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T.R. Hummer
Afghanistan passes 'barbaric' law diminishing women's rights | World news | guardian.co.uk
Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.
The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.
"It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her," the US charity Human Rights Watch said.
In early April, Barack Obama and Gordon Brown joined an international chorus of condemnation when the Guardian revealed that the earlier version of the law legalised rape within marriage, according to the UN.
Although Karzai appeared to back down, activists say the revised version of the law still contains repressive measures and contradicts the Afghan constitution and international treaties signed by the country.
Islamic law experts and human rights activists say that although the language of the original law has been changed, many of the provisions that alarmed women's rights groups remain, including this one: "Tamkeen is the readiness of the wife to submit to her husband's reasonable sexual enjoyment, and her prohibition from going out of the house, except in extreme circumstances, without her husband's permission. If any of the above provisions are not followed by the wife she is considered disobedient."
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AfricaNews - Survey: Malawian women fear child bearing - The AfricaNews articles of FRAZER POTANISome Malawian women have stated that child bearing is no longer joyful for them following harsh treatments from fellow female nurses during labour. They have requested for the services of male attendants during birth.
“They do insult us and sometimes beat us up. We opt to be attended by a male nurse or midwife because they treat us kindly, with respect and dignity,” Asiyatu Ibrahim, 46, a mother of five from Che Mbaluku in Mangochi said.
She stated that she was overwhelmed by a male nurse’s empathy during her fifth child's delivery. "My experience was totally different from previous deliveries whereby I was treated harshly,” she said adding, “In fact during my third pregnancy I was even slapped on the face by a nurse for failing to follow her instructions due to severe pain.”
Malawi’s Principal Secretary for Health Chris Kang’ombe attributed the poor nurse-patient relation to pressure as a result of staff shortage in public hospitals.
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In the Theater of Isak Dinesen
Joanna Scott writes:
Known in this country by her pseudonym, Isak Dinesen, the Danish writer Karen Blixen published her first collection of stories in 1934, at the age of 49. Though she'd returned to her family home in Denmark after spending seventeen years in British East Africa, Dinesen wrote her stories in English and secured her first contract with an American publisher. The book, Seven Gothic Tales, established Dinesen as a literary giant, a reputation that would be sustained throughout her life. Eudora Welty said Dinesen's fiction embodies "the last outreach of magic." Carson McCullers reported that she would reread Dinesen's memoir Out of Africa for comfort. When he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1954, Ernest Hemingway said with uncharacteristic humility that it might have gone to "that beautiful writer Karen Blixen."
But Dinesen's claim on American readers has been waning. The majority of critical books and articles on her work were published before 1990. In 1985, three years after the publication of Judith Thurman's biography Isak Dinesen, Hollywood jumped on board, recasting the time Dinesen spent in British East Africa managing a coffee plantation with her husband as a love story starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford. The film, Out of Africa, might have generated a resurgence of interest in Dinesen's work, but instead it appears to have inaugurated a new period of critical indifference.
Dinesen, who died in 1962, was always an elusive target for readers, even at the height of her renown. As her fame spread, she responded by cloaking herself in an eccentric and mysterious persona. In his introduction to the Paris Review interview with Dinesen, published in 1956, Eugene Walter lists some of the legends about her: "She is really a man; he is really a woman...she is a nun; he is very hospitable and receives young writers; she is difficult to see and lives a recluse." He doesn't note the secret hidden behind the persona: Dinesen suffered for many years from ravaging syphilis, which she contracted from her husband. But if her public identity was a calculated performance, it matched the design of her tales. When Walter asked her in the interview if she objected to readers who found her tales artificial, she responded, "Of course they are artificial. They were meant to be, for such is the essence of the tale-telling art."
These days, when the merit of fiction tends to be measured by the currency of its subjects, a confessional element in the work helps establish credibility. Reviewers try to square the antics of a writer's life with the antics in the fiction. Even satirical verbal play is too often read and admired as autobiographical expression. And thanks to the democratic exposures of the web, it's easier than ever to document private experiences and divulge the most intimate secrets. Confession doesn't leave much room for imagination except to demand its allegiance to the personal, which may leave readers less inclined to find value in the extravagant lies of fiction. It's understandable, then, but no less disappointing, that the tales of Isak Dinesen--filled with children who dream too much, fat old nobles who are devoted to revenge, nuns who are good at weaving, servants who are good at cooking--would be easy to overlook.
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T.R. Hummer
Sheriff's Office explains why it took over county computersA Maricopa County Sheriff's official said Thursday that his office's takeover of a county computer system
was prompted by repeated requests by the state to protect sensitive criminal-justice data.
Chief Deputy David Hendershott said the state Department of Public Safety was concerned that civilians could have inappropriate access to criminal-history records in the system.
The Sheriff's Office took control of the Integrated Criminal Justice Information System from county employees on Wednesday. The system links the county's criminal-justice agencies to state and national databases that hold criminal records, court dates, probation and personal information, and other records.
"We felt intrusion (into the system) was imminent," Hendershott said.
At a Superior Court hearing Thursday, the Board of Supervisors and county administrators tried to get a temporary restraining order against the Sheriff's Office and get the system back under their control. That hearing continues at 2:15 p.m. today.
The Sheriff's Office and the Board of Supervisors have been debating control of the system for months. In April, the Sheriff's Office filed a lawsuit in Superior Court over the system's management.
On Wednesday morning, 10 deputies and a sheriff's computer expert took control of some county computer equipment and changed a password. County officials characterized the action as a "raid."
But Kerry Martin, an attorney representing the Sheriff's Office, said deputies "did not go in and seize any equipment, no court records and no e-mails." Instead, they changed the password so sensitive criminal-justice information could be accessed only by law-enforcement officers with special clearance.
County officials say the Sheriff's Office overstepped its boundaries, especially given the lawsuit.
"There's just no justification imaginable for the . . . use of force that was put out, or the intimidation," said Wade Swanson, an attorney for the supervisors.
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The "Pleasantville" Effect | Shorpy Photo Archive
Shorpy writes:
A splash of color added to Ester Bubley's 1943 photograph of a Washington, D. C. working girl as enjoyed on Shorpy. What were her dreams and aspirations? Was she married or hoping to be married soon? Was her husband or boy friend in the military? What happened to her life after the war? Too many questions, too few answers.
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Al Jazeera English - Europe - Iraqis seized from Denmark churchDanish police have clashed with protesters as they moved to arrest a group of 17 Iraqis who had taken refuge in a Copenhagen church following the rejection of their asylum applications.
Police forced their way into the Protestant Brorson church in a suburb of the Danish capital early on Thursday, pushing past at least 100 protesters who had tried to barricade the building.
Some reports said pepper spray was used as the police tried to clear the protesters, five of whom were arrested.
Video of the operation appeared to show an officer beating a woman protester several times with his truncheon, and other incidents of what critics said was excessive or unnecessary force.
The move drew an angry response from the pastor in charge of the church, Per Ramsland, who said the police action violated Danish traditions of church sanctuary.
"I had never dreamed that something like this could happen," he told reporters.
Denmark's former prime minister, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, also condemned the police action, saying it "went beyond the bounds of common humanity and decency".
Denmark's justice Minister, Brian Mikkelsen, however defended the police action, saying in a statement that "the law must be respected" and "one should not count on special treatment even if one occupies a church".
A spokesman for Copenhagen police said the 17 asylum seekers had been taken to a local police station for questioning to establish their identities and if they had a legal right to remain in Denmark.
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Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede, one of the all-time great American comedy sf novels, will be a movie - Boing Boing
Cory Doctorow writes:
Holy CRAP this is good news: Bradley Denton's incredible comic sf novel Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede is being made into a movie directed and written by Robert Rugan.
Buddy Holly is the story of Oliver Vale, whose mother was obsessed with Buddy Holly, and who one day discovers that Buddy Holly is on the TV, on every TV, on every station, with a guitar around his neck, standing in a bubble on the surface of Ganymede, disoriented, musical, and periodically reading out a sign saying that further information is available from Oliver, and supplying his home address.
The entire world chases Oliver at this point: cops, radio cops, televangelists and their flocks, aliens -- you name it. And Oliver begins a road-trip across America to Lubbock, Texas, there to exhume Buddy Holly's corpse and verify for himself that the famous musician is not on a distant, airless moon.
When this book came out, I was a bookseller at Bakka in Toronto, the venerable science fiction bookstore. If you were a science fiction reader in Toronto in those days, it's a damned good bet I sold you a copy of it. I hand-sold about 750 copies of that book, and would have sold more. Will sell more.
Bradley Denton is a stone comic genius and no two of his books are alike, but this is the one I love -- I worship -- as the apotheosis of a certain kind of gonzo, brilliant, marvellous thing that is to American science fiction comedy what Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers' series is to British sf comedy.
To see it come back and to the big screen, too -- marvellous. Congrats, Brad, and well-deserved.
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Rashied Ali, 1935–2009
feuilleton writes:
The death this week of guitar pioneer Les Paul is already receiving considerable attention; less will be given to the passing of drummer Rashied Ali. The latter means more for me as a musician since I’m listening to his work all the time. Ali famously (and to some, controversially) replaced drummer Elvin Jones as John Coltrane’s drummer of choice from 1966 onwards, and Ali’s revolutionary free style enabled Coltrane to voyage even further out with his stream-of-consciousness sax playing. Ali’s playing supports all of Coltrane’s later recordings, including their extraordinary duet album Interstellar Space (recorded in the ’60s but not released until 1974). Following Coltrane’s death in 1967, Ali played on a number of albums by the fantastic Alice Coltrane, and while this period inevitably overshadows any appraisal of his work, his career continued to develop to the present day.
If you’re unused to the “formlessness” of free jazz, Interstellar Space can be a forbidding region until you attune yourself to its rarefied atmospheres. Alice Coltrane’s A Monastic Trio, recorded shortly after her husband’s death, is less challenging and a beautiful tribute to John Coltrane from his wife, friends and collaborators. With Jimmy Garrison on bass, Pharoah Sanders on sax, Alice playing harp and piano, and Ali drumming on five of its six tracks, its a perfect introduction to Ali’s work, and, by extension, to some of the finest music of the last century.
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