All Of Glasgow Is Our City.

      It was great to see such a magnificent turnout at Monday night's walk through Govanhill. A community issue and a massive response from across the city. To be able to safely walk through any district in Glasgow at any time of day or night is a given, and must not be jeopardised by a handful of mental freaks. The only thought of disappointment that crosses my mind is that Glasgow has a limitless number of community issues, some jeopardise the life and safety of children, others the health and welfare of families, some the well being of the elderly and the vulnerable, but we can't get the same mass response to these issues as we got with this particular matter.

   

    I would like to ask all those who turned up at Govanhill on Monday night to come together on all those other issues that blight lives in our city. For example, in Springburn, we have 52% of children living in poverty, the highest of any district in Scotland, why? As far as I'm aware, Springburn also has the highest number of request for care orders for children. There are other districts in Glasgow not that far behind Springburn. How does this blight and destroy the lives of these children as they grow into adulthood? What kind of adults will they become?

     Like I said, wonderful to see such a mass of people take to the streets on this issue of safety on our streets, but where are they on all those other issues?

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Rape And The Death Penalty.

Where rape merits the death penalty--- for the victim!!

In August, a pregnant Ethiopian immigrant was lured into an empty flat by seven men, who held her there against her will and subjected her to a brutal gang-rape. They recorded the assault, and the video went viral online, drawing the attention of the authorities. How did the police react to this footage? By arresting the victim and throwing her in jail for "indecent behavior."

Now, things have gone from bad to worse. The Attorney General of Sudan has refused to prosecute the rapists, and has announced that he will pursue the death penalty for the victim in the case. Even if the victim isn't found guilty, Sudan's laws won't allow a new trial based on the evidence being used against her -- meaning that she will never be able to get justice.

Care2 member Lisabeth has started a petition to bring public pressure on Sudan's government. Let's show Sudan that the world is watching, and we won't stand by while a woman already traumatized by a brutal crime is punished for seeking justice.

Sign and share the petition now - we don't have much time before the trial starts!

Thank you for your support, Julie R. Care2 and The Petition Site Team

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Reclaim The Night.

      Violence against women is not uncommon in this society, but then again it is a society that glorifies wars and "great battles", that portrays the idea of "macho-man", and promotes the idea that to be successful, women must be sexy and attractive to men. Hardly the ingredients for an equal society based on respect. It is a sad reflection on a society that claims to be civilised, when women have to campaign against rape and violence, and fight for the right to walk out at night without feeling apprehensive and threatened.  This weekend, women in Nottingham held a "reclaim the night" march, demonstrating against rape and all forms of violence against women. The march proceeded, at night, down Mansfield Street and was well attended. Let's build that society where such marches would a lesson in a history book and long since obsolete. 

Photo by Demotix.

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Dignity And Respect Are Universal Rights.

       Grabbed in a dawn raid, sent to a detention centre to be returned to a land where your life might be in danger, and before you are dispatched, you are raped. Not in some far-away dictatorship, but here in the so called civilised UK.

This appeal from The SumOfUs:

       Serco, one of the largest and most powerful companies in the UK, privately runs Yarl’s Wood in Bedfordshire -- an immigration removal centre where vulnerable women are detained and in some cases, raped and sexually abused by the staff who are there to protect them.

        The Chief Inspector of Prisons released a report this week on Yarl’s Wood, urgently calling for a ban on male staff entering the rooms of female detainees uninvited and for the urgent recruitment of female staff. We want more than that. We want Serco to get out of the detention business altogether.

Tell Serco the sexual abuse of women by guards proves it has no business being in the detention business.

      “They choose younger girls, the most vulnerable. They do whatever they want." That’s what “Tanja”, one brave witness and detainee at Yarl’s Wood said. The staff have worked out a convenient way to abuse the women in their care - in the upstairs room set aside for asylum-seekers to take family photos. There's a nice sofa, curtains, and no CCTV up there.

      We have to act quickly. The alleged victims and witnesses who are coming forward and testifying are being deported by the Home Office. Several of them were put on a flight to Pakistan on 1 October. We can’t let this go on another minute.

      Serco will hear us. Their reputation is already in tatters. They’re hoping that if they make a few concessions, and sack a few staff, the controversy will die down. We won’t let it. We won’t accept the sexual abuse and rape of vulnerable women by Serco staff.

       This is part of a pattern of abuse. In 2010 a 30-year-old woman became pregnant by an officer in Yarl's Wood. And many other women may be too fearful to testify or are deported before their case is sufficiently examined. These women are not criminals - many have been victimised by traffickers or were in abusive relationships before they were detained.

Corporations have been left unaccountable for too long. Help hold Serco to account for their behaviour.

Thanks for all that you do,

Hanna, Kaytee, and the rest of us at SumOfUs.org

      p.s. To make things worse, Serco also services our schools. They manage the Local Education Authorities in Bradford, Walsall, and Stoke-on-Trent... that’s right.

 

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More information:

The truth about sexual abuse at Yarl's Wood detention centre, 29 October, Open Democracy
Yarl's Wood immigration detention centre 'needs more female staff' after detainee abused by officers, 29 October, Independent
Yarl's Wood abuse allegations: Tanja's story, 14 September, Guardian

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

The State's Slimy Side.

        In the last two years, details of undercover police pretending to be activists have slowly emerged. A new book by Paul Lewis and Rob Evans, Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk , provides the latest information about police sleeping with activist women while pretending to be someone else. Since it is obvious that the women would never have consented if they had known there were police officers, does this constitute rape? Also officers using the names of dead children. The case that has outraged the public and led to promises of political action has been the revelation that police spied on the Stephen Lawrence campaign.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/23/stephen-lawrence-undercover-police-smears Donnacha from Circled "A" Radio, talks to veteran activist Ellenor Hutson, who knew some of the police spies in their activist cover, about what's happened and what should happen next.

Listen HERE

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THE DISEASE OF RAPE.

       Reading about a recent survey on violence I found the statistics frightening. You start to wonder what would it be like to live in such a country. The survey found that approximately 20% of the women suffered rape, 25% suffered domestic violence. The survey also found that there are 24 reported cases a minute of rape, violence or stalking. In the year prior to the survey there were 1 million reported cases of rape, 6 million reports of men and women victims of violence and or stalking, and more than 12 million men and women reported rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner.

      It also found that 80% of rape victims were raped before the age of 25, and 35% of those raped before the age of 18 were also raped as adults. This survey also found the 1 in 71 men had been raped at some point in their lives with 25% being raped at the age of 10 or younger.

     Where could this land of rape and violence be? No Western civilised country could come up with such horrifying figures and the brutal scenario that they paint. Sadly it is the free democratic peace loving West, the figures are in fact from America. With such dreadful statistics it is difficult to see how we can consider our selves as a role model for any our part of the world.

       These figures are from the Centers for Disease Control's first year of their National Intimate Partners and Sexual Violence study.

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SHE WAS ASKING FOR IT!!!

        When is rape not rape? Apparently when a woman wears a nightie!! It is hard to believe that there are still those who find it hard to accept that a person can so no to the sexual act. It would seem that rape can only happen between strangers and even then they seem to doubt that it was rape, (she was asking for it!!!).

         The video is of one Dick Black, would be politician with a bitter anti-abortion stance, it also seems that he doesn't quite understand the meaning of that simple word NO. If this is the quality of people that enter politics, what chance have we got??

Thanks Care2 for the video.

ann arky's home.

DOES RAPE CHARGE = INVASION?

 

LIBYA - Behind the phony ICC 'rape' charges: ARE NATO FORCES PREPARING A GROUND ATTACK?

The following is an article by Sara Flounders for    International Action Center.

        Without presenting a shred of reliable evidence, NATO and International Criminal Court conspirators are charging the Libyan government with conspiracy to rape -- not only rape as the "collateral damage" of war, but rape as a political weapon.

This charge of an orchestrated future campaign of rapes was made at a major press conference called by the lead prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on June 8, 2011. The even wilder unsubstantiated ICC charge that Libya plans to mass distribute Viagra to its troops confirms this as the most tawdry and threadbare form of war propaganda.

          It is important to understand that NATO countries with the full complicity of the corporate media and the ICC are spreading this Big Lie in order to win support for and close down all opposition to a ground assault of Libya, something that would otherwise be unpopular both in Europe and the United States. This wild charge adds to the evidence of a massive escalation in bombing urban targets in Libya, the use of British and French helicopters that give close support to ground troops and the positioning in the Mediterranean off Libya of U.S. warships that can quickly land troops. The NATO alliance is desperate to put Libya beyond all discussion or defense and raise the NATO war to the level of a Holy Crusade to defend women.

         The charge of rape as a political weapon was spread -- without evidence -- against Serb forces to justify U.S. plans for the first NATO bombing campaign in the history of the military alliance in 1994 in Bosnia and was used again in 1999 in Serbia in the first NATO occupation. The rape charge was used to soften up the U.S. and European population for the criminal war against Yugoslavia. Now a similar plan is in the works for Libya.

        All too often widely fabricated lies are spread to justify imperialist wars. In 1991 the first war against Iraq was justified by outrageous charges that the Iraqi army had grabbed Kuwaiti babies from incubators and smashed the babies to the floor. This was presented as reliable “testimony” to in the U.S. Congress and in the UN. Months later it was confirmed as a total fabrication. But the lie had served its purpose. In 2001 the corporate media and U.S. politicians claimed that they had to bomb and then massively occupy Afghanistan to win rights for women that the Taliban taken away. The situation for women in Afghanistan and for the entire population has deteriorated further under U.S. / NATO occupation.

       Despite video and photo evidence that the entire world has seen through WikiLeaks, the International Criminal Court has never considered for a moment filing criminal charges against U.S. British, French or German troops. The pictures, videos and reports in major newspapers of sexual torture and humiliation at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by U.S. soldiers, the testimony by the U.S. soldiers involved in rapes, tortures, mutilations and executions in Iraq and Afghanistan confirms the brutal reality of U.S. wars. These wars have never been to ‘save’ women.

      As an African country, Libya can hardly expect a fair hearing or any form of justice from the ICC. The International Criminal Court created with high hopes of international justice in 2002 has been used against 7 countries – all in Africa. Meanwhile, the ICC has never examined U.S. drone attacks on defenseless civilians in at least 8 African, Arab and South Asian countries. Nor has it even touched U.S. invasions and occupations. Israeli bombing of the Palestinian people is “off limits”.

        This is an essential time to remind all people concerned about the rights of women that U.S. intervention or any imperialist intervention has never protected women. Even women serving within the U.S. military machine are not “safe”. According to a study published by the Journal of Military Medicine, 71 per cent of women soldiers have been sexually assaulted or raped while serving in the U.S. military. Women who have been assaulted consistently report poor medical treatment, lack of counseling, incomplete criminal investigations and threats of punishment for reporting the assaults. In 2009 the Pentagon admitted that approximately 80 per cent of rapes are never reported – making it the most under-documented crime in the military. In addition U.S. military bases are all too often surrounded by an entire sex industry of abused women forced by hunger, dislocation and lost families into work in bars and clubs.

      Rape in every society has little connection to sexuality and desire. It has always been about imposing power and domination. The "political rape" charge in this case makes no sense and has no basis beyond the U.S.-NATO desire to justify expanding the war against Libya.

Stop U.S.-NATO intervention in Libya.

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