reporters in Kandahar, even in state media. Due to security and cultural limitations even educated women wouldn’t dare be heard via radio or seen on TV,” Zeryamal noted.

StarNewsOnline.com: The Voice of Southeastern North Carolina

Mr. Brahimi, a veteran of peacekeeping operations, most recently was in charge of putting together a government in Afghanistan, for which he won widespread praise. The Afghan model of convening a council of notables from around the country to approve a new constitution is similar to the one he has proposed for Iraq.

Remarks By First Lady Laura Bush at Kilmer for Congress Luncheon

Thanks to my husband’s decisions and America’s actions, 50 million people are free from tyranny and oppression. (Applause.) Consider the women and girls of Afghanistan. During the long years of the Taliban regime, they were virtual prisoners in their homes, unable to leave their home without a male relative. And if they didn’t have a male relative, they were actually forced to have to beg, because they were outlawed from going to school or to work.

Now the people of Afghanistan have new leaders, new freedoms and a constitution guaranteeing the rights of women. And thanks to my husband’s leadership and America’s actions, the people of Iraq are free from the tyranny and the torture of Saddam Hussein and today they are building a free and democratic society.

Yeah, right, Laura. After your husband finishes liberating the women of the world, he’s going to free American women from the tyranny of choice. mjh

Cheney Tells NRA Kerry Will Target Guns
Speech an Effort to Regain Momentum Lost in Dispute Over Assault Weapons
By Mike Allen, Washington Post Staff Writer

Vice President Cheney worked to mend White House relations with gun activists yesterday by warning a National Rifle Association convention in Pittsburgh that Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) would roll back rights of gun makers and users.

”John Kerry’s approach to the Second Amendment has been to regulate, regulate and regulate some more,” Cheney said.

The NRA worked enthusiastically for President Bush in 2000, but the group disagrees with his willingness to sign an extension to the 1994 ban on military-style assault weapons, which is set to expire in September.

Some of the group’s 4 million members, concerned about personal freedoms of all kinds, have also complained about the USA Patriot Act, which makes it easier for the Justice Department conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists, and oppose additional restrictions that have been imposed on air travelers since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Bush campaign is scrambling to be sure it can count on NRA muscle again this year, especially as some of the states in which hunting is most popular are also swing states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. …

Quoting selectively from past Kerry remarks about the NRA, Cheney said Bush is the only one of the two candidates who ”has shown you respect, earned your vote, and appreciates your support.” …

A Kerry campaign statement responding to Cheney’s speech said the senator ”is a lifelong hunter, supports the Second Amendment and will defend hunting rights.” … Kerry also supports closing a loophole that allows people to evade background checks by buying weapons at gun shows, and would ban the ammunition known as ”cop-killer bullets.” …

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said in a telephone interview that while the group has differences with Bush, most members “still consider him a friend.” LaPierre said Kerry is ”probably the most anti-Second Amendment candidate in the country’s history,” and would ”go after every semi-automatic firearm in the country.” … The NRA estimates that the nation has 80 million hunters.

Lord knows how important semi-automatic weapons are to hunters. After we have your machine guns, we’re going to steal your granade launchers, too.

I often wonder what NRA members think of Iraq, where every male over the age of 10 owns a semi-automatic weapon. The poster child for the freedom to defend yourself from tyranny. Oh, wait, they’re hunting us. mjh

I added a gallery of photos of protest statements I’ve observed. Send me yours. mjh

Rooftop Revolt – By the People (link to page one for the full story behind this Revolt)

U.S. National Debt Clock

The estimated population of the United States is 293,816,528 so each citizen’s share of this debt is $24,428.18.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.98 billion per day since September 30, 2003!

FactCheck.org Bush Ad Is ”Troubling” Indeed

The President’s ad recycles bogus claims, then tells only part of the story about Kerry’s position on tax breaks for couples and children.

Summary

A Bush Cheney ’04 ad released April 1 repeats several misleading claims that FactCheck.org has de-bunked before. It also adds something new, saying Kerry repeatedly opposed tax breaks for married couples and families — breaks that Kerry has repeatedly and consistently said he would preserve. …

Overall, Bush’s ad strives to give the impression Kerry plans a massive tax increase on middle-income people, the exact opposite of what Kerry says he’d do.

FactCheck.org Treasury Tax Expert to Bush: Clinton’s Increase WASN’T The Biggest.
Study published by Bush’s Treasury Department contradicts Bush’s campaign.

Summary

In speeches and fundraising appeals the Bush campaign keeps making a distorted claim that Clinton ‘s 1993 tax increase — supported by Kerry — was ”the biggest in history.”

Republicans have been repeating this gross overstatement for more than a decade, but now there’s less justification for it than ever. The GOP claim is contradicted by a study published last year by the Office of Tax Analysis of Bush’s own Treasury Department. …

A tax increase in 1942 boosted federal revenues by 71%, for example, as the US geared up for war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Measured in inflation-adjusted 1992 dollars, Roosevelt’s wartime increase amounted to $73 billion a year, while Clinton’s increase averaged $35 billion a year (average for the first two years.)

The study said that inflation-adjusted ”constant dollars” is probably only the second -best measure of the size of a tax increase. ”The single best measure for most purposes is probably the revenue effect as a percentage of GDP.” That’s Gross Domestic Product, the way we gauge the size of the economy. Clinton’s tax increase isn’t the biggest by that ”best” measure, either. In the period since 1968, the study said, ”the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 was the biggest increase.” That was the tax increase signed by Ronald Reagan, rescinding some of the effects of his huge tax cut passed the year before.

That 1982 tax increase only slightly exceeded Clinton’s in inflation-adjusted dollars ($37 billion a year vs.. $32 billion) but it was much bigger in relation to the size of the economy. The ’82 increase amounted to 4.6% of GDP (average for the first two years) while Clinton’s was 2.7%.