Women Speak Out! - Against War and State Spin
Action!
Monday 19th November
Downing Street 12pm
Bring banners, musical instruments, food to share and friends

Cherie Blair and Laura Bush, wives of this century's key global warmongers, have apparently only just decided to address the newly discovered urgency of the plight of women in Afghanistan despite ten years of Taliban-executed fascist exclusion, beatings and demonisation. Now the two first ladies are doing their bit for the war effort by launching a campaign for women's rights in the bomb-pounded country. Wow, what sisterly solidarity! Maybe the world leaders and their wives really do care, after all these years, and capitalism really is a saving grace to all trapped in poverty. So, now all the burkahs are off, two generations of indoctrination are shed for good in a puff of dust, how fantastic, we saw it on the telly, it must be true, people even had Pocahontas t-shirts they'd just been dying to show all this time, and it's all thanks to us western freedom crusaders, yeah we heard you'd been fighting underground for years to overthrow the Taliban but were too starved and repressed to do anything decisive, and noone would help you internationally, too expensive, wouldn't want you getting any real power and getting all upitty and gulp, taking control of your lives and creativity/productivity, independently, so we came and did it all for you, we want help, no, not help you to help yourselves, no no, we want to take over.

The female Bush and Blair are now exploiting a fake gender identification with women they have NOTHING IN COMMON WITH and NEVER WILL, and will infact contribute to their future subjugation under capital through their forced entry into the free market where, the majority, will end up working for peanuts to line the pockets of transnational corporations about to making a killing out of the war. Maquiladora-style Free Trade Zones here we come. And as Afghanistan moves towards becoming a 'Newly Independent State', its resources, mineral and, crucially, human, will be subsumed into the profit driven project of breathing the life or death, of overseas investment into the region and with it, a globally exported life of wage-labour misery. This wonderful model of production and consumption, a democracy, still keeps people locked in patriarchal power structures which will remain ever-strong as long as a profit focused system based on wage labour - unequal at that, even here in the UK- and the fetishisation and commodification of gender through alienated, prescriptive identities is promoted. Afghani women, just like women throughout the 'developing' - read re-colonised world- bear the brunt of IMF and WB imported Structural Adjustment Programmes. These are a checklist of escalating state facilitated austerity measures geared towards preparing a country for plundering. SAPs (slapped on countries and councils both in the North and South - Hackney, London is a prime example) dictate a slashing of public services; education, health, land - forget it-, hyper-inflation and the privatisation of everything in sight.

Enough!

Or 'rights' or victimisation will not be used to justify military aggression and the onslaught of capitalism - the engine of war - not here, Afghanistan or anywhere in the world. War liberates noone. Solidarity with all sisters in struggle. Never give up. Power to the people. Women Speak Out!

Background info:
Leaders' wives join propaganda war Cherie Blair and Laura Bush to speak out for Afghan women Lucy Ward, political correspondent

Guardian
Saturday November 17, 2001
Cherie Blair and Laura Bush, the United States first lady, are to speak publicly about the violation of women's rights under the Taliban regime as part of a new coordinated campaign in the US and Britain. Mrs Blair, who rarely risks direct personal involvement in government matters, will join senior women cabinet ministers at Downing Street on Monday in an attempt to "lift the veil and show what has been happening to women in Afghanistan under the Taliban", according to the prime minister's official spokesman. Mrs Bush will also break with tradition to use a radio address tomorrow - the first solely by a first lady, according to Bush aides - to highlight how the Taliban sought to oppress women and export such practices elsewhere. The campaign will be seen as a clear, coordinated attempt to maintain the propaganda war despite the Taliban retreat.

The campaign to underline the regime's maltreatment of women, who were denied education, most employment and the freedom to leave their homes unaccompanied by male relatives, was welcomed by UK campaigners. But they also called on the US and UK governments not merely to condemn the Taliban record on women's rights - which is now widely known - but to ensure women play a key role in the building of a democratic government in a stabilised Afghanistan. Annette Lawson, chair of the international working group of the Women's National Commission, which advises the government on policy affecting women, said: "I hope Cherie Blair will stress the importance of women's involvement in the broad-based coalition that emerges, pointing to examples such as South Africa where women have been part of the rebuilding process." Suggestions that requiring a female presence in a future government amounted to the inappropriate imposition of western ideas neglected to take account of the fact that Afghan women previously had the vote, were elected to office and took a wide range of employment, she said. "This is not about imposing our values; it is about restoring the values that were there before." Lesley Abdela, a partner in consultancy Shevolution, which advises on women's role in democracy building, also urged Tony Blair and President Bush to underline the need to bring women into Afghanistan's new administration. "If the prime minister and president are serious about building a broad-based coalition representative of the people, then they should remember that half of Afghanistan's population are women. There should be at least 50% women on any committee looking at a new constitution, and any government the UN is helping to facilitate." Campaigners, including the Labour MP Joan Ruddock, who set up a campaign group to help represent Afghan women living in the UK, feel coalition governments are in danger of overlooking any role for women in a future Afghani government. The United Nations resolution on Afghanistan agreed on November 14 does not specifically refer to the involvement of women, though it states the need to ensure a broad ethnic representation. The resolution supports a "broad-based, multi-ethnic government, fully representative of all the Afghan people", which should respect the human rights of all the Afghan people "regardless of gender, ethnicity or religion". The Foreign Office yesterday said it was "clear this means fully representative of Afghan people, including women".