The Panama Papers

Apr 3rd, 2016 5:10 pm | By

We’ll be learning some details of how rich people avoid taxes by using offshore tax havens, via the Panama Papers. The Guardian is one of a group of news outlets that have access to the papers.

The hidden wealth of some of the world’s most prominent leaders, politicians and celebrities has been revealed by an unprecedented leak of millions of documents that show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes.

The Guardian, working with global partners, will set out details from the first tranche of what are being called “the Panama Papers”. Journalists from more than 80 countries have been reviewing 11.5m files leaked from the database of Mossack Fonseca, the world’s fourth biggest offshore law firm.

The records were obtained from an anonymous source by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with the Guardian and the BBC.

Though there is nothing unlawful about using offshore companies, the files raise fundamental questions about the ethics of such tax havens – and the revelations are likely to provoke urgent calls for reforms of a system that critics say is arcane and open to abuse.

Why isn’t it illegal? Why are tax havens legal? I’ve never understood it.

What we need to know:

What is Mossack Fonseca?
It is a Panama-based law firm whose services include incorporating companies in offshore jurisdictions such as the British Virgin Islands. It administers offshore firms for a yearly fee. Other services include wealth management.
Where is it based?
The firm is Panamanian but runs a worldwide operation. Its website boasts of a global network with 600 people working in 42 countries. It has franchises around the world, where separately owned affiliates sign up new customers and have exclusive rights to use its brand. Mossack Fonseca operates in tax havensincluding Switzerland, Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, and in the British crown dependencies Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man.

It gets to that why question:

Are all people who use offshore structures crooks?
No. Using offshore structures is entirely legal. There are many legitimate reasons for doing so. Business people in countries such as Russia and Ukraine typically put their assets offshore to defend them from “raids” by criminals, and to get around hard currency restrictions. Others use offshore for reasons of inheritance and estate planning.

Oh, well, as long as they’re used to get around hard currency restrictions, that’s fine then. Eh?

Are some people who use offshore structures crooks?
Yes. In a speech last year in Singapore, David Cameron said “the corrupt, criminals and money launderers” take advantage of anonymous company structures. The government is trying to do something about this. It wants to set up a central register that will reveal the beneficial owners of offshore companies. From June, UK companies will have to reveal their “significant” owners for the first time.

This should run for awhile.



You can hear people screaming

Apr 3rd, 2016 4:08 pm | By

A horror in Molenbeek yesterday:

Shocking footage has emerged of a woman being mown down by a car in the Brussels district of Molenbeek during a far-right rally. Police later arrested the driver, who is said to be a local man.

In the footage, a white Audi A1 that had broken through a police roadblock hits the woman, who appears to be wearing a black Muslim headscarf, while she is crossing the road. She rolls across the bonnet of the vehicle and falls onto the floor, while the vehicle speeds down the street.

The woman suffered multiple fractures and head injuries.

Police arrested two suspected far-right activists carrying Molotov cocktails and weapons in the district of Saturday, as they struggled to close down an anti-Islam protest that had been banned by authorities, reported RBTF. Minor clashes between police and local youths were also reported. Anti-fascist protesters were also arrested in the city’s Place de la Bourse.

The fascists are rubbing their hands with glee.

 



Threats from fanatics

Apr 3rd, 2016 3:34 pm | By

In the no good deed goes unpunished department

A prominent human rights lawyer has said he received death threats after calling for unity within Scotland’s Muslim community. Aamer Anwar said he was taking the threats from “fanatics” extremely seriously and that police were investigating.

Anwar chaired an event at Glasgow central mosque last week calling for unity and condemning violence and extremism after the killing of the shopkeeper Asad Shah and the terrorist attacks in Brussels and Lahore.

So naturally he got death threats, because what could be more horrifying and terrible than condemning violence and saying let’s not kill each other?

Anwar said: “Having been a campaigner for human rights for over 25 years, I have grown used to the bile and hatred directed at me, sadly that is par for the course.

“On occasion when I have had my life seriously threatened, I have informed the police but have always chosen to keep it private. On this occasion I could no longer remain silent, because of a small minority who believe they can silence me by creating a climate of fear.”

He said “abuse and hatred” had been whipped up on social media over the last few weeks, and that he had received calls in the middle of the night.

Because he campaigns for human rights.

“It is a terrifying and deeply lonely place to be when you say goodbye to your children and wonder if it is for the last time, but the death of Asad Shah should be a wakeup call to our community that we must not be silenced.

“Our so-called community leaders must do much more. They have avoided tacking hatred to preserve their status and that is deeply shameful and hypocritical.”

Anwar has taken on a number of high-profile cases, including representing the families of the Fife man Sheku Bayoh, who died in police custody, and the murdered Indian waiter Surjit Singh Chhokar.

He does good things, so he gets death threats. That’s the world we live in.



They are not about female inclusion. They are about female exclusion.

Apr 3rd, 2016 12:15 pm | By

A friend brought my attention to an article at Mamamia about Kim Kardashian and “empowerment.”

Kim Kardashian and Emily Ratajkowski posted a joint topless nude selfie on Instagram this morning and we’re all meant to sit back, have a look at the black stripe over their boobs, their middle fingers in the air and that omnipresent bathroom mirror and say, “Oh, Thank God for female empowerment. How empowering. Just look at those two women empower. I need to get me some of these empowerment black strip things. Thank you Kimmy, you have made me see the empowerment light.”

Last time Kim K did this she tweeted that, “It’s so important that we let women express their sexuality and share their bodies.”

If it has to do with a woman and we put the words empowering, liberation and control in there, it’s all totally okay. Don’t go putting shade on that empowering female parade by “judging” Kimmy for getting her gear off.

If you dare judge a woman who is exercising her God given nude empowerment you simply don’t get it. Just look at what Kim K said to Bette Midler when she questioned the last nude selfie:

It was rude, ageist and probably worst of all humorless, but totally okay because Kim has better boobs than Bette. And Kim’s boobs are empowered. And Kim is nude so she definitely knows what she is talking about.

That’s the thing, isn’t it, or at least one of them. Kim Kardashian posting selfies of herself looking gorgeous is not so much “empowering” as it is competitive. “Empowering” would be average women, in all our dumpiness or scrawniness or bulgyness or flatness, posting selfies. Gorgeous women saying look how gorgeous I am is just more of the same old thing – women treating themselves as commodities for inspection because that’s the way the larger world treats them, and triumphing over other women in the process. I suppose you can call that “empowering” if you want to, but it seems pretty silly.

In this Instagram snap are two international celebrities who have both got a lot of things to sell – products, movies, themselves mainly. They have had $100,000s of dollars invested into the way they look (from cosmetic and surgical procedures to stylists, clothes, hair, eyebrows, everything and anything). And the way they look is largely dictated to by what men find attractive. So all that control over their bodies? Men are pulling the levers at the very start of the chain. They have personal trainers and dietitians, they starve their bodies and pump certain parts up, maybe because it makes them feel good, but most probably because their bodies need to look a certain way so they can market themselves and earn more money.

Which works for them, but that’s no reason for the rest of us to treat it as a branch of feminism because “empowering.”

Yeah, that equals empowerment to me. Two privileged women in LA (BTW: who have more clothes than some department stores) whose life success has been based on what they look like, topless in a bathroom, with nothing to wear, giving the world the finger.

Send them to gender studies at Oxford University STAT. They have so much to contribute to the discourse. Or, more importantly for gender studies and feminism, let’s send them into the bedrooms of young women across the world to talk about the power of their bodies. The power of all sorts of different shaped, differently used, amazing bodies that will never be perfect but could get you on a basketball team or to work, the beach, to a party with really, really good friends where you laugh and talk even though you are four whole kilograms bigger than you think you should be and your eyebrows aren’t perfect, and your skin isn’t flawless and your stomach isn’t flat and your arms don’t look good without sleeves.

Oh, that’s right, they are in their bedrooms already. Telling our daughters how empowering it is to look exactly like they do and take a nude selfie while you are at it.

Kim’s nude selfies are not about feminism. They are not about liberation or empowerment. They are not about female inclusion. They are about female exclusion. They are about selling the Kardashians. They are about celebrating the “right” type of body – thin, flat stomachs, big boobs kind of like a blow up Barbie.

Of course they are. They’re saying “Don’t you wish you looked like us? You poor sad flabby ordinary women?” What’s “empowering” about that?

They are about screwing with the minds of young women who look at them (because they can’t help but look, they are everywhere, all the time) and think so that is what female liberation looks like.

Kim K’s nude selfie will get attention, it will get clicks, it will allow the Kardashians to keep charging advertisers $200,000 to $400,000 for one Instagram post alone.  It will keep a woman’s value stuck in that awfully fragile and mean and energy sucking world of how they look, not who they are as people.

Vive la Kardashians. They are taking women, one “empowering” selfie at a time, to the very worst place inside herself.

That’s not empowerment. That’s two, very privileged, mean girls in a bathroom taking pictures of themselves and giving the world the finger.

Wait, aren’t they giving the finger to patriarchy?

Hahahahaha just kidding.



Protest

Apr 2nd, 2016 6:25 pm | By

Protests against the plan to ban all abortion in Poland:

Numerous cities in Poland will be protesting tomorrow against a legislative project completely banning abortions.

Right now, abortion in Poland is illegal except in the following three cases: when the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest; when the life of the pregnant woman is in danger; or when the fetus is severely damaged. This is already one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

There is a new legislative project that aims to restrict this law even further, making abortion completely illegal. This means that:

– Rape survivors and children will be forced to give birth.

– Women that might die due to their pregnancy will have no way to legally terminate it.

– A miscarriage might be punished with a sentence, as fetal murder will enter the criminal code.

– The state will have the right to bypass a person’s constitutional rights to protect unborn children.

– Since prenatal testing is connected to a very small risk of miscarriage, it will be banned and doctors performing it might face criminal charges.

– The morning-after pill will be categorized as an early abortion tool and thus completely banned (same with IUDs).

People are outraged. The current law, misleadingly called acompromise, was passed in the early nineties to gain political support from the Catholic Church. The new legislative project has full support from the Catholic Church, whose priests are obliged to read a special letter of support during mass tomorrow. Once again, women will be denied basic rights to their bodies, pushed to seek dangerous methods to terminate unwanted pregnancies (clothes hangers, injecting chemicals into their vaginas, punches, etc.).

There are protests in over 15 Polish cities. Ten thousand people are expected to protest in front of Sejm (the Polish Parliament building in Warsaw). The list of cities joining the Sunday protest is growing:

CITIES JOINING THE PROTEST:

Warszawahttps://www.facebook.com/events/249592045385830/

Białystokhttps://www.facebook.com/events/885720881536481/new!

Częstochowahttps://www.facebook.com/events/220300961660443/

Gorzów Wielkopolski:https://www.facebook.com/events/972216896202301/ new!

Katowicehttps://www.facebook.com/events/540441612801975/

Kielcehttps://www.facebook.com/events/493069244210974/

Koszalinhttps://www.facebook.com/events/1569962253314697/

Kraków https://www.facebook.com/events/499782146878881/

Lublinhttps://www.facebook.com/events/489003887962084/

Łódź: https://www.facebook.com/events/629305593888367/new!

Opolehttps://www.facebook.com/events/248067022208142/

Oslo: 2:00 p.m. Polish Ambassy Oslo, Olav Kyrres Plass 1 new!

Poznańhttps://www.facebook.com/events/1124003284285568/

Rzeszówhttps://www.facebook.com/events/272332806435953/

Szczecinhttps://www.facebook.com/events/1684918121761871/

Toruńhttps://www.facebook.com/events/1678806435719364/

Trójmiastohttps://www.facebook.com/events/563885360453343/

Wrocławhttps://www.facebook.com/events/223340218023178/

Zielona Góra:https://www.facebook.com/events/605470029616735/ new!

Article in Polish / Artykuł po polsku:http://takdlakobiet.pl/aktualnosci/gdzie-i-kiedy-mozna-protestowac-przeciw-zaostrzeniu-ustawy-aborcyjnej/



Priests have been asked to read out a letter from the bishops’ conference

Apr 2nd, 2016 5:55 pm | By

Poland is looking to impose a complete ban on abortions.

The Polish prime minister, Beata Szydło, said she backs moves towards a total ban on abortion, in a sign the nationalist government may be set to turn its attention to the nuclear family.

A campaign against abortion is due to be launched this Sunday in the country’s Roman Catholic churches. Priests have been asked to read out a letter from the bishops’ conference calling for Poland’s existing, limited abortion rights to be scrapped.

After mass on church steps, anti-abortion group Fundacja Pro will gather petition signatures for a citizen’s parliamentary bill calling for a total ban.

That’s right, women – no escape for you. Not if you’re raped, not if your pregnancy is threatening your life, not if you have an incomplete miscarriage and develop a raging infection – no abortion for you. The priests said so. The celibate men who will never be forced to give birth to a baby have said you have to be subject to being forced to give birth to a baby. The priests are in charge, and you’re just machines for the manufacture of babies.

Poland already strictly limits access to abortion. A 1993 law grants it up to the 25th week from conception, but only on the condition that the woman’s life is in danger, the pregnancy is the result of criminally proven rape or incest, or the foetus is “seriously malformed”.

The bishops’ letter, signed on Wednesday, calls the current law a compromise, adding: “The life of every person is protected by the fifth of the Ten Commandments: thou shalt not kill. Therefore the position of Catholics in this regard is clear and unchanging.’’

Except of course that a fetus isn’t a person in that sense.

Monika Płatek, a prominent member of Poland’s Women’s Congress, said the prime minister’s view illustrated the influence of the church on the ruling Law & Justice party.

“The bishops do not care if a woman dies. Szydło is a puppet. The abortion ban was the condition of the church’s support for Law & Justice. The move is typical of an arbitrary state that uses support for moral ideas to take total control.

“We saw it under Hitler and Ceaușescu and now we are seeing it under Law & Justice,’’ said Płatek, a professor of law at the University of Warsaw.

Authoritarians and god-botherers can just never get enough of grinding women into the dirt.



How dare anyone appear to question

Apr 2nd, 2016 5:01 pm | By

And more of the same ridiculous idea that saying X is not Y is denying X’s right to define her own Xality. The Guardian purses its lips and frowns and says Ian McEwan has been a naughty naughty boy.

Subhead:

Booker-winning author appears to question people’s right to decide their own gender

No he doesn’t. He questions his (McEwan’s) obligation to believe whatever people tell him. People have every right to decide all sorts of things, an infinite number of things; it doesn’t follow that we all have a corresponding duty to believe or endorse or repeat or praise whatever they’ve decided.

Campaigners have criticised author Ian McEwan for comments that appeared to question the right of transgender people to choose their gender.

No, they didn’t appear to do that. See above.

In a speech to the Royal Institution, the Booker prize-winning writer asked whether factors such as biology and social norms limited our ability to adopt a different gender.

“The self, like a consumer desirable, may be plucked from the shelves of a personal identity supermarket, a ready-to-wear little black number,” McEwan said. “For example, some men in full possession of a penis are now identifying as women and demanding entry to women-only colleges, and the right to change in women’s dressing rooms.”

People can identify however they like. That doesn’t mean they can control how we receive their identification. A scruffy white guy age 20 can identify as Barack Obama; if he sits next to me on the bus and tells me he’s Barack Obama, I don’t have to take his word for it.

In a Q&A after his speech, one woman asked McEwan, 67, to clarify what she called his offensive remarks, the Times reported (paywall). “Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think of people with penises as men,” he said. “But I know they enter a difficult world when they become transsexuals and they tell us they are women, they become women, but it’s interesting when you hear the conflict between feminists now and people in this group.

“It’s quite a bitter conflict. Spaces are put aside, women are wanting to put spaces aside like colleges or changing rooms, and find from another side a radical discussion coming their way saying men who want to feel like it can come in there too. I think it’s really difficult. And I think there is sweeping through American [university] campuses a kind of strange sense of victimhood and a sense of purposeful identities that we can’t actually all of us agree with. Of course sex and race are different, but they also have a biological basis. It makes a difference whether you have an X or Y chromosome.”

It makes a difference where you grew up. It makes a difference who your parents were. (If they weren’t the same as Obama’s parents, there goes your identification as Obama.) It makes a difference where you lived as a child…and so on. Identify how you like, but if the facts don’t support your identification, that’s not the fault of all the people who aren’t you.

Stonewall condemned McEwan’s “uninformed views” as “extremely sad”. In a statement it said: “The complexity of gender identity extends beyond genitalia. Trans people need and deserve acceptance and equality. This sort of commentary doesn’t just denigrate the trans experience, it denies its very existence, and that’s especially hurtful for a group of people who have spent their lives fighting to be heard and understood.”

No, that’s exactly what it doesn’t do. It does not deny the existence of the trans experience. It’s dishonest to say it does.



Misogyny illustrated

Apr 2nd, 2016 3:51 pm | By

Warning – this is very bad.

Gulalai Ismail shared a post on Facebook.

Because we as a society are so much obsessed with commoditisation of women’s bodies that killing a girl is “normal” using myth of “virginity”.

Oh and yes, now let’s deny early age marriages in Pakistan.

17 Years Old Girl Killed On Her Wedding Night In Jacobabad Sindh For Not Proven Virgin

The Express Tribune in Pakistan reports the story, though it says the claim about virginity is not confirmed.

A bride was allegedly strangled to the death by her husband on the night of their wedding in a suspected case of ‘honour killing’, Jacobabad police said on Saturday.

During the day, an alleged picture of the deceased bride made rounds on social media and suggested that the young girl was killed by her husband for “not being a virgin”. However, this piece of information could not be verified.

Khanzadi, daughter of Lal Mohammad Lashari, married her cousin Qalandar Bux Khokhar the night before her lifeless body was found in her bedroom in ADC Colony. The suspect, her husband, remains on the run.

If you train people to hate women, this is what you get.



“Something I never thought about until I was on the receiving end of it”

Apr 2nd, 2016 12:20 pm | By

In October 2014 Meghan Stabler wrote in the Huffington Post about being named Working Mother of the Year.

What is remarkable is the staggering inequality we working mothers face. The reality of the workplace for women in 2014 is stark; I know because I’ve seen both sides. I started my career as a male, and as long as I presented as such, I found that my views and opinions were widely respected. But since transitioning to my true, authentic self, I’ve come to recognize the gender-stereotypical male dominance in meetings and work in general, something I never thought about until I was on the receiving end of it.

Ah – isn’t that interesting. It’s helpful of her to admit it.

That admission is exactly why we pesky radical feminists say that if you grow up presenting as male and you never think about the gender-stereotypical male dominance in meetings and work in general, then in that sense you did not grow up a girl or woman. That’s why we say growing up with male privilege does make a difference, a difference that matters, and that’s why we say trans women who grow up that way shouldn’t be talking over us or correcting us, let alone bullying and dogpiling and shunning us.

Live as a woman by all means, present as a woman, identify as a woman, hang out with women as a woman – but do not tell us that growing up presenting as male makes no difference. That’s not for you to say.



He struck his wife and threw tins of cat food at her

Apr 2nd, 2016 11:17 am | By

The Guardian reports on an arranged marriage that turned out to be enslavement.

A man who treated his wife as a slave and subjected her to an existence of “violence, intimidation, aggression and misery” has been jailed following a pioneering trial which saw him become the first Briton convicted of forcing their spouse into domestic servitude.

Prosecutors and police said they hoped the case of Safraz Ahmed, a 34-year-old mechanic from south London who abused, demeaned and taunted Sumara Iram over a two-year period, could see more potential victims come forward.

Ahmed subjected Iram to “physical and mental torture” after she came to the UK from Pakistan in late 2012 for an arranged marriage into which she entered willingly and with initially high hopes, Woolwich crown court was told.

He struck his wife, threw tins of cat food at her, sent streams of abusive and demeaning text messages, and once told her to jump in front of a vehicle or into a river, the judge, Christopher Hehir, was told.

Iram says she wasn’t allowed to leave the house alone or to make friends.

I cooked, I cleaned, I washed, I ironed, looked after other people’s children and when things were not to the liking of the family I was punished by beatings. I felt that there was only one purpose of my life and that was to serve this family.

Of course that’s always been what many people have understood marriage to mean.

Ahmed admitted enforced domestic servitude, for which he was jailed for two years, and assault causing actual bodily harm for breaking her nose, for which he received an eight-month term. The sentences will run concurrently, meaning he could be free within 12 months, less than half the time that Iram lived under his control.

And no broken nose.

Ahmed had once hit his wife for, as he viewed it, failing to tend properly to his sister, the court heard. If the family told her to “stand on one leg” she should do it without question, she said.

Iram came to police attention in February 2014 after neighbours saw her outside the family home in just a dress and flip-flops, before her husband dragged her back inside by her hair.

Officers realised she had a broken nose and black eye and arrested Ahmed, but they released him the next day when Iram signed a document asking for him to be freed, saying she was not under pressure.

Following the conviction police accepted they could have removed Iram then, sparing her another 18 months with her husband.

Not to mention her husband’s family, who must have helped him keep her prisoner.

Polly Harrar, the founder of the Sharan Project, which helps victims of forced marriages from south Asian communites, said the conviction suggested there were large numbers of victims living similarly restricted lives in the UK.

“This case will open the door to more prosecutions,” she said. “This woman was restricted in terms of going outside the home. She was brought here to be a slave in effect. This is just the tip of an iceberg. We have dealt with many similar cases. This case is really good for raising awareness of the problem.”

Up to a point. I wonder if Iram is worried about retribution when he gets out in a year.

H/t Barry Duke



Facts are not rights, rights are not facts

Apr 2nd, 2016 10:34 am | By

Now it’s Ian McEwan’s turn. Pink News reports that he has Said Things.

Award-winning author Ian McEwan has waded into a debate on trans rights, claiming that he can’t seen anyone with a penis as other than a man.

McEwan, 67, is the latest to offer his opinion on the rights of trans people, mentioning an ongoing controversy surrounding people like Germaine Greer, who denies that trans women can truly be women.

Wait.

Rights are one thing, and perceived facts are another. There can be spillage along the border, but all the same – there is a difference.

McEwan’s saying he can’t seen anyone with a penis as other than a man isn’t part of a “debate on trans rights.” It’s not a right to be seen as something in particular. I don’t have a right to be seen as Japanese or tall or Shakespeare. Germaine Greer isn’t giving her opinion on the rights of trans people when she denies that trans women can truly be women.

It’s entirely possible to see trans people as trans people and think they should have all the rights everyone else has, be safe, be free from discrimination and abuse, and so on. None of that is or should be dependent on mystical beliefs about “gender.”



Faces

Apr 1st, 2016 5:41 pm | By

The Huffington Post published a string of photos of the aftermath of the Lahore bombing. There are no gory ones, but there are many anguished faces.

K.M. Chuadary/ASSOCIATED PRESS

A woman weeps for her injured family members as she tries to speak to security at a local hospital in Lahore.

Arif Ali/Getty Images

A Pakistani family brings an injured child to the hospital in Lahore on March 27, 2016.



The flight attendant pressed her further

Apr 1st, 2016 3:20 pm | By

Yet another man on yet another flight to Israel makes a woman change her seat because he doesn’t want a filthy whorey woman sitting next to him.

A retired lawyer who fled the Nazis as a child is suing the Israeli national airline El Al for alleged discrimination after being asked to move on a plane when an ultra-Orthodox Jew objected to sitting next to a woman.

Renee Rabinowitz, 81, is being supported by the Israel Religious Action Center, which has campaigned against ultra-Orthodox efforts to enforce the segregation of men and women and to have images of women removed from public hoardings.

You don’t get to “object to” sitting next to people in public accommodations unless they’re something along the lines of roaring drunk or covered in vomit. You don’t get to “object to” sitting next to them simply because they’re a category of human you consider beneath you. That shit needs to stop.

On 2 December last year, Rabinowitz settled into her business class seat on an El Al flight from New York to Tel Aviv following a visit to the US to see family. Her seat was one of a pair separated by a screen.

Shortly before the plane doors closed, a passenger who had been allocated the window seat next to Rabinowitz boarded. The middle-aged man, who was wearing ultra-Orthodox garb, called a flight attendant and spoke to him in Hebrew.

Rabinowitz said the flight attendant then offered Rabinowitz what he described as a better seat, one of the central row of three nearer the first class cabin. “I didn’t understand. It wasn’t a better seat,” she said.

Seeing as how she lives in Israel, I bet she did understand, all too well.

She said she initially declined to move, but the flight attendant pressed her further and as the plane was close to taking off, she felt she had no alternative. Using her walking stick, Rabinowitz followed him to the front of the business class section.

“I asked the flight attendant point blank if the man sitting next to me had asked me to be moved, and unabashedly he said yes.”

So it’s that taken for granted that women are filthy and unacceptable.

Back home in Jerusalem, Rabinowitz attended a public meeting at which Anat Hoffman, IRAC’s executive director, spoke about the organisation’s successful campaign to end gender segregation on Israel’s public buses at the demand of the ultra-Orthodox. Since IRAC won a court case on the issue, buses carry prominent notices informing passengers they may sit where they wish.

“Anat said they wanted to launch a similar action in the air. Afterwards I told her what had happened to me,” said Rabinowitz.

Hoffman said: “We kept hearing from women, both Israelis and tourists, that they had been asked to move seats on planes. We were looking for a good case to take up, and then Renee walked in. She’s 81, and a Holocaust survivor – and she was humiliated by Israel’s national airline.”

It’s not a good look, is it. “Excuse me, ma’am, and sorry about the Holocaust and everything, but this gentleman here can’t bear to have you sitting next to him, so I have to ask you to move.” The irony is breath-taking.

IRAC is awaiting El Al’s formal statement of defence, which must be submitted within 30 days of the lawsuit being filed. But in a letter to Rabinowitz’s lawyer, the company insisted there was no gender discrimination on El Al flights.

It said it had investigated the incident, and found that the flight attendant had dealt with Rabinowitz politely and sensitively, making it clear that Rabinowitz was not obliged to move. As a gesture of goodwill, El Al offered Rabinowitz a $200 (£140) voucher towards her next flight. “The money is not the important issue here, it’s the principle,” said Rabinowitz.

That’s even more insulting. Calling it “polite” and “sensitive” to make someone move just because the passenger next to her dislikes the category of human she is is incredibly insulting…especially, sorry to labor the point, from one Jew to another Jew. Offering her a voucher for an offensively small amount is insult 3.

Hoffman described El Al’s acquiescence to demands to move women passengers as “one more way that ultra-Orthodox extremists get away with demands that have nothing to do with Judaism. Humiliating women can in no way qualify as a religious act. It is simply not acceptable.”

In a statement, El Al said it maintained “the highest levels of equal treatment and respect for all passengers. Our employees in the air, on the ground, in Israel and around the globe do all possible to listen to and provide solutions to the concerns or requests from our customers whatever they might be, including seating requests on the airplane.”

So if someone asked to sit next to a gentile? Would El Al employees do all possible to listen to and provide solutions to the request?



Salma’s every movement is policed

Apr 1st, 2016 2:44 pm | By

Shaheen Hashmat reviews a BBC 3 drama that was broadcast the other night (and alas as usual is not available outside the UK), Murdered by my Father.

The recently aired BBC 3 drama Murdered by my Father is an incredibly powerful depiction of the circumstances in which ‘honour’-based violence takes place. Screenwriter Vinay Patel developed the story following detailed consultation with specialist support charity IKWRO (the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation), among others. We learn that London teenager Salma (Kiran Sonia Sawar) is betrothed from an early age to the son of her father’s business associate Haroon (Salman Akhtar), and despite trying hard to honour her father’s wishes, her love for Imi (Mawaan Rizwan) makes it impossible for her to reconcile the idea of getting married to anyone else. Though she and her widower father Shahzad (played by Adeel Akhtar) share a warm relationship to begin with, his control on Salma’s life tightens considerably as the pressure on him increases to force her into line and ‘protect his reputation’.

Haroon tells her she’s Westernized, her school alerts her father to her absences from school, her father moves up the date of the wedding – the walls close in.

We see Salma’s despair as she is torn between her father’s emotional blackmail and the desire to live her own life. After running away to safety, Salma is tricked into coming back to the house, where her father strangles and suffocates her to death.

It sounds so Jacobean, but it’s real and it’s contemporary.

Patel has done a fantastic job of conveying the social backdrop to this very specific type of violence. We know that Salma previously tried to break up with Imi, but she was unable to resist getting back together with him. When his sister catches him looking at her at a wedding, she warns him to leave her alone, saying, “I’d prefer it if I didn’t have to tell mum why her darling puthar got his head kicked in at a wedding.” She recognises the threat to both of them. In fact Salma’s every movement is policed by everyone from the nosy neighbours to her own little brother, who isn’t even a teenager himself.

She’s perpetually afraid.

Many victims are indeed betrothed to each other from a young age in order to strengthen family ties, which in this instance are broken when Haroon tells Salma’s father that he’d rather keep the business in his own family than associate with someone who has ‘shamed’ them in the way they say he has for failing to make Salma comply. The impact of stigma from the community on ‘honour’ abusers is depicted in a particularly intense manner in the scene where Salma’s father is beaten by Haroon. Although much less dramatic, I too recall in this personal blog post the moment my own father is told he should be ashamed for raising a daughter like me.  The dynamic between Salma and her father is also spot on, from the initial pleading and tense compromises to outright threats. Many abusers do indeed imprison their victims to isolate them and prevent them from having any contact with the outside world.

The one thing Hasheen doesn’t like is the ending, in which the father kills himself.

There is no way that Shahzad would have killed himself after killing his daughter. Men who murder in the name of ‘honour’ are revered and celebrated within the communities from which they spring. Even in jail they are treated like heroes. Deeyah Khan’s Banaz: A Love Story demonstrates how killers will even gloat about what they’ve done as they recall the gory details to an eager audience. Shahzad would have served his time comfortably and re-entered a community that would mostly have welcomed him back with open arms.

The Shafia family are appealing their sentences.



Babies for sale cheap

Apr 1st, 2016 12:18 pm | By

Now for Julie Bindel’s article on Gujarat surrogacy clinics.

Having heard many stories about how commonplace outsourcing pregnancy and reproduction is, I am in India to investigate the country’s “rent-a-womb” industry.

As a feminist campaigner against sexual abuse of women, and in particular the sex trade, I feel sick at the idea of wombs for rent. Sitting in the clinic, seeing smartly dressed women come in to access fertility services, all I could think about was how desperate a woman must be to carry a child for money. I know from other campaigners against womb trafficking that many surrogates are coerced by abusive husbands and pimps.

In fact how could that not be the case? We know abusive husbands and pimps exist in India, and how would they not coerce the women in their power to turn their ability to gestate into piles of cash?

I decided to visit four clinics in Gujarat,one of India’s most religious states – known as the country’s surrogacy capital – posing as a woman interested in hiring a surrogate and egg donor to gain access to those providing the services. I wanted to be able to speak from experience about the human rights abuses that result from the practice, and to become more involved in the international campaign to abolish it.

I was told it is common practice to plant embryos in two or more surrogates and to perform abortions if more than one pregnancy takes hold. Similarly, if several embryos are implanted in one surrogate and a multiple pregnancy occurs, unwanted foetuses will often be aborted.

Approximately 12,000 foreigners come to India each year to hire surrogates, many of them from the UK.

Why India? Why not hire surrogates at home?

Because India has a lot of poor people, that’s why. Because the price is a fifth of what it would be at home. Because it’s a perfect setup for rich pale people to exploit very poor brown women.

I have heard several stories of women being forced or coerced into surrogacy by husbands or even pimps, and ask Mehta if she is aware of this happening.

“Without the husbands’ [of the surrogates] consent we don’t do surrogacy. We don’t give all the money before the delivery. We take from you but we hand it over to her once she hands over the child to you. We give her in instalments so she will also take care she will deliver the baby no problem.”

Mehta said they try to avoid the women forming bonds with the baby by giving them drugs to stop lactation. “She will not produce milk at all and she will not be shown the baby.”

Some of the women sell their breast milk, extracted by a pump at the clinic and delivered to the commissioning parents. Others agree to be paid to directly breastfeed the baby, despite the likelihood of bonding.

Ah well, the market will sort all that out.

Amin hands me some photographs of potential surrogates, while explaining the fees for egg donation – “caucasian donors £2,500 to £3,000, Indian donor £1,000”.

The surrogates remain at home during their pregnancy and are monitored daily. “I don’t allow the women to live in surrogacy house,” says Amin. “The husband is the better watchman I feel. He is involved in the programme – he knows how to take care of his woman. Outside, if she’s alone she will have many friends and [it will be] difficult for me to control. Even if I put them in a hostel I never know what is going on there.”

I ask if the women ever experience domestic violence during pregnancy.

“Rarely, but we have seen it,” says Amin. “Last year we heard a surrogate’s husband was beating her. She came crying to us so we put her up. After the child was born we sent her back.”

According to Amin, the surrogates she hires are middle class or upper class. “Recently we [hired] three Brahmin [a high caste] girls, all educated. We have about 25% of that class. About 85% [of all surrogates] are quite well off.” I suspect this is a lie. Research by pressure group Stop Surrogacy Now shows that, aside from rare cases, it is the poorest women from the lowest castes who become surrogate mothers.

But this isn’t exploitation, at all. How could anyone possibly think it is?

 



Trousers in flames

Apr 1st, 2016 7:24 am | By

Sometimes the dishonesty is hard to believe.

The tweet:

Alison Phipps @alisonphipps
Seeing Indian surrogates described as ‘wombs for rent’ by British feminists seems deeply objectifying and disrespectful to me.

What Julie Bindel actually wrote:

Having heard many stories about how commonplace outsourcing pregnancy and reproduction is, I am in India to investigate the country’s “rent-a-womb” industry.

As a feminist campaigner against sexual abuse of women, and in particular the sex trade, I feel sick at the idea of wombs for rent. Sitting in the clinic, seeing smartly dressed women come in to access fertility services, all I could think about was how desperate a woman must be to carry a child for money. I know from other campaigners against womb trafficking that many surrogates are coerced by abusive husbands and pimps. Watching the smiling receptionist fill out forms on behalf of prospective commissioning parents, I could only wonder at the misery and pain experienced by the women who will end up being viewed as nothing but a vessel.

Alison Phipps is an academic. It is not possible that she misunderstood what Julie so plainly wrote there.

This is not my Left. I repudiate it. I sow salt in its fields.



A proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim

Apr 1st, 2016 6:25 am | By

The Tories have imposed a new contract on junior doctors in the NHS, much to their fury. Now there’s been a government “equality analysis” that says the new contract is bad for women but that’s ok because don’t be silly who even needs a because.

The Independent has the details:

Junior doctors are outraged over an equality analysis which appears to condone the new contract having an “indirect adverse impact on women”.

The analysis, published by the Department of Health, reads: “We consider that the payments proposed are fair and that any indirect adverse effect on women is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.”

It also says: “Whilst this may disadvantage lone parents (who are disproportionately female) due to the increased cost of paid childcare in the evenings and weekend, in some cases this may actually benefit other women, for example where individuals have partners, it may be easier to make informal, unpaid childcare arrangements in the evening and weekends than it is during the week due to the increased availability of partners and wider family networks at weekends and in the evenings.”

Aka them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose. It will be bad for single mothers, in the way things always are bad for single mothers, because it’s more difficult and more expensive to be a single parent than it is to be a pair, but that’s ok because it will be good for the people for whom it’s already better. Tory social justice in a nutshell. “Look on the bright side: it will make the already prosperous more prosperous!”

Rachel Clarke in the Indy:

Yesterday, the Government published its equality impact assessment of the new junior doctor contract. Until now, female doctors’ salaries have kept pace with men’s because small annual pay awards prevent part-time doctors, of whom the vast majority are women, earning less than their full-time colleagues over time. But the new contract strips these safeguards away.

Now, as doctors progress through their training, we will see ever-widening gender pay gaps in medicine. Incredibly for a government ostensibly so committed to gender equality, the Department of Health hasn’t even tried to hide the discrimination at the heart of its new contract. Instead, it states in its assessment that: “Any adverse effect on women is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate end.”

Aka yes it’s bad for women but it gets us what we want so that’s fine.

A recent study by the statistics agency, Eurostat, found that the UK has the sixth largest pay gap between men and women in the European Union. Our gender pay gap means that, for every pound a man in Britain earns, on average a woman will still only receive 80 pence. That equates to us working for free for 57 days of the year.

When my five-year old daughter grows up she wants to be a doctor like mummy. The government claims to support such aspirations. Nicky Morgan, Minister for Women, pledges “to inspire young women and girls so that they can compete with the best in the world for the top jobs – and see that their hard work will pay off.” Except, that is, when it doesn’t suit Number 10.

And except when it’s actual money as opposed to words in speeches.



Sex & Obscenity in the Bible

Mar 31st, 2016 5:36 pm | By

From the Freedom From Religion Foundation: Colorado school district censors FFRF pamphlets

On Friday, April 1, Delta County School District employees are scheduled to place Freedom From Religion Foundation literature, along with material from the Western Colorado Atheists and Freethinkers and The Satanic Temple, in schools for students to take. The School District has complained about two FFRF pamphlets: “An X-Rated Book: Sex and Obscenity in the Bible” and “What Does the Bible Say About Abortion?” Both of them are being limited to just the local high schools.

The School District objects to the cartoon cover of “An X-Rated Book,” which shows a bible groping a young woman.

“It is inappropriate in a school setting; we would not allow any of the high school students to wear or otherwise display such a cartoon,” says School District Attorney Andrew Clay. “Why would we allow them to carry it in the building? It may also qualify as hate literature, demeaning women.”

Delta County School District officials are misconstruing the cover.

“The School District misses the point entirely,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The cover image is a feminist cartoon whose message is that the bible itself demeans women.”

FFRF Staff Attorney Andrew Seidel also dismisses the School District’s argument.

“The idea that that the pamphlet qualifies as hate literature is absurd, and if you’re banning it on those grounds, then the district must ban the bible too,” he says. “If you actually examine the pamphlet, you will see that it is comprised almost entirely of bible quotes. There is absolutely no way for the district to exclude the pamphlet and allow the bible to be distributed.”

This gets to the larger point of why FFRF is insisting that it be allowed to dispense its literature. In spite of repeated FFRF requests, the Delta County School District has refused to stop the Gideons from passively distributing bibles in the local public schools. Since the School District has told FFRF that it will keep on giving the Gideons access, FFRF is making sure other perspectives get heard, too.

“The school has no ability to censor any materials based on their viewpoint once it opens a forum,” says Seidel. “That is why open forums in public schools are such a bad idea. If you want to open a forum, you do not get to determine what is acceptable and not.”

As a compromise, FFRF has put stickers over the cover of “An X-Rated Book,” stating “censored by order of Delta County Schools.” The organization is of the view that the attempt at censorship will likely backfire, since students are more likely to take “forbidden fruit.”

The School District has also limited the distribution of “What Does the Bible Say About Abortion?” to local high schools, since it deems the cover to be a “pornographic picture.”

“Albrecht Dürer’s famous depiction of Adam and Eve in Paradise can be called many things, but it is not pornography,” Seidel responds. “Dürer completed this engraving in 1504, and it is one of the most technically precise woodcuttings in all of art history. It has been displayed in the world’s foremost museums and is a staple of most art history classes. The idea that this picture is somehow pornographic is, to be frank, absurd.”

The other brochures and booklets such as “Why Women Need Freedom From Religion” and “Top 10 Public School State-Church Violations and How to Stop Them” are also being distributed to local middle schools.

In all their objections, Delta County School District officials are missing the forest for the trees.

“We do not think schools should be a battleground for religious ideas,” Seidel wrote in a March 3 letter to the district. “But when schools allow the Gideons to prey on children, their message of eternal damnation for any who don’t believe in their God must be countered.”

The Delta County School District has brought this divisive controversy upon itself. The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a nontheistic organization with more than 23,000 members nationwide, including almost 700 in Colorado.

See more here.

 

 



The policers

Mar 31st, 2016 5:17 pm | By

Shaista Gohir wonders why Muslims are policing other Muslims in a way that used not to be the case.

Muslims who express views regarded as too moderate and therefore against their narrative (and according to them against Islam), are often bullied and smeared including incitement of hatred. Many Muslims have been subjected to such aggressive behaviour regularly through social media. The Online trolls who go after Muslim men and women in this manner are often connected to each other and sometimes operate in packs. Muslims like myself are also regularly referred to in derogatory terms such as ‘House Muslims,’ (derived from the term House Negro)‘Uncle Toms,’ and ‘Sell Outs.’ It is used to dehumanise any Muslim who disagrees with their worldview. They are portrayed as traitors pandering to the interests of White people, especially those in media and government. This is arrogant, dangerous and also bigoted rhetoric. Contrary to what they may believe and want, Muslims are diverse in their religious and political views and can think for themselves and engage with people in power on their own terms. We are a part of British society and should be engaging on every level and not shouting and whinging from the margins.

These bigots can disagree and move on but they don’t. They want to harass in an attempt to silence and shut alternatives voices down. They want to enforce one religious and / or political ideology. They will stop at nothing to achieve their aim including accusing Muslims of changing Islam and refusing to accept that Muslims are diverse and believe in different interpretations. This deliberate tactic now being employed against British Muslim is a sinister one because the consequences of implying that someone is a heretic or is committing blasphemy can be fatal.

And the bullies and harassers know that very well.

Unfortunately I am now on this hit list of Muslims to target. After being trolled on Twitter recently, an anonymously written article appeared online criticising a number of Muslims. Interestingly the article was called, Deformist Subversions: British Islam Architects and Shaista Gohir. It is clear the intention of this piece is to promote that we (and especially me) are distorting Islam. I have even been given my own Islam and it is called Gohir’s Islam. The next step can easily be accusing me of heresy and blasphemy or hope that others will do that after reading the article. Perhaps the author wants to remain anonymous to avoid responsibility of any consequences from this article.

We know what happens to those deemed as heretics and blasphemers in some Muslim countries.

No thinking allowed.



“So you don’t feel like a boy or girl?”

Mar 31st, 2016 4:18 pm | By

This piece in Esquire is drawing a lot of hilarity on Twitter. It’s a helpful article explaining what “non-binary gender” is for people who have been living in a locked trunk for the past few years. It’s by Sam Escobar, who is non-binary themself (they use “they/them” for their pronouns).

So non-binary.

They (Sam Escobar) start by explaining that people ask them (Sam Escobar) a lot of silly questions once they (Sam Escobar) tell them (the people) they (Sam Escobar) are non-binary. They (the people) even ask them (Sam Escobar) about their (Sam Escobar’s) crotch.

Yes, even in New York. Yes, even among seemingly “progressive” people. And it stems from the fact that most people you meet simply do not know much about non-binary gender identities. It usually goes like this:

“So you don’t feel like a boy or girl?”

“Exactly.”

“But you wear makeup.”

“Yeah.”

“But you’re not a woman.”

“Nah.”

“…Huh.”

I have had this exact conversation at least once a week, every week since coming out publicly in November. It’s not one I mind; it just gets repetitive, and occasionally a little insulting if the conversation leads to questions like, “So you’re just trying to be different?” With trans visibility increasing more quickly than ever, non-binary gender identity is coming into focus, too.

No, it’s not. People like Sam Escobar are yammering about it more, but it’s not coming into focus, because it was never out. It’s a self-flattering fiction that everybody else except the oh so special people like Sam Escobar is binary. Nobody is binary. This idea that the Muggles totally identify with their “assigned gender” while the wizards alone see through all that is just a new way to perform Being Better Than Everyone Else in public.

On Tuesday, The New York Times Magazine published a brief etymology of the words “they” and “them” as pronouns for people who identify as genderqueer, genderfluid, agender, gender-noncomforming, and other genders. The piece is another stride in acknowledging those who do not feel they fit on the current male/female binary—and another piece in the growing conversation surrounding gender in society.

What was that little thing called feminism that had to do with a lot of women saying we don’t feel we fit on the current male/female binary and we don’t much like being expected to do all the domestic work while also working full time thanks very much? Oh that was just some boring thing the boring old Wrong Wave did back around the time of Downton Abbey, and not remotely as hip as what the hip people are doing now.

As someone who identifies with gender-neutral pronouns, I was amped to see the Times bring the discussion onto the radar of readers who may not know there are even people out there who don’t identify as male or female. I’ve been out for four months, but I’ve known I’m not cisgender for the last five or so years (probably longer, if I’m honest, depending on how you interpret some odd childhood habits).

And it goes on like that, filling us in on exactly how special they (Sam Escobar) and their (Sam Escobar’s) friends are and how tragically clueless and conformist everyone else is, especially women.