2022:
Child Q - Police Racism And Misogynism
UK
Police Racism - Child Q is suing the Met Police and a school in Hackney, London, over an incident which occurred in 2020. A black 15-year-old female pupil, known as Child Q, was taken out of an exam to the school's medical room and strip-searched by two female Met police officers who were looking for cannabis. The girl's intimate body parts were exposed and she was made to take off her sanitary towel. No other adult was present and her parents were not contacted. No drugs were found. A Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review in March 2022, conducted by the City & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership (CHSCP) concluded the strip-search was unjustified and racism "was likely to have been an influencing factor". This ghastly incident is utterly unacceptable. In 2023, The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) confirmed that four Met officers had been served with gross misconduct notices but the trail runs dry from then.
Operation Soteria - Between January 2021 and August 2022, a team of academics conducted deep dives on the police response to rape in 5 police forces in England and Wales. Operation Soteria, found that the police treatment of the crime of rape, was woefully lacking. Following the deep dives, the police have developed tailored improvement plans to address the findings. The number of rape reports in the UK, continues to increase YET the backlog continues to grow.
Violence Against Women - Listing some of the tragic victims (and faces) in the first half of 2022, (sorry, for examples of London): Yasmin Chkaifi, Mum-of-two, was stabbed to death in Chippenham Road in Maida Vale; Lesma Jackson, 84, was found dead at home in Enfield with a 'number of injuries'; Ashley Wadsworth, a Canadian teenager, who had been visiting London died of stab wounds to the chest in Chelmsford; Sabita Thanwanidied, a 19-year-old psychology student, died from sharp forced trauma wounds to her neck at her City University accommodation in Clerkenwell; Yasmin Begum, a mum-of-two, was stabbed to death at her home in East London whilst her children were at school; Shotera Bibi, an 80-year-old pensioner, was found stabbed to death at her home in Manor Park; three women were brutally killed at a house in Bermondsey - NHS worker Dolet Hill, and her husband Denton Burke, were stabbed to death in their kitchen alongside their daughter Tanysha Ofori-Akuffo and their granddaughter Samantha Drummonds; Ania Jedrkowiak, a 21-year-old Polish national, was stabbed to death in an alleyway in South Ealing; Zara Aleena, a law graduate, died after being stamped and kicked, while walking home from a night out... that is just London!
Recently while walking home in the afternoon, two ladies asked me directions to the hight street (Brixton) and mentioned that they had just moved there and they wanted to eat a sandwich - I went into sweet overdrive proudly extolling all the cool places in the hood. After our enthusiastic fun exchange, they asked finally... how far was the tube station from the spot (near where they lived) and.. how safe, was it to walk home circa 22.00. Was that it that they asked because they were Anglo-Indian and or, women? Christ sake - UK government and the Police get a handle on this.
Gender-neutral Brit Awards 2022 - the Brit Awards removed separate male and female prizes for Best Solo and Best International Act and replaced them with two gender-neutral awards: Artist of the Year and International Artist of the Year. The start of handbag fights - why replace? Why not add extra awards? Taking to the stage, as she won the gender-neutral Artist of the Year Award, Adele said: "I understand why the name of this award has changed but I really love being a woman and being a female artist". I high five Adele!
UK Bills / Acts in consideration:
- Minimum legal age of marriage to be raised to 18? - to avoid young people being pressured by their parents into marrying against their own wishes, activists have been campaigning to raise the minimum legal age of marriage in England and Wales to 18. The UK government is considering this.
- Online Safety Bill - The Online Safety Bill is a proposed Act by the UK Government which aims to establish a new way to regulate online content - covering not just abusive messages but all harmful material online, from bullying through to pornography. The Bill places a duty of care on tech firms like Facebook and Twitter that allow users to post their own content or to interact with one another and, search engine providers, to protect users from harmful content: ensuring children are not exposed to harmful or inappropriate content ensuring that adults are protected from legal but harmful content preventing the proliferation of illegal content / activity such as terrorist material, racial abuse and as child pornography.
The World
Women of Ukraine - Ukraine has been an independent state since 1991. In December 2021, Ukraine's defence ministry claimed that about 90,000 Russian soldiers were stationed near their border and in rebel-controlled areas in Ukraine’s east. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that this was an army exercise. The "West" did nothing as they did nothing in 2014. On 24 February 2022, (four days after the end of the Winter Beijing Olympics) Russia began a military invasion of (war on) Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin : "The purpose of this operation is to protect people who for eight years now have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime... To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine..."
Putin's disinformation campaign has been utterly despicable as spoken by Putin, his spokesmen and the state media - the lying propaganda utterly reeks of Hitler's heinous propaganda. It is a war NOT a "special operation"! Moreover, Putin is committing war crimes: bombing (sometimes with illegal cluster & thermobaric bombs) civilian residences, schools, hospitals, infrastructure, nuclear plants, shooting fleeing civilians (women and children) in agreed Human Corridors ... In democratic countries we have all witnessed through autonomous news and social media the barbaric war crimes playing in front of our eyes... innocent Ukrainian women and children fleeing in millions, the huge courage of the incredibly brave women staying as they can't leave / fighting or staying to sustain the infrastructure for Ukrainian (& Western) democracy and independence. Forensic doctors carrying out post-mortem examinations on bodies in mass graves say they have found evidence that some women were raped before being killed by Russian forces. But, also a shout out to the incredible brave Russians protesting against the war (which they are not allowed to call it) in a you-will-be jailed dictatorship.
Not only has Putin committed war crimes on Ukraine, he is false flagging for the potential use of chemical warfare on civilians (which he has used in previous wars), threatened Western / NATO direct intervention with implications of a threat of nuclear war AND, Putin has increased the continued de-liberalism of his own citizens rights. Lest we forget Putin has instigated many wars: Chechen war 1999-2000, Georgia 2008, Ukraine 2014, Syria 2015 to present and, Kazakhstan 2022.
To all women (civilian men & children) who are victims of war, I am so truly, sorry. I know it only from my parents experience in WW2 - holy moly... 82 years ago! I can't fathom what a nightmare it must be like AND to leave your fathers, husbands, sons, grandsons, boyfriends, boy friends behind to fight... Slava Ukraini!
Women's Education: Women of Afghanistan - Women's Education Banned by The Taliban: The Taliban have effectively banned girls from secondary education in Afghanistan, by ordering high schools to re-open only for boys. Can you imagine how your life would be, if, as a woman you had no right to further education?
Venture capital investment for female-founded companies - accorinding to The World Economic Forum, companies founded solely by women received only 2% of all venture capital (VC) investment in 2022. Moreover, of all VC 'cheque-writers', only about 15% are women.
Apparently, several female biotechnology founders have argued that the scandal surrounding Elizabeth Holmes has made accessing venture capital funds even more challenging. Elizabeth Holmes was once heralded as America's youngest self-made female billionaire. Elizabeth is an American biotechnology entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud in connection to her multibillion-dollar blood-testing start-up, Theranos. In November 2022, she was sentenced to jail for 135 months (now shortened by two years) and ordered to pay $250 (£197) a month for her share of $452m in restitution to 14 investors. Do watch the miniseries "The Dropout"
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Hijabs / Headscarves: Women of Iran - Hijabs / Headscarves: the awful death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini on 16 September, has sparked outrage and countywide protests which are being thwacked by security forces. Mahsa was with her brother in Tehran when she was arrested by morality police, who accused her of breaking the law requiring women to cover their hair with a hijab, or headscarf. While in a detention centre she collapsed (after being beaten?), was taken to hospital and after spending three days in a coma, sadly died. I am shouting with you: "Jin, jiyan, azadi!" — "Woman, life, freedom!"
Morality Police - After the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, Iranian authorities imposed a compulsory dress code requiring all women to wear a headscarf (hijab) and loose-fitting clothing that disguises their figures in public. In Iran, among other things, Morality Police are tasked with ensuring women conform with the authorities' interpretation of "proper" clothing. Morality Police Officers have the power to stop women and assess whether they are showing too much hair; their trousers and overcoats are too short or close-fitting; or they are wearing too much make-up. Punishments for violating the rules include a fine, prison or flogging.
Islamic Religious Police (also known as morality police) enforce religious observance and public morality across Afghanistan, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Al-Qaeda and ISIL-controlled areas...
World Child marriage (marriage before the age of 18) - From UNICEF: Globally around 21% of young women (650 million girls) were married before their 18th birthday, circa 22 million people were living in forced marriage on any given day in 2021 and, 12 million girls under 18 are married each year. The countries with the highest rates of child marriage before age 18 (counted among women now aged 20 to 24) in order are: Niger (76%), Central African Republic (68%), Chad (67%), Bangladesh (59%) and Mali (52%). Not only is it a human rights violation, child marriage will lead to a lifetime of suffering as the girls are: less likely to remain in school, more likely to experience domestic violence and die due to complications in pregnancy and childbirth than women in their 20s, and their children are more likely to be stillborn or die in the first month of life.
Banning Abortions: Women of America - Banning Abortions: On 24 Jun 2022, the move of the Supreme Court to strike down the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, handed American states a free rein to limit or ban abortions. Half of U.S. on states are expected to ban abortion or impose heavy restrictions following the Supreme Court decision to overturn a landmark ruling that legalised pregnancy terminations nationwide. 2022, in a so called liberal country this is insane!
Women of some parts of the world - It is so sad, that still in the 2020s, in some countries women's rights and equality are still utterly perverse.