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THE BELOW (updated 12 MAR 2022)
When one hurts or kills a women
one hurts or kills hummanity and is an antrocitie.
Gino d'Artali
and: My mother (1931-1997) always said to me <Mi
figlio, non esistono notizie <vecchie> perche puoi imparare qualcosa da
qualsiasi notizia.> Translated: <My son, there is no such thing as so
called 'old' news because you can learn something from any news.>
Gianna d'Artali
Read all about the Zan, zendagi, azadi!> (Women,
life, freedom) women revolution in Iran by clicking here
The Guardian
14 Oct 2022
By Christopher Knaus
<<Brittany Higgins: court hears how a dream job turned into the
nightmare of alleged rape.
In her final memory before blacking out, Brittany Higgins paused for a
moment of reflection, she told those closest to her. From a window
perched high among parliament's labyrinthine network of office suites
and hallways, she looked out over the prime minister's courtyard, quiet
in the early morning darkness of 23 March 2019. Her mother, Kelly
Higgins, told court this week that her daughter remembered being struck
by two feelings: happiness and pride. All through high school and
university, she had prepared herself for this career. She studied
debating and public speaking, and volunteered for the Young Liberals,
charting a path to reach Canberra's halls of power. <She's saying 'I was
looking out [the window]' and … like this was her dream,> Kelly Higgins
told the ACT supreme court this week.
<This was everything she wanted and she just remembers feeling … proud
and happy.
<And then she passed out.>
Higgins told her mother her next memory was of waking to find Bruce
Lehrmann, a colleague and senior staffer in then defence industry
minister Linda Reynolds' office, on top of her, raping her on a couch
opposite their boss's desk. Lehrmann has pleaded not guilty to sexual
intercourse without consent. In evidence that was temporarily suppressed
this week, friends, family and colleagues told the court they noticed a
marked changed in Higgins' demeanour after that night. The <bubbly> and
<happy> young woman, excited for her career in politics, became
withdrawn. Multiple witnesses described her as <broken>. <It was like a
light had turned off in her,> Ben Dillaway, a fellow Coalition staffer
who had a close personal relationship with Higgins, said. <She was a
broken, shattered person, I would say.> Kelly Higgins said her daughter
became unfamiliar to her. <She was just so frozen in what had happened
to her,> she said.
Early hours in Parliament House
Lehrmann, dressed in a navy suit and tan boots, has for the most part
busied himself taking notes in a small black diary as his trial plays
out. He watched this week as multiple witnesses contradicted his
evidence on the reason for going back to Parliament House in the early
hours of the morning.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/15/brittany-higgins-court-hears-how-a-dream-job-turned-into-the-nightmare-of-alleged
The Guardian
12 Oct 2022
By Moira Donegan
<<The new state of healthcare in America: one for men and a worse one
for women.
Maybe the pharmacist at the Tucson, Arizona, Walgreens was acting out of
religious conviction. Maybe they were afraid that they could get
arrested. We may never know. What we do know is that on 26 September,
two days after Arizona's abortion ban went into effect, Emma Thompson, a
14-year-old girl with rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis, was denied
her prescription for methotrexate.
Thompson had been on methotrexate for some time; this was a longstanding
prescription that she was getting refilled. The drug, a potent
anti-inflammatory drug, is used to treat a wide array of issues, from
autoimmune disorders, like Thompson’s, to arthritis and cancer. It's
estimated that 60% of all rheumatoid arthritis patients are prescribed
the drug, and for Thompson, it was working well. After a childhood spent
in and out of hospitals, enduring years of debi-litating pain, her
doctors had finally found a medication and a dosa-ge that seemed to be
working for her. Her symptoms abated enough that she was able to attend
school. <It's her first year and she's in high school and it feels like
a dream,> said Thompson's mother, Kaitlin Preble. <She's not in a
wheelchair, she has a social life and friends for the first time, and a
life all young people should have.> But in high doses, methotrexate can
also terminate a pregnancy. The drug is not used in most abortions –
when methotrexate is used as an abortion drug, it is often administered
as an injection to treat an ectopic pregnancy, the kind of nonviable
pregnancy that occurs when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus,
which can never result in a baby and frequently has fatal implications
for pregnant women. It's for this reason that several state abortion
bans mention methotrexate by name. When the pharmacy wouldn't fill
Thompson's prescription, this was why: they refused to give the drug to
any female patient of <childbearing age>. Thompson is not alone. Facing
politically motivated refusals from rightwing or religious healthcare
providers - and caution and confusion from others, who may refuse to
prescribe or dispense necessary drugs for fear of being prosecuted or
sued under abortion bans - American women living in anti-choice states
have suddenly found themselves unable to access a wide ar-ray of
medications. Drugs which can be used in abortions, or which can possibly
cause fetal abnormalities, are used to treat everything from chronic
pain to lupus to ulcers to acne. These were medications that these
patients were prescribed, and medications that they could get with
relative ease before Dobbs. They are medications that they could still
get, if they were men. In response, these women have had to change the
course of their medical treatment, or gone through onerous procedures to
find new prescribers, pharmacists or medi-cines. Many women and trans
people have long had to take preg-nancy tests before they are allowed to
access certain medications, proving that there is no fetus to be harmed
or risked before they are allowed the medicine that they need to get
well. Others are now finding that scared or anti-choice doctors are
demanding that they have themselves sterilized before they can continue
the treatments that allow them to live normal, productive and relatively
pain-free lives.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/12/abortion-new-state-healthcare-america-one-men-worse-one-women
The Guardian
11 Oct 2022
By Ben Quinn and agencies
<<Madeleine McCann suspect charged with sexual offences by German
prosecutors
German prosecutors said they have charged a 45-year-old German man, who
is a suspect in the Madeleine McCann case, with several sexual offences
he allegedly committed in Portugal between 28 December 2000 and 11 June
2017. Police in Germany had announced in 2020 they were investigating
Christian Brueckner in connection with the disappearance of Madeleine,
who went missing from her family’s Portuguese holiday flat in May 2007.
A statement released on Tuesday by the prosecutor's office in the German
city of Braun-schweig said: <The accused is the same person against whom
char-ges were brought in connection with the disappearance of the then
three-year-old British girl Madeleine Beth McCann.>
<Specifically, the accused is charged with three offences of aggravated
rape and two offences of sexual abuse of children,> the prosecutor's
office added. The new charges against him include the rapes of an
unidentified woman aged between 70 and 80 and of a 20-year-old Irish
woman. In both cases the accused had gained access to their apartments,
tied up and lashed the women with a whip, and filmed the assault with a
video camera he had brought along. Hazel Behan, an Irish citizen, in
2020 asked UK detectives working on Madeleine's disappearance to review
her attack, after learning that a new suspect in the then three-year-old's
abduction had been convicted of a sexual assault with similarities to
her own experience. <My mind was blown when I read how he had attacked a
woman in 2005, both the tactics and the methods he used, how well he had
planned it out,> she told the Guardian. Two of the charges are based on
the testimonies of two former acquaintances of Brueckner, who described
having seen the sexual assaults on a video camera and videotapes they
stole from his house in 2006. The video-tapes that show these acts have
never been found, and the identity of the two females described by the
witnesses remain unknown.
Brueckner is also charged with forcing a 14-year-old girl to engage in
sexual activity, and of exposing himself to girls aged 10 and 11 on two
separate occasions 10 years apart, in Faro in April 2007 and in São
Bartolomeu de Messines in June 2017. Madeleine was three when she went
missing from her family's holiday flat in Praia da Luz on 3 May 2007,
while her parents dined at a nearby tapas restaurant, triggering a huge
missing person investigation.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/11/madeleine-mccann-german-suspect-charged-sexual-offences-portugal
The Guardian
10 Oct 2022
By Nadeen Badshah
<<Man gets life sentence for 'brutal' murder of Canadian girlfriend.
A man who stabbed his 19-year-old girlfriend to death in a “brutal and
cowardly attack” after being angered by her decision to return home to
Canada has been handed a life sentence.
Jack Sepple, 23, killed Ashley Wadsworth at the one-bedroom flat they
shared in Chelmsford, Essex, on 1 February. The judge, Mr Justice
Murray, told Chelmsford crown court Sepple <gratuitously inflicted some
90 wounds on her body>. He said the pair met online when Wadsworth was
12 and Sepple was about 15 and they had a long-distance relationship,
adding that Sepple had relationships with other women during this time.
The judge said the victim travelled to the UK on a six-month tourist
visa while on a gap year shortly before Christmas in 2021. Murray added
that when the killing happened, Wadsworth was soon to return to Canada
and Sepple faced <imminent loss of control over her>. He said that a
week before her death, Wadsworth had <indicated to her mother that
things were not going well and she wanted to return to Canada>. Murray
sentenced Sepple to a life prison sentence with a minimum term of 23
years and six months, which he must serve before he can be considered
for parole. The judge told the defendant: <You are a dangerous indivi-dual,>
adding that the attack was <brutal and cowardly>. Sepple admitted his
girlfriend's murder at an earlier hearing and showed no reaction as he
was sentenced on Monday. Simon Spence KC, prose-cuting, said that Sepple
had murdered Wadsworth after being <ange-red by her decision to return
prematurely to her home country of Canada>. Spence said: <He strangled
and repeatedly stabbed Ashley and left her in the bed that they shared
while he went about his daily business>. When police forced entry to the
property they found Sepple on a FaceTime call to his sister <as he
showed her the body>, Spence said. The barrister said that earlier on
the day Wadsworth died, a neighbour heard a female scream. The neighbour
said Wadsworth came to her and told her that Sepple <had beaten her up
and thrown the kitten against the wall>. The judge said that Wadsworth
was <hysterical> and said that Sepple was going to kill her. Sepple
apologised to Wadsworth and was <calm> when the neighbour spoke to him,
Spence said. The neighbour subsequently <went for a medical appointment
and left at 9.30am>. Police forced entry at 4.13pm after friends raised
concerns for Wadsworth's safety.
The court heard Sepple told police: <I went psychotic, I’m sorry,>
adding: <I strangled her and stabbed her.> Spence said that Sepple had
<filmed himself on his mobile phone covered in Ashley's blood
apologising for what he had done - Ashley's lifeless body was visible in
the video>, with the footage recorded at about 12.45pm.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/10/man-gets-life-sentence-for-brutal-of-canadian-girlfriend
The Guardian
9 Oct 2022
By Sam Levine
<<'Force to be reckoned with': Ketanji Brown Jackson shines in first
week.
It was the final round of questions and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the
newest member of the US supreme court, had one final thing to ask.
For nearly an hour, Edmund LaCour, Alabama's solicitor general, had been
laying out the case for why his state's congressional map did not
discriminate against Black voters. The plaintiffs in the case, Merrill v
Milligan, showed it was possible to draw a map with two majority-Black
districts instead of one, but LaCour argued that was only possible if a
mapmaker went out of their way to consider race. He argued that was
inconsistent with the US constitution’s 14th amendment, which guarantees
all citizens, regardless of their skin color, are treated equally under
the law. Jackson quickly started taking a scalpel to his argument. She
was confused, she said, as to why considering race created a problem
under the 14th amendment.
<I don't think we can assume that just because race is taken into
account that that necessarily creates an equal protection problem,> she
said. History, she said, showed that the founders and framers adopted
the 14th amendment <in a race-conscious way. That they were, in fact,
trying to ensure that people who had been discrimi-nated against, the
freed men in - during the reconstructive - reconstruction period were
actually brought equal to everyone else in the society.> She continued
for nearly four minutes uninterrupted, laying out historical evidence
and analysis supporting the idea that the 14th amendment was designed to
be race-conscious. By the time she finished speaking, it appeared to be
one of the longest speeches ever made during an oral argument, according
to Adam Feldman, who tracks supreme court statistics at Empirical Scotus.
By the end of the argument, the rookie justice had spoken more than any
of her collea-gues on the bench, Feldman noted. In just her first few
oral arguments, Jackson has wasted little time making her presence felt
- earning praise from court observers for asking sharp questions.
<I think it's really clear she's just going to be a force to be reckoned
with,> said Leah Litman, a law professor at the University of Michigan.
<Both in questioning positions that she’s skeptical of, but also in
providing support for lawyers when they’re being subject to hostile
questioning.> A day before the Alabama case, Jackson asked her first
questions from the bench in Sackett v EPA, a high-stakes environmental
case dealing with the Clean Water Act. When a lawyer representing the
challengers said that certain language in the statute was
<unenlightening> Jackson cut in and said <let me try to bring some
enlightenment to it>. >>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/09/ketanji-brown-jackson-us-supreme-court-first-week
The Guardian
6 Oct 2022
By Nadia Khomami Arts and culture correspondent
<<Beverley Knight: Suffragettes' struggle still relevant today.
The story of the suffragettes is a <metaphor for so many things going on
right now> including gender inequality and the disen-franchisement of
the poor, the singer Beverley Knight has said.
Knight is playing Emmeline Pankhurst in a new production at the Old Vic,
which celebrates Pankhurst's lesser-known daughter, Sylvia.
Sylvia, which premieres at the London theatre from next January, is a
hip-hop musical looking at the life of a <feminist, activist, pacifist,
socialist and rebel> who changed the lives of working women and men
across the world. <It's a metaphor for so many things that are going on
right now,> said Knight, who is widely regarded as one of Britain's
greatest soul singers. <The way that the poorer sections of society are
disenfranchised and removed from what goes on in the social and
political circles, how they’re easily passed over and dis-regarded -
Kwasi Kwarteng and Liz Truss, I'm looking at you!> The musical is set in
a time when women’s voices were not only ignored but actively and in
many cases violently crushed, but “in a lot of ways we still haven’t
moved on”, Knight said. “Women are still held in subjugation. We still
have mansplaining, we still have gender violence. Look at the Sarah
Everard case, all the conversations that were a ripple effect from that.
<In the show we portray 18 November 1910, Black Friday, where the women
who marched on parliament, led by Emmeline, were battered and a couple
of them later died from the extent of their injuries. It's a story that
happened over a hundred years ago, but we're still feeling the effects
of that now, to this very day there’s still huge gender inequality.>
Directed and choreogra-phed by Kate Prince, the musical follows in the
style of Hamilton by telling a historic story in a new, imaginative way
that will hopefully draw in younger and more diverse audiences. Sharon
Rose, who starred as Eliza Schuyler in Hamilton in the West End, has
even been cast as Sylvia Pankhurst. Sylvia was expelled from the Women's
Social and Political Union for her insistence on involving working-class
women in the suffrage movement. The fervent Labour supporter, who had an
affair with the party's founder Keir Hardie, was at loggerheads with her
mother, Emmeline, and her sister Christabel, who felt that suffrage
could best be achieved through the efforts of middle class women like
themselves, and who wanted to divorce the suffragette movement from any
party politics. Sylvia was also a pacifist, while her family endorsed
violence to achieve their ends.>>
Read more here:
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/oct/06/beverley-knight-suffragettes-struggle-still-relevant-today
Note by Gino d'Artali: The blast the below article is writing about hit
a girls' school in Afghanistan. Do I need to say more? Well:
The Guardian
Supported by The Guardian
5 Oct 2022
By Deepa Parent
<<'She could have done so much good in this world': victims of the Kabul
blast remembered.
Last week, a suicide bomber killed at least 53 people - mostly girls
from the minority Hazara ethnic group - outside an education centre in
Kabul. Here, relatives and friends of four young women who died remember
their loved ones.>>
Read their more than touchings memories here:
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/oct/05/victims-of-the-afghanistan-kabul-blast-remembered
Note by Gino d'Artali: if it doesn't touch your heart you don't have a
heart.
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