Peace activist and Green Party candidate assaults romantic rival, puts him in coma

New Zealander Christiaan Briggs sounds like a dedicated peace activist. He served as one of Saddam's human shields in Iraq. He ran for office in England under the Green Party.
But the 30-year-old pacifist wasn't very peaceful to 19-year-old rock singer Billy Leeson when the punched the teenager to the ground and put him in a coma after hassling the young man's girlfriend on the bus. And running off laughing.
I will point out that Briggs turned himself in after police broadcast an appeal, to his credit. But I will add several thoughts:
Obviously, for a pacifist to resort to violence is hypocritical.
You can find his blog by googling his name (he's verbose and all over the internet). His blog expresses a lot of hatred for America and Israel, for the CIA and Homeland Security. He seems to hate power, powerful institutions, winners. Yet he doesn't mind winning in a personal encounter by using force. He seemed to think it was funny.
And then he turns around and shows his respect for institutions after all by going ahead and turning himself in to the police. His blog calls the CIA cowards, but he has respect for the law after all, as long as he gets to whine about it. Wonder if Saddam would have let him do that.

"I cannot hand over my girls like goats"

Imagine you are a college girl from a small town when you get news that you must return home to be married to a stranger or be abducted and raped or killed, and it's your town's leaders who have ordered this.

A village council in Pakistan has decreed that five young women should be abducted, raped or killed for refusing to honour childhood "marriages".
The women, who are cousins, were married in absentia by a mullah in their Punjabi village to illiterate sons of their family's enemies in 1996, when they were aged from six to 13.
Amna Niazi, the eldest of the five at 22, is taking a degree in English literature, while both her sisters want to attend university.

The barbaric tradition of handing over women to resolve disputes is called vani in Pakistan.

The Daily Telegraph was granted access to the young women, despite Mr Niazi's fear that the village will further condemn him for being "un-Islamic" by allowing his daughters to be photographed, albeit with their faces covered by veils.

Amna, who hopes to become an English lecturer, said: "We are proud of our father. Despite having little money, he has educated us and shown us that we must stand up in society and demand our rights."

She is studying at a college affiliated to the university of Lahore, while her sister Abida, 18, is applying to study medicine, and Sajida, 15, is still at secondary school.

The other girls, Assia, 20, and Fatima, 16, are the daughters of Mr Niazi's brothers.

Mauritanian girls brutally force-fed

NOUAKCHOTT (Reuters) - Mariem Sow was a little girl when her sister Zeinabou choked to death in front of her while being force-fed camel's milk by a family slave.

Beaten if she refused to swallow the rich diet of sweetened milk and millet porridge, Zeinabou was one of many Mauritanian girls fattened up because of an ancient belief that corpulent women make more desirable wives.

"As soon as my older sister was 12 they started force-feeding her so she would be plump by 15. They wanted to prepare her for marriage," said Mariem, now 42, wrapped in white robes and reclining on cushions in her Nouakchott home.

The traditions of the desert are very much alive in Mauritania, an Islamic republic on the western edge of the Sahara whose people were still almost entirely nomadic when the country gained independence from France in 1960.

Wealthier families who have settled in the capital Nouakchott often keep a "khaima" -- a nomadic tent -- in the courtyard of their homes. Men and women walk the sandswept streets in flowing robes and headscarves.

Having a voluptuous wife and daughters -- well fed to survive the rigors of a desert lifestyle -- was long a visible sign of wealth and power among the country's light-skinned Moors. It is still seen by many as a canon of beauty.

But with Lebanese satellite television broadcasting images of flat-stomached girls cavorting on beaches, and more Mauritanians traveling abroad, the vogue is starting to change.

Many Mauritanians believe it is unseemly for women to be seen engaging in any strenuous activity, but as dusk falls, chubby ladies shuffle self-consciously around the stadium in Nouakchott, their tracksuit trousers hidden under flowing "malhafa" robes.

"Sometimes I walk, sometimes I run. We come after dusk when the men have gone home," said Fatimatou, a breathless 31-year old, force-fed as a child but now trying to get down to 60 kg (132 lb).

"It's no longer the modern fashion to be overweight. Women have evolved. Now they work in offices and they have to be fit."

BIG IS BEAUTIFUL

More than one in five women in Mauritania, which straddles black and Arab Africa, were force-fed as young girls, according to a government survey from 2001, the latest available.

"Our society has this vision that a woman has to be fat to be beautiful. It is a canon of beauty," said Marienne Baba Sy, head of a government commission that deals with women's issues.

"If you're a thin woman, people assume your family don't look after you," she told Reuters.

The force-feeding technique known as "gavage" -- a French word more closely associated with fattening up geese to produce foie gras -- is less widely practised than it used to be after the government launched campaigns to highlight the health risks.

But the cult of fatness has deep roots.

"My husband says he wants me to lose weight but he looks at fat women and I think he prefers going to bed with them," said Nene Drame, 47, a writer working on a novel about force-feeding.

"The Mauritanian man is savage by nature. He likes something he can get his hands on," she said.

"Gavage" left some women struggling to walk, not just because of their weight -- which often tops 90 kg (198 lb) -- but because they were tortured as they were force-fed.

Some had their fingers or toes broken so the pain would distract them from having to swallow the milk and porridge. Others had their feet crushed by a "zayar" -- a wooden vice which would only be loosened once they ate.

"Above all it causes cardiac problems, problems during childbirth. Even from the point of view of work, obese women are less productive," said Baba Sy.

"They get tired very quickly, out of breath. Psychologically it is very damaging. You can't do the same things as other women -- you can't even pray properly," she added.

Some children were tied down while being fed and were forced to eat whatever they vomited up during the ordeal, Baba Sy said. The force-feeding often lasted years.

Naturally these girls aren't just tempted with goodies and encouraged to eat a lot. Noooooo, they have to be brutally force-fed like geese making foie gras, beaten and broken to make them comply. Because they're just females, lower than animals.

Indira Ghandi, Muslima

Peregrinations across the web led me this morning to discussions of Indira Ghandi's muslim husband and possible/probable conversion to Islam herself on the occasion of her marriage. This is believable when you find out that the government of Saudi Arabia invited her to visit the Kaaba. Non-muslims are not allowed into Mecca much less into the presence of the holy black stone. (Not that the Saud family was too religious to ask French troops to take care of that nasty rebellion for them in 1979.)

Indira was very much in love with Feroze Khan, son of Nawab Khan, the Moslem family grocer. Feroze sympathized with Indira who too had been practically abandoned by the aunts; the mother was eternally sick, and the widowed father was always chasing all kinds of women, breeding bastards. Her education was neglected. She was admitted in Oxford but driven out from there for non-performance. She was then admitted in Tagore's Shantiniketan but was chased out from there too for bad conduct. She had no proper education and was brought up almost as an orphan.

Indira was fully conscious of her half-Islamic parentage. Against Kamala's wishes, she married Feroze, whose own mother was a converted Parsi woman married to Nawab Khan. As soon as they got married in England, the old crow, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi ordered Jawahar to force the bride and the bridegroom to change the name Khan, by an affidavit, to Ghandy, a Parsi sounding name. But the not so intelligent grocer's boy got the name changed to Gandhi instead; since then India had in its destiny a half-mussalmani to become its PM for many years under a false name and to promote the cause of Islam.

Disclaimer: I know nothing about this swordoftruth website. I'm just presenting this as a matter of interest.
Sonia Gandhi (now I'm confused about where to put the h) was born in Italy and it is said her husband Rajiv converted to Catholicism when he married her. Their daughter Priyanka/Bianca seems to be Catholic as well.

Priyanka's wedding itself was one of the biggest exercises in fooling the public. Her husband Robert Vadhra is a baptized devout Catholic, the son of Rajinder and Maureen Vadhra who are both confirmed Catholics. This detail can be attested from the fact that the Delhi archdiocese had made a big ruckus about the fact that Priyanka was not baptized when they sought permission to get married in a Catholic ceremony at the Sacred Heart Cathedral of Delhi. Robert had to produce his Baptism papers and Priyanka had to produce proof of her conversion to Christianity, before they could be married in the Catholic ceremony at Sacred Heart Cathedral at 10.30 am on February 5, 1997. This was hastily followed by a publicity exercise where the already married couple was shown being wedded in "traditional Hindu style" on February 18, 1997 at Sonia's Bungalow on 10 Janpath.

This is Indian secularism. Hindu nationalists don't trust it one bit because they see secularism as seeking to undermine and destroy the great Hindu tradition of tolerance and substitute for it a hypocritical multiple-standard "separate-but-equal" approach to cultural diversity.
The Nehru-Ghandi dynasty is the ruling family of Indian secularism. They seem to convert to whatever religion is convenient for them, which is fine -- perhaps they consider themselves Hindus in a sense that lets them "add on" a religion without forsaking their own gods. So why do they seek to hide their Muslim and Christian ties? Wouldn't they want to be a shining example of diversity?
More inportantly, there is a huge distinction between Hindu Dharma and Islam. The Indian Supreme Court has formally included tolerance and acceptance of many paths as part of the very definition of Hindu Dharma. Islam, on the other hand, considers itself the One True Religion which all must eventually acknowledge, with a fair amount of scripturally justified and mandated violence and intolerance. If Indira Ghandi ever believed, or was compelled to act as an agent for any entity that believes in the Islamic view, then her actions must be looked at in the light of new information on her motivations.

Humiliation-avoidance: the engine that drives public policy?

"I was publicly humiliated," Abdul said in her closing statement. "That is why with an open heart and a selfless agenda, I implore you to pass this bill."

That was the closing statement in entertainer Paula Abdul's testimony before the California Senate Business and Professions Committee on the subject of unsanitary nail salons.
Seems she got the mother of all nail infections and that, along with her celebrity, gave her standing to testify on this subject with which probably a lot of people have had experience.
What I found remarkable is that in her final appeal, she used humiliation of all things as the reason to regulate nail salons. Not health or hygiene, either her own or that of future nail salon customers. And then she called that a selfless agenda. I couldn't imagine a more selfish agenda.
How these things usually play out is: someone in the spotlight says something boneheaded and because words do mean something, someone else points out to them what they just said. Then we get protestations of "I was taken out of context" because the speaker cannot seem to grasp that words do mean things.
Anyhow, most of us care more about the pain of a wicked nail infection than the pain of public humiliation, which is why we have so little sympathy for a terrorist with panties on his head.

Bono's world turned upside down

5/06/2005

U2 frontman Bono was horrified during a visit to Ethiopia, when he saw local women pelting a breast-feeding aid worker with stones.

The American woman was oblivious of the offence she was causing, and had to escape the angry onslaught from female Muslims who had no qualms about injuring her or her baby.

Bono recalls: "I remember one vision of the people who are with World Vision, which is an American aid agency.

"One of the women was breast-feeding a child on the horse. She was so comfortable. She didn't mean to be insensitive.

"But the Muslim women did not like this and came out and started throwing stones at her because she was showing her breasts."

But but but! Breasfeeding is natural. It's what tribal womyn do. How could these Muslim womyn intend to cause harm to a fellow womyn and her baby just for breastfeeding?
Could it be... the Islam, stupid?

An anectode from the mullahs' sadistic regime

Sometimes a single mullah serves as judge, jury and executioner. Hadji Rezai is the mullah judge of the small city of Neka. When Atefeh Rajabi, a young and psychologically unstable girl, refused to be his "temporary" wife, Rezai framed her with the blessings of the high court in Tehran. Allegations of sexual misconduct were fabricated against her, so that she could be brought to “justice” according to the scorned Rezai, who personally hung the noose around Atefeh’s neck. Rezai’s last words to the dying young girl: “This will teach you to disobey!”

Under the global caliphate envisioned by the Salafists/Caliphists, this is completely permissible. Even if there were a passage in the Koran against such abuse of power, and even if it were unabrogated by a later verse and even if it did not have its meaning watered down by a hadith, who would enforce mercy for women, children and the infirm?
Every story like this, and there are millions of them, clearly illustrates that Islamic states have no checks and balances against the worst of human nature, no protection for its weaker members. To think that a global caliphate would be any different is magical thinking.
I have friends who may be typical of many liberal people in America. They respect Islam as they do all religions, because they value freedom of religion. They respect and value people of other races. They care for the environment and they care for women's rights. They haven't looked deeper into Islam, and why should they have? (Aside from 9/11, there is no reason for them to have examined it. Why they have become deeply involved and learned about the logging issue but not the Islam issue is a good question but I'll save it for another time.)
A short conversation with some of my friends revealed to me that they apparently believe that either Muslims or Arabs (I did not quite get which they meant but am leaning towards Arabs) are an agricultural people who live in harmony with the environment. From which they jumped to the conclusion that under this ideal agricultural society, women would have equal rights and children would be cherished.
There are so many fallacies in this line of reasoning, it alarms me. Suffice it to say, I document these grisly scenes to refute the idea that there is any reason to prefer the Islamic society over the perfectly good one we have right now.

Women's empowerment and the reconstruction of Sudan

Southern Sudanese women -- of the oppressed, rebelling Christian South of Sudan -- will be going to Oslo to ask donors to focus on women's empowerment.

Next week's meeting, set for Monday and Tuesday, will gather some 60 delegates including UN chief Kofi Annan, Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha, SPLM/A leader John Garang and ministers from bilateral and multilateral donors like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
They will be looking at an assessment that says Sudan needs nearly eight billion dollars (six billion euros) for reconstruction and development over the next two years to recover from the north-south civil war.
The international community is being asked to fund about 2.6 billion of that with the rest coming from Sudan's own resources, particularly oil revenue, according to the assessment which was released in early March.

I have avoided using the term "women's rights" because I am beginning to examine the idea that women's empowerment is a right. In my mind a right is something natural that simply exists without your reaching out and making it happen. But it could be my personal definition of a right that is ... wrong. The term certainly gets misused a lot by people who want to wrap themselves in the victim mantle, and so I am becoming allergic to it.

Pray for Hanifan

Hanifan Bibi is a 55-year old Christian mother who worked as a servant in a Muslim home.

On the 12th of January, 2005, Sharing Life Ministry Pakistan found out that some Christians had been taken to the hospital with serious injuries. They went to the hospital and talked to Hanifan's family.

Seems she and her family had been kidnapped and tortured by her Muslim employer and some of his gangster friends because Hanifan wouldn't provide Christian girls as sex slaves for them.

Aslam Masih told “Hanifan bibi had been working in Saeedan Batni’s house in Iqbal town as a maid servant. On 10th Jan. 2005, Saeedan Batni with Mohammad Baber, Mohammad Amjaad, Mohammad Rashid in car # LRB-5259 and other car was without # plate came to Hanifan’s house. They broke the door of Hanifan Bibi’s house and took Hanifan Bibi, Pervaiz Masih, Kashif Masih and Kala Masih to an unknown place.
There were empty wine bottles in a large number. Some heavy physique gangsters were present there. Moreover, 16,17 young girls were also sitting over there. I came to know later that four/five girls were Christians”. Kashif told that “ my clothes were taken off, they hanged me by tying my feet with cord and turned my body upside down on the ceiling. Those cruel people started beating me with hot iron pipe. While Pervaiz and Kala were beaten with sticks, pipe and bats. They kicked us very brutally and cruelly.”
Kashif told SLMP team “when they were beating Hanifan bibi, they were continuously saying that she did not bring Christian girls so this was her punishment.

Read the whole thing, won't you. The language is a little hard to follow but you'll get the gist about the 16 or 17 young girls, the attempted extortion, the humiliation, the chili peppers up the anus, the threats to frame an old Christian woman for theft, the impossibility of getting justice from a police force that has the Muslim thugs in for tea.
This is life in Pakistan for Christians.
As a poster said on the Pim Fortuyn forums, "Pakistan is a Muslim country, this is how they treat their minorities. Look how they treat you now, don't forget how bad it can get."

Barbarians of Fallujah

Marines found the butchered body of a foreign woman in the street. Arms and legs hacked off, disemboweled, her throat slashed, and decomposing. And it seems the barbarians hauled out her decomposing body just in order to throw it into the street for the Marines to find.

In the south of the city, where insurgents regrouped over the weekend, the butchered body of a blonde-haired Caucasian woman was found Sunday lying on a street.

"It is a female ... missing all four appendages, with a slashed throat and disemboweled, she has been dead for a while but only in this location for a day or two," said a Navy Corps hospital apprentice who had inspected the body.

Two foreign women have been abducted in Iraq and remain missing: Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole, has blonde hair, and British aid worker Margaret Hassan, 59, has chestnut-coloured hair.

Mubarak eulogizes Arafat

At dawn, we lost President Yasser Arafat, who we knew as a defender of justice, as a man who strove towards peace, and resisted occupation, and as a man who looked for international legitimacy.
History will judge him as a brave man who defended his people.

Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak
Holy Effin' Crap! No he was not!
He was a blood-sucking terrorist who ruined his people's future. Jesus Christ, Mubarak. Defender of justice???? and this is a country that supposedly has a peace treaty with Israel. Feh.

Yahoo UK disrespecting President Bush

This was on the front page of yahoo.co.uk today. I find it disrespectful. Do we make jokes about the resemblance of the name of the president of Indonesia to that of a Flintstones character?
Does Yahoo UK intend to mock the overwhelmingly ugly face of the old terrorist Yasser Arafat?
If not then why not? Oh I get it -- because Bush is eeeeeevilllll.

Europe seethes

Some choice comments from the BBC News site:

The voice of America indeed - but which America? How so many people voted for Bush is mind-boggling. An absolute disaster. This is a tragic day for our planet and for all of us, wherever we live.
Raymond Perrez, Toulouse, France

If Bush wins, as it seems now, we will have more problems. For the world it's a sad day. The conflicts with Europe will widen. And the hatred against the US will also widen. Just hope for 2008 and Hillary Clinton.
Peter, Gothenburg, Sweden

It is "almost" unbelievable that the American people have once again chosen to allow Bush control of power for another four years. I feel as though they have turned their back on the international community, that they have forgotten that the world is small place, where America's actions affect us all.
Jennifer, Canadian living in Munich, Germany

I am not a US voter but my wife is. It is unbelievable how many Americans voted for Bush again regardless their experiences from the last 4 years. If Bush wins again that is bad news for the rest of the world.
Christoph Thuemmler, Edinburgh, Scotland

I just woke up to find Bush in the lead. I feel physically sick. I wish I could go back to bed and get up in another four years.
Sarah, Brussels

Well it looks like we have to put up with another four years of Bush. I think that in a country like America, it was naive to believe that Bush would lose elections. I think most Americans approve of the arrogance that Bush portrays to the world. Today, I wish Soviet Union never disintegrated and there would have been some balance still in this world.
Let's hope Bush learns from the mistakes made in the first term and we get a more peaceful and balanced world in the next four years. Maybe just like Reagan, Bush would be less radical in the next term. What's funny, except for America, Kerry would certainly have won an election anywhere else in the world.
HA Qureshi, Islamabad, Pakistan

UN ignores its own resolution on war rape while some UN "peacekeepers" use their position to get themselves some tender young ass

It's irritating to even have to point out yet againg how corrupt and amoral the UN is.
Some of the salient points from the report:
Thoraya Obaid, head of the U.N. Population Fund, scolded the UN for not enforcing their own resolution on protecting women in conflict zones.

"From Afghanistan to Liberia, from Colombia to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from Burundi to Darfur — the list goes on and on — women and girls, and even men and boys, are being subject to sexual violence, torture and slavery that defy the imagination and bring into sharp focus the cruelty that human beings can inflict on each other," Obaid said.

Obaid noted that in Rwanda, two-thirds of the women who were raped during the 1994 genocide were infected with the HIV virus "and they are dying slow painful deaths from AIDS."

"It is truly sad, and terribly angering, to see the tremendous needs. But it is even more shocking to witness the response so far, which remains completely inadequate," she added.

Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, urged the Security Council "to use all its influence to generate the political will, as well as the financial support, to protect women's rights and ensure women's access to justice."

Many speakers lamented that the resolution's call for countries in conflict to give women a major voice at peace talks has gone largely unheeded — as has its call for the United Nations to give women top jobs in conflict resolution.

Sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers and humanitarian personnel is also far too widespread, he said, citing about 70 allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse against U.N. peacekeeping personnel this year just in the Congolese city of Bunia.

Classrooms in grip of red terror

NAMITA CHOURASIA
Dhanbad, Sept. 28:

Students are fleeing government-run schools in extremism-ravaged Topchanchi and Baghmara blocks.

Almost all the 20 education institutions — both primary and middle-level — in the area have witnessed nil attendance over the past fortnight following reports that Naxalites have demanded 10 children from each school to join the underground outfits.

The two blocks are in the grip of fear ever since rumours that the extremists have sent notices to the schools to hand over 10 children started doing the rounds.

The rumours surfaced a fortnight ago when some students of Rajganj Middle School in the area claimed that the school walls were splashed with extremist slogans demanding children from each school.

Villagers alleged that “suspected” rebels had tried to abduct two children last week.

Thirteen-year-old Swapna Kumari, a Class VII student of Bokathan Middle School, nearly 25 km from the district headquarters in Dhanbad, refused to go to school after a “stranger” tried to drag her away at 10 am from near her school. “I was walking to my school when a fierce-looking man with a bushy moustache and beard tried to take me away after threatening me with dire consequences if I raised an alarm. But I managed to escape. I don’t want to go school again as dubious people are waiting to abduct us,” Swapna said. The child, according to her parents, is still in a state of shock.

Kamli Devi, the mother of a school-going boy in neighbouring Banspahar village, said the Naxalites have sent the villagers a message. “But we don’t want to comply,’’ she added. Christina Tudu, principal of Rajganj Middle School, which controls eight other schools in the villages, attributes the poor attendance rate to examination phobia.

But after persistent queries, she admitted that the students were probably scared by reports that Naxalites were planning to abduct students.

“The students are not coming as they fear abduction by Naxalites. Of the 450 students registered in the school, nobody turned up on Saturday. Today 40 students attended school after their guardians were convinced,” Tudu said.

Six teachers of the school today cycled to the remote villagers to speak to the guardians individually and virtually ferried 40 students.

“I am going to the nearby villages almost every day to allay their fears, but the villagers refuse are reluctant. I feel the rumours are the handiwork of mischief-mongers,” said Ram Ratan Pathak, a Rajganj middle school teacher.

Officer in-charge of Rajganj police station Ram Lalla Paswan said he has not received any complaints.

Who are the Naxalites?

Rather historical

To paraphrase the Dead Parrot Society, because Ryan puts it so well:
CBS has been arrogant, diversionary, misleading, bullheaded, dismissive, shameless, narcissistic, secretive and unethical. Good Lord, the press is supposed to illuminate that kind of behavior, not illustrate it.
CBS has screwed all of journalists over -- both with the way it ran the story and with the way it's handled the backlash. The network's behavior has confirmed every single nasty thing that everybody believes about the media, and it's not like the media has a nice fat reserve of goodwill to squander right now.
And a commenter adds:

An interesting question: how much of the media reporting of the 20th century was based on fraud and forgery, which couldn't, prior to the development of the internet, be exposed?

History marches on. I tend to agree with those who think this changes the nature of journalism forever. No one I have spoken to in person or on the internet fails to grasp what the main issue of the Dan Rather/faked Guard documents story is.

Nigerian transvestite lives among Muslim women for seven years

According to a story by freelance Agence France Press reporter Aminu Abubakar out of Kano in northern Nigeria, a teenage boy who had been living as a girl was recently exposed.

Abubakar Hamza lived as "Kawajo, a young woman who sold magical charms and potions to the married women of Kano" after he ran away at age 12. "When my fathers disapproval of my dressing like a girl became unbearable I left home and lived with a family in a nomadic settlement, dressing and behaving like other girls in the family," he said.

Now 19, he has lived ever since among married women in purdah -- the practice of screening women from men or strangers by means of a curtain or all-enveloping clothes.

He even attracted unsuspecting suitors among the young men of the city of Kano, all the while struggling to conceal the attraction he felt towards his female hosts.

But his life fell apart on April 22, when a visitor from his home village recognised him at a naming ceremony held by one of the families which had been taken in by his winning performance.

He was forced to strip and the tissue paper padding his bra was discovered.

That must have been an embarrassing scene. Worthy of a summer comedy, perhaps.
"Kawajo? But but but... my daughters have been sharing a room with you! Saaay what's going on here?" Benny Hill type chase ensues.

Kawajo had such a fetching manner under her burqa that she attracted suitors who gave her gifts and money.

Abdullahi Ahmad, a 35-year-old man who asked for Hamza's hand in marriage, said: "There was no way one would differentiate Kawajo from any girl in the neighbourhood.

"She walked and talked like a girl and I could not resist making advances to her, although I knew she had rebuffed many such offers," he added.

"The competition between two friends in this neighbourhood over Kawajo degenerated into a quarrel and they stopped talking to each other for weeks.

"But when it became known that Kawajo is a man and not a woman they just laughed over it and resumed their friendship," Ahmad smiled.

Kawajo made a livelihood by accepting gifts from smitten suitors and by working her mojo for the women (and not in the dirty way you are thinking)

"I get my inspiration on medicine from spirits who work in collaboration with me to assist people. Their intention is just to help women," he said.

"I lived with my women hosts, cooked with them, ate with them. I slept on the same bed with them and plaited their hair," he said.

"They would change their dress in my presence, exposing their nakedness since they thought I was a woman. But I dared not sleep with any of them for fear that my true identity could be exposed," he explained.

"And whenever I sensed my disguise was threatened or I found my sexual need for my host becoming hard to control, I would leave because any attempt to make love to my host would blow my cover," he said.

According to one of his unsuspecting hosts, his self-control did not fail.

"She lived in my house for four years and never showed any trace of manhood and none of my three daughters who shared bed with her ever complained of any funny behaviour," Muhammad, a grocer, told the court.

After "she" was found out, a poster with her likeness was even printed up and is selling for 100 naira (70 cents). Since "she" faces a 10,000 naira (70 dollar) fine or a year in jail, she just has to sell, what? 100 posters to pay her fine off. Shoot, I'd buy one of those.
Which brings me to my final point.
A young man was caught disguising himself in order to get into the women's quarters, deceive them, see them naked, and sleep in the same bed with them. And he faces a fine or a year in jail according to the Sharia court.
A woman who was inappropriately close to a member of the opposite sex, with no deception on her part -- let us say she was forcibly raped -- faces death at the hands of her family.
If this cute little transvestite had managed to seduce anyone in the harem, do you think any woman would be stupid enough to admit it?

What kind of a "women's rights activist" works to marry a rape victim off to her rapist?

Rape victim marries jailed attacker to avoid Muslim shun
Shaikh Azizur Rahman In Calcutta

On the order of the court in Berhampur, Ahammad Shaikh, 30, tied the knot with Sabina Khatoon, 18, inside the local prison where he is serving his sentence.

Shaikh kidnapped Khatoon - the daughter of a daily wage labourer - from her village and raped her in a nearby forest in March this year.

Then, with permission from the court, an activist carrying out work among rural women, approached Shaikh inside the jail and informed him of the woman’s miseries after being ‘tainted’ by his rape.

The women’s rights activist suggested that Shaikh marry Khatoon.

Khatoon, who looked very happy after the marriage, said: "For that act [of rape] I hated him. Sometimes I felt like I wanted to tear him to pieces.

"But I have a different feeling for him now. I have forgiven him because he has chosen me as his wife. I have to love him now."

In recent weeks, at the order of the courts, at least three such marriages between rapists and their victims have taken place inside jails in eastern India.

Sigh.

• How Biblical. This is just what it says to do in the Old Testament. Why don't American courts enforce this?


• What kind of women's rights activist works to get a rape victim married off to her rapist? Does the international activist community know what this person is up to?


• The poor girl was delivered into the hands of her rapist by her very own parents. The man admitted "I took advantage of her weakness and assaulted her while she was alone." So now she gets to sit at her new in-laws' house waiting for the man has already taken advantage of her weakness once to come get her again. And the father who initially appeared to be on her side is the one that handed her over.