"Daily-humble-personal- these "wee performances" keep me grateful and grounded, and now, deeply connected with friends- they have become small messages shared as well as small gestures made" Newfoundland artist Pam Hall

remains suspicious of growth on the grid

New York Times: African Studies Give Women Hope in HIV Fight
VULINDLELA, South Africa — With an AIDS vaccine still out of reach, two rigorous new studies have found different ways to sharply cut H.I.V. infections among women and schoolgirls, who make up a majority of the newly infected in sub-Saharan Africa.

After two decades in which researchers searched fruitlessly for an effective vaginal microbicide to block H.I.V., South African scientists working in two AIDS-devastated communities of South Africa, one rural and one urban, say they have finally found something that shows real promise.

Women who used a vaginal microbicidal gel containing an antiretroviral medication widely used to treat AIDS, tenofovir, were 39 percent less likely over all to contract H.I.V. than those who used a placebo. Those who used the gel most regularly reduced their chances of infection 54 percent, according to a two-and-a-half year study of 889 women by Caprisa, a Durban-based AIDS research center.

Globe and Mail: It's a Crime to be a Woman in Iran: Margaret Wente -
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian mother who was convicted of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning, is still alive, for now – saved by an international outcry of revulsion against state barbarism. But the story isn’t over. She’s still on death row. Once the heat dies down, the regime may simply choose to hang her, instead.

“This regime has taken so many lives,” says Maryam Namazie, an Iranian human-rights campaigner who now lives in London. “There’s got to be a time when it stops.”

The Tabriz prison where Sakineh is locked up contains 200 other death-row cases, according to Ms. Namazie. Thirty-five are women who face death by stoning.

Reuters News: Council of Europe opposes bans on Muslim face veils, June 28

STRASBOURG: The Council of Europe human rights watchdog said on Wednesday it opposed an all-out ban on full face veils, under consideration by some European states, but also urged Muslims to reject customs that deny women equal rights.

The Council’s Parliamentary Assembly unanimously passed a resolution saying all-out bans on full veils in public would deny a basic right to women who wanted to cover their faces. It qualified that right by saying veils, also known as burqas and niqabs, could be banned when public security or professional obligations required women to show their faces.

Red Deer Advocate: Aboriginal Women Push Message Around the World
Time and time again, Erin Konsmo has provided her voice to bring awareness and change to some of the issues Aboriginals face. And, at just 23-year-of-age, the Red Deer citizen has positioned herself to be heard around the world.

Konsmo, a Métis and self-described “compassion activist,” has tirelessly been involved with the Aboriginal HIV/AIDS movement locally, nationally and internationally for the past few years. She has now, however, joined forces with five other Aboriginal women from across the country to form the new Aboriginal Women’s Leadership Circle to help generate discussions regarding the struggles that these women face.

New Internationalist: Nepal's TrailBlazing Dalit Feminist
Durga Sob was just 10 when she realized she was from the Dalit, or ‘untouchable’, class of Nepal: ‘I drank from a water pot that other people used, and by sharing this water, I’d made it ‘unclean’. I was screamed at and chased away. I told my mother and she said: “God made us Dalit, that’s just the way it is.” It was then I knew the pain of being a Dalit, and had to do something to change things.’ The injustices experienced during her childhood in the remote village of Silgadi in western Nepal inspired Durga to found the Feminist Dalit Organization (FEDO) to fight against caste and gender discrimination.


BETRAYED: They said we were there to save Afghanistan's women. So how come we haven't? Valerie Hudson, Foreign Policy Review
In November 2009 a group of Afghan widows and divorcees met with Patricia, who had been commissioned to write a series of success stories for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). All the women were in their 20s, 30s, and 40s but looked to be in their 60s. Until very recently, none of them could work because they possessed no marketable skills, could neither read nor write, and were at risk of being killed if they left their homes. A number of women said that, before the program -- which focused on tailoring and basic literacy -- their children used to weep at night from hunger.

As Patricia prepared to leave, the women fluttered around her like moths, touching her sleeves and speaking all at once. "What are they saying?" Pat asked the young Pashto-speaking interpreter. "They are telling you to go back to your country and to ask your people not to abandon them. The women of Afghanistan don't want you to leave. They will quite literally die if the Taliban return," she said.

Brutal Crackdowns make Iran's Women Stronger, by Shirin Ebadi, Guardian UK
Just a few weeks ago, on 9 May, the lengths to which the regime will go to crush its opponents came to light. Five political prisoners were executed in secret. Not even their families or their lawyers were notified. Shirin Alam Holi (right) a 28-year-old Kurdish woman, was executed along with four men. In letters from Evin prison, Shirin wrote of being tortured to confess to charges of terrorism. She refused to confess, sealing her fate. At least 25 other men and women await the same fate on death row.

However, as we see time and time again, the harsher the repression, the stronger the movement grows. And as the story of Shirin Alam Holi demonstrates, women are at the forefront of the struggle for human rights in Iran."