Hilary Clinton chooses human rights activist as assistant secretary of state.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to name human rights activist Michael Posner to the position of assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor, Bloomberg News reports. Posner is currently the director of Human Rights First. Reports Bloomberg:

Posner’s organization works with activists in countries including Guatemala, Russia, Zimbabwe and Indonesia. He drafted and campaigned for a 1992 U.S. law called the Torture Victim Protection Act, designed to give victims of the most serious abuses a remedy in U.S. courts, according to the Human Rights First Web site.

In 1998, Posner led the group’s delegation to a Rome conference where the statute for the International Criminal Court was adopted, according to a short biography on the Web site. The Obama administration has signaled support for the ICC, a tribunal the Bush administration said didn’t offer adequate protections against politica

For Zaneta

"Missing:" A message video by UNICEF about Maternal Mortality from Big Yellow Taxi on Vimeo.

Compelling.

Funny Ha Ha

Disturbing...

Va. pharmacy follows faith, no birth control sales
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer Matthew Barakat, Associated Press Writer Wed Oct 22, 12:28 am ET

CHANTILLY, Va. – A new drug store at a Virginia strip mall is putting its faith in an unconventional business plan: No candy. No sodas. And no birth control. Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy is among at least seven pharmacies across the nation that are refusing as a matter of faith to sell contraceptives of any kind, even if a person has a prescription.

States across the country have been wrestling with the issue of pharmacists who refuse on religious grounds to dispense birth control or morning-after pills, and some have enacted laws requiring drug stores to fill the prescriptions.

In Virginia, though, pharmacists can turn away any prescription for any reason.

"I am grateful to be able to practice," pharmacy manager Robert Semler said, "where my conscience will never be violated and my faith does not have to be checked at the door each morning."

Semler ran a similar pharmacy before opening the new store, which is not far from Dulles International Airport. The store only sells items that are health-related, including vitamins, skin care products and over-the-counter medications.

On Tuesday, the pharmacy celebrated a blessing from Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde. While Divine Mercy Care is not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, it is guided by church teachings on sexuality, which forbid any form of artificial contraception, including morning-after pills, condoms and birth control pills, a common prescription used by millions of women in the U.S.

"This pharmacy is a vibrant example of our Holy Father's charge to all of us to wear our faith in the public square," said Loverde, who sprinkled holy water on the shelves stocked with painkillers and acne treatments. "It will allow families to shop in an environment where their faith is not compromised."

The drug store is the seventh in the country to be certified as not prescribing birth control by Pharmacists for Life International. The anti-abortion group estimates that perhaps hundreds of other pharmacies have similar policies, though they have not been certified.

Earlier this year in Wisconsin, a state appeals court upheld sanctions against a pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control pills to a woman and wouldn't transfer her prescription elsewhere. Elsewhere, at least seven states require pharmacies or pharmacists to fill contraceptive prescriptions, according to the National Women's Law Center. Four states explicitly give pharmacists the right to turn away any prescriptions, the group said.

The Virginia store's policy has drawn scorn from some abortion rights groups, who have already called for a boycott and collected more than 1,000 signatures protesting the pharmacy.

"If this emboldens other pharmacies in other parts of the state, it could really affect low-income and rural women in terms of access," said Tarina Keene, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the National Abortion Rights Action League.

Robert Laird, executive director of Divine Mercy Care, believes many of the estimated 50,000 Catholics within a few miles of the store will support its mission and make up for the roughly 10 percent of business that contraceptives represent in a typical pharmacy.

Whether Catholics will be drawn to the pharmacy is uncertain. According to a Gallup poll published last year for an extensive study of U.S. Catholicism called American Catholics Today, 75 percent of U.S. Catholics said you can still be a good Catholic even if you don't obey church teachings on birth control.

Catherine Muskett said she plans to shop at the drug store even though she lives more than 20 miles away.

"Obviously it's good to support pro-life causes. Every little bit counts," said Muskett, one of about 75 people who crowded into the tiny shop for Tuesday's ceremony.

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Powerful

MTA = Shady

Trial Looms Over MTA's Negligence in Platform Rape

A lawsuit against the MTA is about to go to trial surrounding the rape of a woman on a G train platform in Queens three years ago. And the victim, now 25, told the Daily News this weekend that she forgives her attacker ("I know he was sick in the head"), but not the token booth clerk at the 21st Street station, "I can't forgive those five seconds when I stared into his eyes, screaming for help, imploring him with my tears and all I got back was a cold stare."

The victim's suit, filed two years ago, claims the MTA is negligent for not properly training its subway workers as well as lacking the proper communication tools between a booth and the platform below. As the woman was being attacked, she says not only did the token booth clerk see her yet stay in his booth, but another conductor whose train entered during the attack saw her being assaulted and allowed his train to leave the station. The only action taken by both the clerk and the conductor respectively was to call into their command center for further help.

For his part, the clerk claims he wasn't supposed to leave his booth, according to MTA rules, saying the victim "is very wrong" to blame him, adding, "She doesn't remember a lot of things." When asked in a pre-trial deposition why he didn't try to at least scare away the attacker by informing him that police were on their way, he said, "I did not even think about it." He says that when the woman was taken out of his view to the platform for the ten minutes that followed, he did "nothing really. I was just waiting for the police."

The only positive update to comes since we first reported the attack back in 2005 is that Right Rides, the volunteer organization that offers women, transpeople and gender queer individuals safe rides home late on Saturday nights now serves 35 neighborhoods in four boroughs (as opposed to a small section of Brooklyn and the LES back then). They are always looking for volunteers and sponsors for the Zipcars they send out.

Terrorism and Gender: Afghan Women Victims of Many Taliban Attacks

Afghan woman police director gunned down

The violence occurs the same day as a suicide bomber kills 6

The Associated Press

updated 11:42 a.m. ET, Sun., Sept. 28, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan - Two gunmen on a motorbike shot and killed a high-ranking woman police official in Afghanistan's largest southern city Sunday, while a suicide bomber killed three police and three civilians in the same region.

Malalai Kakar was traveling from her home in Kandahar city to the office Sunday when she was shot, said Zalmai Ayubi, spokesman for the Kandahar provincial governor. Her son, 18, was wounded in the attack, he said.

Kakar, 41, was the head of the department of crimes against women in Kandahar city, Ayubi said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility.

Militants frequently attack projects, schools and businesses run by women. The hard-line Taliban regime, which was ousted in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, did not allow women outside the home without a male escort.

President condemns assassination
President Hamid Karzai condemned the assassination, as did the European Union, which said it was "appalled by the brutal targeting" of Kakar.

"Any murder of a police officer is to be condemned, but the killing of a female officer whose service was not only to her country, but to Afghan women, to whom Ms. Kakar served as an example, is particularly abhorrent," the EU said in a statement.

Elsewhere in Kandahar province, a suicide bomber on a motorbike attacked a border police convoy in Spin Boldak district, killing three policemen and three civilians, said the regional border police chief, Abdul Razzaq.

The blast wounded 17 others — all but of them civilians, Razzaq said.

Taliban militants use suicide attacks in their campaign against Afghan and foreign troops in the country. The majority of the victims in such bombings are civilians.

In other violence, an Afghan police official said a U.S.-led coalition killed three civilians in an operation apparently targeting a suicide bomb cell in eastern Afghanistan. That claim was disputed by the coalition, which said its troops killed two al-Qaida militants.

Gen. Abdul Jalal Jalal, the provincial police chief in the eastern province of Kunar, said airstrikes hit a compound in the province's Asmar district, killing three civilians.

The U.S.-led coalition said its troops targeted an al-Qaida cell responsible for a number of bomb attacks in Kunar province.

Civilian deaths a source of tension
The coalition said two militants were killed after a firefight in one of the compounds. It said no civilians were killed. Capt. Scott Miller, a U.S. spokesman, said artillery strikes were used in the fight but no airstrikes.

It was impossible to independently verify either report, due to the remoteness of the area.

Civilian deaths are a highly sensitive topic in Afghanistan. Karzai has long pleaded with international troops to avoid civilian deaths in its operations.

The Afghan government and U.N. say that an Aug. 22 U.S. operation killed some 90 civilians in the western province of Herat, a strike that strained U.S.-Afghan relations.

An original U.S. investigation found that up to 35 militants and seven civilians were killed in that strike. However, a new investigation was opened — and is now under way — after video images emerged appearing to show many more dead than the U.S. had acknowledged.

The coalition said separately that it killed six militants and detained eight in two operations on Saturday.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26927780/

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© 2008 MSNBC.com

The Economy Affects Women The Most

Wall Street Takes Welfare It Begrudges to Women

Run Date: 09/24/08

By Mimi Abramovitz WeNews commentator

The bailout of Wall Street is particularly galling for women on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, says Mimi Abramovitz. They've already spent the past 30 years steadily losing ground without anyone seeming to notice or care. Editor's Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women's eNews.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Today we sit and watch as the high-rolling gamblers and critics of "big government" take welfare. These are many of the same people who thought it was just fine to deprive millions of women of critical resources and let them fend for themselves. Even before the catastrophic news out of Wall Street in recent days, women have been worried about their economic security. Last March a Gallup poll found that in the past two years more women than men said that they worry about the economy (64 percent versus 57 percent). The same holds for health care, crime, the environment, drug use, unemployment, hunger and homelessness. More men are employed by Wall Street and more men have money invested there. That means the male anxiety meter is probably much higher now that they risk losing their jobs, pensions, portfolios and homes. But women's worries have probably shot up even more. Women are likely to lead in the economic-anxiety gap because distressing economic events fall harder on people with less. "I don't play the stock market, but it does affect us. It affects me personally. It affects the little guy," a female dispatch supervisor of a limo company that serves investment bank employees recently told the New York Times. The same holds for all the secretaries and housekeepers who keep investment houses clean and running. Decades of Lost Ground But what makes the bailout of the fat tomcats so galling is that women at the bottom of the economic ladder have lost ground during the last 30 years, with very few seeming to notice or care. From F.D.R.'s New Deal in the 1930s to L.B.J.'s Great Society in the 1970s, the expansion of government programs for the middle class and the poor--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, public assistance, as well as health and social services--provided a modest economic backup for women who predominate among recipients. Great Depression leaders who saw government as the solution to that economic crisis bailed out banks in exchange for tighter regulations to curb speculation. But they also created cash-assistance programs that increased women's purchasing power and protected them against economic hardship. Those programs redistributed income downward and expanded the capacity of the federal government to kick-start the economy while cushioning consumers and workers from the vagaries of the market. Beginning with President Carter in the mid 1970s, our leaders changed their tune, blaming economic woes on "big government." Successive administrations relaxed the rules on financial markets and cut funding for the safety net. Benefits Didn't Trickle Down Advocates of "less government" promised that benefits would "trickle down" to the rest of us. Instead their laissez-faire strategy weakened government benefits, one of the three interlocking pillars of economic support counted on by thousands of women from all walks of life. The Congressional Budget Office recently reported that government spending for domestic discretionary programs fell from a high of 4.8 percent of national output, or gross domestic product, in 1978 to 3.4 percent in 2007. That equals billions of dollars in cuts. Except for rising health care costs, spending on entitlement programs--such as Social Security, unemployment insurance and public assistance--also fell from 8.5 percent of the gross domestic product in 1983 to 7 percent in 2007. During the past eight years, war spending zoomed ahead, bringing us to the present spectacle, where we see U.S. military spending exceeding that of the rest of the world combined. Meanwhile, Bush tax policies diverted dollars from public services and boosted corporate profits to a record high of almost 14 percent of national income while the share going to wages dropped to its lowest level since 1929. Combined with relaxed government oversight and rampant speculation the way was paved for abusive mortgage practices that turned Wall Street into one big profit bubble waiting to pop. With these excesses as a backdrop, women saw their other two pillars of economic security weaken as well: marriage to a wage-earner and paid employment. Falling marriage rates combined with three decades of sagging male breadwinner wages have undercut the capacity of matrimony to provide women with the financial security it once offered. Wobbling Wages and Work From 1979 to 2006, the real value of the median weekly wage of men 25 years and older fell steadily to $797 from $807. The massive entry of women into the work force since World War II--one of the most significant social trends in modern U.S. history--gave them a third pillar of support. But this too is now wobbling. As male wages stagnated many women went to work--not as a matter of choice, as headlines about women opting in and out might suggest--but just to make ends meet. Between 1970 and 2005 the proportion of married couples with two earners jumped to 62 percent from about 46 percent, Labor Department data show. The U.S Women's Bureau finds wives' contribution to family income rose to 35 percent from 26 percent. But many of today's 68 million wage-earning women have recently suffered more job losses than men and a larger drop in wages than the general population, according to the Women's Bureau. In 2006 full-time female workers earned an average of $627 week or about $32,000 a year. While we watch the spectacle of the government channeling untold billions of taxpayer dollars into failing Wall Street giants the three pillars of economic support for women--the safety net, marriage and wages--continue to crumble. The public bailout of corporate America may be necessary given the risks of a collapse to the global economy. But why is it that the rich and reckless accept "welfare" for themselves while steadfastly rejecting the same for women in need? It's time to take a billion here and there to assist the women raising families on too little income to keep a roof over their heads. Mimi Abramovitz, the Bertha Capen Reynolds Professor of Social Policy at Hunter College School of Social Work, is the author of "Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Policy From Colonial Times to the Present," the award-winning "Under Attack, Fighting Back: Women and Welfare in the U.S." and co-author of "Taxes Are A Women's Issue: Reframing the Debate." She is currently writing "Gender Obligations: The History of Low-Income Women's Activism Since 1900." Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org.