Afghan Women Self-Immolation Growing

Among the most hopeless people on the face of the earth are Muslim woman - everywhere. And one of the countries plagued by self-immolation or suicide by fire, is Afghanistan, where women are killing themselves in record numbers, or at least trying...women who cannot deal with divorce because they lose their children. Death is sometimes better.

Dr. Sayed Naim Alemi, director of the regional hospital in Herat, said that there have been 85 cases of attempted suicide at his hospital alone over the past six months, double the number from previous years. Of those, 57 women succeeded in taking their own lives.

Their marriages are arranged and the father's treat their daughters like a puppy litter, but with less benevolence. On weekends here in Tulsa, I see dog breeders on the side of our busy 71st Street with a little fenced area on the grass, full of puppies. We can stop and pick out our puppy. Some are giveaways. Some we pay for. Same with Muslim fathers in Islamic countries: Who wants my daughters? And which one do you want? Please, if you are a Muslim man, don't bother explaining the sacred Muslim marriage to me.

Holger Awakens recently posted following story from RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan), which is generally hyper-critical of the U.S., but doesn't shy from the issue of women abused and murdered by their husbands and fathers:  RAWA condemns the U.S:

“Neither the occupiers! Nor the bestial Taliban and the criminal Northern Alliance; long live a free and democratic Afghanistan!”

I don't think there anything on the RAWA site explaining how these women will bring about a "free and democratic Afghanistan." Allah certainly isn't helping.

• Every 30 minutes, an Afghan woman dies during childbirth
• 87 percent of Afghan women are illiterate
• 30 percent of girls have access to education in Afghanistan
• 1 in every 3 Afghan women experience physical, psychological or sexual violence
• 44 years is the average life expectancy rate for women in Afghanistan
• 70 to 80 percent of women face forced marriages in Afghanistan

Source: AfghanistanOnline

Poverty and illiteracy add to the hopelessness of domestic violence meted out by father's, brothers, uncles and husbands. For Afghan women, there is little to no education. Often they are no allowed to work outside the home.

 Support the women of Islam by knowing the truth. Sometimes being set on fire comes not from your own hand, but by your husband's. See this teenager who attempted suicide after thinking she broke her husband's television; and this 20 year old who lived but lost her eyelids, and Aisha whose husband sliced off her nose and ears.

*****

Afghan Muslim Women Hit the Wall of Abuse, 67 Cases of Setting Themselves on Fire Just This Year
Holger Awakens, originally published October 9, 2010

This article, from RAWA News, details a horrific trend in Afghanistan where 67 muslim women have seen such abuse and hopelessness in their lives that they have tried to commit suicide by setting themselves on fire.

From the article:

"I was crazy angry at that time. I wanted to kill myself and I thought that it would be a quick death," said the 20-year-old who has been a second wife for five years. "But it wasn't."

As shocking and gruesome as the practice is, self-immolation is not unusual among young women in Afghanistan, where women are often seen and treated as the property of men.

Some experts, such as Dibi Hareer of the small German-based charity Medicale Mondiale, say the phenomenon is growing, the reasons embedded in "Afghan customs and traditions that are stronger than laws".

"She was found 15 days after setting herself alight. She was found by accident by a human rights group. Her brother-in-law and father-in-law had raped her, so she wanted to kill herself," Jalalai said.

Many of the women who do make it to hospital discharge themselves after a few days, he said, inviting infection that probably kills them later.

The misery, the death, the destruction and the horror of islam just keeps churning away across this world ...ironically at the same time that there is the big push here in the West for "understanding" and "tolerance" and "building bridges."

We have a man such as Geert Wilders who has simply brought the message of truth about Islam to the Western world - he has simply tried to warn us, show us the types of things this article shows and at this very moment, Wilders is fighting to keep himself out of prison in his home country of the Netherlands.

I've said it before...if you are a muslim woman in childbirth and at that moment your child enters the world and you discover that you have a daughter...you must begin to weep....not in joy but in fear of what your newborn baby girl will endure here on Earth.

Desperation drives abused Afghan women to death by fire
HERAT, Afghanistan — In the refined, cultured and historic Afghan city of Herat, 67 young women have been admitted to the main hospital this year after setting themselves on fire.

Halima is the most recent. She arrived earlier this month with third-degree burns to 30 percent of her body after dousing herself in diesel oil and setting it alight during a family argument.

Her torso and one of her arms -- the one that did not pour the oil -- are swaddled in thick bandages, the charred and blackened fingers on her right hand poking through. Every now and then she winces in pain.

It had been a furious row, she said, with her husband's first wife, whom she accused of supplying him with opium.

"I was crazy angry at that time. I wanted to kill myself and I thought that it would be a quick death," said the 20-year-old who has been a second wife for five years. "But it wasn't."

As shocking and gruesome as the practice is, self-immolation is not unusual among young women in Afghanistan, where women are often seen and treated as the property of men.

Some experts, such as Dibi Hareer of the small German-based charity Medicale Mondiale, say the phenomenon is growing, the reasons embedded in "Afghan customs and traditions that are stronger than laws".

At Herat General Hospital's burns unit, Dr Aref Jalali has been keeping statistics on self-immolation since about 2002, and said he admits eight to ten cases of self-immolation a month. In June, he said, there were 20.

"Of the 67 cases so far this year, 33 died, 15 discharged themselves from the hospital and never came back, and the others are fine," he told AFP while standing at Halima's bedside.

"It might be that there are five to 10 cases a month of young women setting themselves on fire that we never see, they are a long way from the city and so they cannot get here in time to get life-saving treatment.

"Or it could be that they are not helped by their families, they are just left to die," he said, relating the case of one young woman who was found locked in a barn weeks after attempting self-immolation.

"She was found 15 days after setting herself alight. She was found by accident by a human rights group. Her brother-in-law and father-in-law had raped her, so she wanted to kill herself," Jalalai said.

Many of the women who do make it to hospital discharge themselves after a few days, he said, inviting infection that probably kills them later.

Since 2007, Jalali has seen between 50 and 95 cases of self-immolation a year, but numbers are up 40 percent this year, he said, adding: "I believe the real number is much higher than the cases we see but there is no strategy for dealing with this phenomenon."

Jalali has set up a research foundation called Nejat, meaning rescue in Dari, which he hopes will gather enough information to be able to help put a stop to what he calls a "horrifying trend".

-- Traditions stronger than laws --

Afghanistan's lack of social development is blamed for the way women are treated, with much of the horror attributed to tradition and religion.

The Muslim country is pious and conservative and the spread of the Taliban's hardline Islamist insurgency has seen more women retreat behind all-enveloping burqas amid objections to plans by President Hamid Karzai to open peace talks.

There has been little improvement in the lot of women in rural areas despite the introduction of constitutional rights after the Taliban's brutal regime was overthrown in late 2001.

Afghanistan remains a society mired in misogyny, with most women confined to their homes, unsocialised and uneducated, with no control over their lives.

"Forced marriages lead to problems, young women married to old men, sold, swapped for sheep or even opium. Sometimes girls are engaged as babies to baby boys -- this is common outside the cities and it leads to some of the problems of the women who come in here," Jalali said.

"Women are seen as chattels, they are treated as animals, when they are at home they face constant discrimination and when they are forced into underage marriages nothing changes.

"They feel more pressure from their abusive husbands and equally from women, mainly mothers-in-law. They sometimes go to mullahs and community councils to ask for help, but even there they face humiliation and abuse," he said.

"They finally set themselves on fire in an act of utter desperation."

The vast majority of the women he sees are aged between 15 and 25 years old, he said, up to 85 percent of them impoverished, illiterate and "unable to deal with problems within their families".

Their desperate cry for help rarely results in any improvement in their lives and if they survive can lead to even more problems, Jalali said.

"They have terrible scarring, the situation at home rarely changes, police investigate and they don't tell the truth, saying their burns are from an accident."

Sometimes, the women will appeal to the village elders, whose councils are called "shuras," for mediation, but tradition rules and little changes.

"The shuras often tell them to go back to their homes, which doesn't deal with, let alone overcome any of the problems that led to this situation in the first place," Jalali said.

In an effort at least to draw attention to the issue, Afghanistan's public health ministry has declared October 10 Self-Immolation Day.

Ghulam Sakhi Kargar Noor Ogholi, ministry spokesman, said the idea was to involve schools and mosques in a public information campaign to stop the practice that "takes the lives of hundreds of women".

For Jalali, education is the key to change.

"No forced marriages," he said emphatically.

"We must start in the schools, we must use the media and the mullahs at the mosques to get the message across. We need to set up centres that focus on young women, helping them learn how to deal with and solve their problems.

"I come across many women who want to burn themselves, which means they have already reached the very extreme of what they can tolerate," he said.

"Here, we give them counselling on how to deal with their problems. So tolerance and awareness are the biggest factor in improving their lives when they leave here, because very little else is going to change."

Nasrin Soutoudeh Shirin Ebadi: Nasrin Soutoudeh Arrested Charged

Nasrin Soutoudeh, sometimes spelled Nasrine, is an Iranian female attorney representing Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi. Soutoudeh received a warning from the Iranian intelligence officials that she would be arrested if she continued to represent Ebadi. Ebadi fled Iran one day before the elections, in June 2009 and is living in London. Soutoudeh was arrested last Saturday and is believed to be in Tehran's Evin prison.

Nasrin Sotoudeh

Charged with "propaganda against the regime" and "acting against national security," Soutoudeh is a member of the Iranian Human Rights movement, the One Million Signature Campaign, which is gathering names of Iranians opposed to the country's laws against women, and the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPRC).

Nasrin's home and office were searched at the end of August. Her hard drives were confiscated and her assets frozen. She has a husband, who she says is a "modern man," and two children about 11 and 3 years old. In Iran, Human Rights attorneys receive no payment for representing human rights victims. She believes the regime is working to "limit the conditions for human rights defense, and says the "ultimate goal is to shut down all defense of human rights."

A few days before her arrest, Sotoudeh told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran how the authorities were creating bogus tax problems for human rights lawyers as a way to provide pretexts for their prosecution.

“I was referred to the taxation bureau and while there I noticed in addition to my name, they are conducting special investigations into thirty human rights lawyers,” she said.

Soutoudeh said Shirin Ebadi paid hundreds of thousands of dollars on her 2003 Nobel Peace Prize money. She was the first Iranian to win the Nobel, and the first Muslim woman to receive the honor. In 2009 the regime confiscated the medal,  and diploma from her bank box and froze her assets.

Ebadi is also an Iranian lawyer, a human rights activist and the founder of Centre for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran.  Nasrin Soutoudeh has represented many victims of Human Rights atrocities, many of them Human Rights attorneys.

There are some conflicting stories about Soutoudeh, but in all, she is at the least missing. Some of the accounts say her attorney was told that "Soutoudeh would be interrogated for an indefinite time." Her husband says he has not seen her or heard from her.

Muslim women in the U.S. and across the West, live in a large measure of freedom, or at least the opportunity of freedom,  and never utter a word about their sisters existing in abject tyranny. Soutoudeh is just one of many. Give me one reason Islam is to be respected...anywhere in the world. Just one.

Linked by Drive By Thinking - Thank you!

Avastin Meets Death Panel

Avastin is a drug therapy for "advanced" Stage IV breast cancer patients. Approximately 17,500 women in the U.S. are on Avastin.  Being brutally honest here, the FDA believes the drug is too expensive to be dispensed to women who will die anyway, and are considering rescinding it from their drug approval list. The medical community is divided on the effectiveness of the drug. Some believe the toxicity is not worth the results, others see good results in their patients. A look around the InterWeb shows that some insurance companies have already stopped the treatment, and I also see patients who have been on the drug for two years and are doing extremely well. Read a patient's statement below.

Avastin

Before getting to the story, let's revisit Obama's close friend and adviser, Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of Rahm Emanuel. Ezekiel is an advocate of discontinuing care to patients who will never make a full recovery:

Savings, Emanuel writes, will require changing how doctors think about their patients: Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath too seriously, "as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others" (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

ObamaKare is gearing up. Where can the FDA and insurers find savings? By de-certifying drugs for patients considered to be on a terminal list, or soon to be. Who is making these decisions. Well, that's easy, people with "influence," of course, also know as a Death Panel:

The Food and Drug Administration is reviewing the recommendation of influential scientific advisers to revoke authorization of the drug to treat metastatic breast cancer. Contrary to initial research, new studies indicate that the benefits of the drug, which costs $8,000 a month, do not outweigh its risks, the advisory panel concluded.

Avastin is not only prescribed for treating breast cancer. It has proved to be effective for other cancers. Look at this odd statement:

Avastin is approved for use in treating several cancers, including those of the colon, lung, kidney and brain. So doctors could continue to write prescriptions for it for breast cancer, as an "off-label" use. 

But in addition to prompting insurers including Medicare to stop paying for Avastin, an FDA revocation of approval for its use in breast cancer treatment might mean that breast cancer patients would lose eligibility for a program in which Genentech caps the annual cost of the drug at $57,000 for women with annual incomes of less than $100,000.

Does this mean people suffering from of the other cancer can continue to receive Avastin, and only breast cancer patients would be denied? The answer is 'yes.' Apparently, the toxicity does not affect cancers other than breast cancer. Do we really believe that? This is a death panel issue. Mentioned above is the idea of making Avastin available for breast cancer treatment for "off-label use," meaning you can get have it you can pay for it.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal in July, "an FDA advisory panel voted 12-1 to remove the breast cancer indication from the drug's label. If the FDA follows the advice of its committee - as it often does - the drug could still be marketed to treat colon, lung and other cancers."

Medical sources are divided on the success rendered versus the harm caused. Some believe the drug should have never been approved. Here is one success story, and Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute stand behind the drug's good performance:

"I'm very upset," said Leslie Twohig, 48, of Lothian, Md., who has been taking Avastin for eight months and credits the drug with helping her survive. "How long will I be able to stay on Avastin? Are they going to take it away? I know it's working for me. Right now I am able to enjoy my life. Every morning I wake up and wonder how long it's going to go on."

"I am very concerned about people who are receiving the drug and may feel threatened that they may not be able to receive it," said the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's Winer, who is also chief scientific officer for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer patient advocacy group. "This is not a worthless drug by any means. There is almost certainly a group of women who get a big benefit. "

Some members of Congress have written protest letters to the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) says he fears this is the beginning of "a slippery slope leading to more and more rationing under the government takeover of health care that is being forced on the American people."

Wealthier patients who can pay the $4000-$10,000 per month for the drug will probably live longer and have far less pain than the patient without an option for Avastin .

Saudi Women to Breastfeed Adult Men in Exchange for Right to Drive

In the bizarre Muslim news world, you may have heard of various fatwas calling for Saudi women to breastfeed the grown men in their lives who are not "kin." Believe it or not, it's true, but that's not where the story ends. See a video below.

Saudi Women

The first fatwa came in 2007. An Egyptian at the Al Azhar University apparently couldn't get as close to the women around him, and issued a fatwa "calling upon women to breastfeed their male colleagues." This would create a "maternal bond," dontcha know. After an unknown time at the breast, the man becomes a brother or son.

Three years later, the fatwa is back again, and Saudi women are actually considering it, much to the chagrin of Saudi males.

Saudi women are forbidden to drive, so the ladies have threatened to "breastfeed their drivers," if not allowed to drive themselves. If that isn't desperate, I don't what is. The visual is just too, too....?

Obviously there are some problems, and one that I can think of that isn't being mentioned: generally, women don't tote breast milk around with them unless they have small children - hopefully babies. So, assuming a woman has breast milk, will she have enough for the child(ren) and the grown guy? What if the soon-to-be-kin doesn't want to quit when she's had enough? If she doesn't have small children to breastfeed, what do the fatwa-issuers expect the woman to do? Snap her fingers nipples and command the milk?

This blog quotes some Saudi women and sheds a light on some of the complications of this fatwa:

"I have not breastfed my own children. How do you expect me to do this with a foreign man? What is this nonsense?" she said.

Another woman said the fatwa should also apply to the husbands who should be breastfed by housemaids. By doing so, all will be brothers and sisters," she said

Saudi writer Suzan Al Mashhadi sarcastically asked Al Obaikan: "Do the women have to breastfeed the driver in the presence of their husbands or can they do this alone?"

Muhammad must bear the blame for this because his wife, Aisha, was one little-breastfeeding mama (once she reached puberty, of course). Source: Middle East Forum, LATimes.

Others bloggers talking about breastfeeding adult men:
BareNakedIslam

Fatwa for Saudi Women to Breastfeed Adult Men (video)

Boy Scouts Perform Breast Exams as Community Service

What? I say...what?

12-Year-Old Boy Scouts Volunteer To Give Women Breast Exams


(video)

Kiera Echols Neurological Nightmare - A New Kind of Encephalitis - a Tiny Tumor with Eyeballs and Feet

Kiera Echols, a perfectly normal young woman went through hell, and she remembers some of it today. She had massive headaches, saw goblins and children, remembers being in hell - literally, and she wanted a exorcist. Echols was diagnosed with a rare form of Encephalitis, only discovered in 2000...and a tiny turmor, a Teratoma, too small to be seen on CT scans, on an ovary. How weird is this? Teratomas are capable of having "eyeballs or tiny feet." See a video below.

Surgery and treatment for the Encephalitis have Kiera almost back to normal. Her husband, Mike, is in the Air Force and was in basic training at the time of her diagnosis.  How many women have been institutionalized or died, how rare is it to have both at the same time?

The following video shows Ms. Echols in the grip of her attacks, as well as today. The film has been entered in the 2010 Neuro Film Festival.

Kiera Echols Neurological Nightmare - A New Encephalitis and a Rare Tumor (video)

Loincloths Liberate Women in Japan

This report demonstrates how Japanese women wear loincloths. Considered to be "more liberating" and more comfortable than traditional underwear...hmmmmmm, I don't think so.