Dr Wangari Maathai, visionary and Nobel Laureate

Though she was cut down by cancer, the legacy planted by Africa's "Tree Lady" will thrive, generation after generation.

Wangari Maathai, who died on September 25 aged 71, won the Nobel Peace Prize for encouraging women in rural Kenya to plant trees; from that simple idea sprouted a powerful movement that challenged what she saw as the incompetent, corrupt and often brutal rule of many male-dominated regimes in post-colonial Africa.

Wangari Muta Maathai was born on April 1 1940 in the village of Ihithe, near Nyeri, in the central highlands of Kenya. Her parents were subsistence farmers from the Kikuyu tribe. She was the eldest of six children, and in most families would not have attended school. But one day her elder brother, Nderitu, wanted to know why he had to go to school when Wangari did not. She was soon being taught by Catholic missionary nuns at Loreto Limiru Girls’ High School, from which she graduated in 1959.

Her teachers recognised her talent, and recommended her for a scholarship to study in America. In 1964 she obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St Scholastica College at Atchison, Kansas, then, in 1965, a Masters from the University of Pittsburgh. Her work involved new techniques in tissue processing that were largely unknown in Kenya, and on her return to Africa her expertise was in great demand. She became research assistant to the head of the department of Veterinary Medicine at Nairobi University, where she also taught (on lower pay than her male colleagues) and, in 1971, completed her PhD. [...]

Wangari Maathai began to focus on the vicious circle that links poverty, hunger, environmental collapse and women’s status. She saw how in poor families women scavenged for firewood to cook, eventually wandering further and further from home to find it. As more and more trees are felled, soil erosion leads to desertification; fewer cooked meals, meanwhile, results in malnutrition.

She decided to break this chain of impoverishment, developing a simple tree-planting programme. In 1977 the National Council of the Women of Kenya (NCWK) embraced her idea, initiating what was soon called the Green Belt Movement (GBM). On World Environment Day, June 5 1977, GBM began by planting seven trees in a small park in Nairobi.

It then branched out, offering free seedlings to women across the country. For every tree that survived more than three months (about 80 per cent in fertile areas) the women tending them were paid a few pennies. The more trees they planted, the more they made. As they were encouraged to plant more than they would need for firewood, women were soon able to earn extra from selling the surplus. Not only did the scheme reverse deforestation but, for the first time, many women discovered financial autonomy.

From here. And more here (also source for photo).

Meanwhile in Canada and the US, First Nations women and men are leading the charge against an expansion of the toxic Tar Sands development, by opposing the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and the one that will be threatening the ecological integrity of the land as it snakes its way through Alberta and BC to the coast.

Tar Sands update: Our esteemed sister blogger Alison at Creekside has been covering a number of aspects over the last year. Here's an excellent overview of key players and interconnected issues.

Le Devoir also had a good item about the connections between Cons and the Contempt Party, with regard to Who's who in promoting the Tar Sands. It's in French; Google translate is your friend.

Unsafe Abortion in Africa

No matter how the figures are expressed, they're appalling.

Here's one set of shockers:

Over 90 % of African women of childbearing age live in countries with limited or no access to safe abortion procedures.

According to the most recent data, of the 5.6 million abortions carried out in the region every year, only 100,000 are performed under safe conditions.

Here is another way to think about that statistic: Every year, about 5.5 million women in Africa risk their lives when they decide to terminate a pregnancy. Drinking bleach or inserting sharp objects into their cervix are only two of the horrifying methods they use. These are not risks any woman should be forced to take.

Or how about this?

IPAS vice-president for Africa Eunice Brookman said nearly 40 women every minute risk their lives and health by undergoing unsafe abortions.

Or this?

More than half of the 67,500 global deaths related to unsafe abortion, occur in Africa and more than half of the women who die from unsafe abortion in Africa are younger than 25 years.

These numbers are in the news now because a three-day conference in Ghana called Keeping Our Promise: Addressing Unsafe Abortion in Africa just wrapped up.

Addressing maternal mortality rates is Goal 5 of the Millennium Development Goals.

Several African countries -- including Zambia, Botswana, Ghana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe have loosened the rules around abortion, but women continue to die there because they could not access services or did not know they existed. (Here's that nifty interactive map showing the legal status of abortion around the world again.)

One example is South Africa, where just six years after the country liberalised its abortion law, the number of women dying from unsafe abortion dropped by 50%, and the number of women suffering serious complications fell as well.

It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that there are three basic pieces to the seemingly unsolvable puzzle of unsafe abortion in Africa.

1. Liberalize misogynistic laws. This is a job for the African people, but help should be offered and given if accepted.

And there's hope on that front. There are more women parliamentarians in Africa than other third-world areas.

The report’s [UN Human Development Index] new Gender Inequality Index—which tracks gender gaps in reproductive health, empowerment and work-force participation in 138 countries—shows that there are proportionally more women in sub-Saharan African parliaments (17 percent) than in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (12 percent), South Asia (10 percent) or the Arab states.

Well, there's bad news in that report too.

Yet, the region includes seven of the 10 most gender-unequal countries in the world: Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Central Africa Republic, Mali, Niger and Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2. Provide more contraception and sex education. This we in the West can do.

3. Provide training, supplies, and facilities for abortion services where they are already legal. This we could do too.

Well, we could have if we didn't have misogynist theocrat Stevie Spiteful unaccountably still in office.

Attention, Socons

Referring to the Citizen article I linked to yesterday, Chris Selley writes:

Well, well, well. As the Ottawa Citizen’s Elizabeth Payne reports, Canada’s Minister for International Co-operation now has no problem with funding abortion infrastructure in Third World countries where abortion is legal. But … but … what about all that vote-courting “no Canadian money for abortions” bluster back in April? Aren’t we now risking a terrible “divide [in] the Canadian population,” as Stephen Harper warned? Well, no. Of course not. It was just a ruse. Attention, social conservatives: You’ve been had. Again. And to borrow a line, it’s not going to stop until you wise up.

While the PMO is insisting that nononono, we are NOT funding abortions, the base is pissed.

LieShite:

In a shocking about-face, pro-abortion activist and Minister of International Cooperation Bev Oda has said that the Canadian government is now open to funding abortion under its G8 maternal health plan.
. . .
"Bev Oda worked closely with Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups during the G-8 discussions and made pro-abortion statements at that time,” commented CLC national organizer Mary Ellen Douglas in a press release today. “She eventually conformed to Party policy regarding maternal health at the last moment. It is now very clear that she was merely biding her time."

The Freaks are discussing it too and my Facebook friend Connie writes:

Can someone please explain this to me because it looks an awful lot like the socons just got screwed again.

So, socons, as mothers used to say to daughters back in the neolithic, why would a man buy a cow if he could get the milk for free? You're being milked. And no doubt sneered at to boot.

Yo! Fetus Fetishists! Con Government Does Fund Abortion

Illegal ones, too.

Despite its refusal to consider abortion in its maternal-health plan, the Harper government has given financial support to an international agency that provides abortion illegally in some African countries.

It's a very coy article and one wonders what the point of it is.

In a related story, the Ottawa Citizen claims that Bev Oda has seen the light on family planning.

Fresh from a fact-finding trip to Mali and Mozambique, Stephen Harper's minister in charge of delivering the federal government's $1.1-billion commitment to improving maternal and child health, is singing a different tune, and it is one that includes funding for family planning and even indirect support for abortion, if Canada is asked.

International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda seems to have returned from Africa with a more nuanced vision of how Canada can help reduce hundreds of thousands of maternal deaths every year than the one originally offered by her government.

Here we go with the nuancy shit again.

Asked if you could improve maternal mortality rates without family planning, Oda, during a telephone interview, replied: "Of course not."

She said she has always understood the importance of family planning to reducing maternal mortality, adding that it was a topic of much discussion during her trip in meetings with government officials, health officials, and NGOs in small villages.

Oda said the governments of Mozambique and Mali are both highly supportive of family planning, including abortion in some cases, and they like working with Canada, because it is considered very flexible. "We are not seen as having stipulated certain paradigms ... or having any particular direction. We say 'How can we help? What is the most effective way?'"

Oda said the controversy around Canada's G8 initiative and abortion was largely limited to Canada and is not an issue in either Mali or Mozambique.

Abortion is legal in both countries, when a woman's life is considered to be at risk, which, effectively, means that most women don't have access to abortion.

Still, Oda said Canada would support abortion infrastructure if asked. "As long as it is legal within the country and it's a legal procedure ... if we were asked to help in that way, we would do that."
. . .
But it is refreshing to see a minister from a government that began with an ideologically simplistic view of the issue concede something that those working in the field have long understood: "It's very complicated."

Any bets on when Bev will hit the pavement in front of the proverbial bus when the fetus fetishists find out about this?

Uh-oh.

Bev Oda shows her true colours and should be removed as International Co-operation Minister says Campaign Life Coalition.

TORONTO, Sept. 2 /CNW/ - International Co-operation Minister, Bev Oda has returned to Canada from Africa and has again been stating her personal opinions on her blogs regarding family planning and abortion in third world countries.

In a news article Oda stated that abortion is legal in Mozambique and Mali when a women's life is in danger. She said this means most women do not have access to abortion.

"Bev Oda once again shows her preference on "access to abortion" as she did at the time of the G-8 controversy," said Jim Hughes, National President of Campaign Life Coalition (CLC). "Surely the Prime Minister must have known that a Minister as pro-abortion as Oda would attempt to impose her own views within the implementation of the Canadian goals to provide help to women and children in third world countries."

"Bev Oda worked closely with Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups during the G-8 discussions and made pro-abortion statements at that time. She eventually conformed to Party policy regarding maternal health at the last moment," said Mary Ellen Douglas, CLC National Organizer. "It is now very clear that she was merely biding her time."

Campaign Life Coalition calls on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to remove Bev Oda from her position as Minister of International Co-operation since she cannot seem to follow Conservative Party Policy on the international stage.

Pope Maledict Calls The Kettle Black.

Faithful as ever to the paternalizing approach he has perfected when speaking about the African continent, Pope Maledict condescends to telling its people what is wrong with them.

Benedict praised Africa's rich cultural and spiritual treasures, saying they were the "spiritual lung" for a world increasingly in a crisis of faith and hope. But he said Africa had also been afflicted by materialism – the "toxic spiritual garbage" exported by developed countries.

"In this sense, colonialism – while finished in the political sphere – hasn't really ended," he said, adding that as a result Africa was also at risk of another "virus": religious fundamentalism. Groups claiming to be from religious backgrounds are spreading across the continent.

"They are doing so in the name of God, but with a logic that is opposed to divine logic: teaching and working not with love and respect for freedom, but with intolerance and violence," he said. ...

The church is growing enormously in Africa; between 1978 and 2007, the number of Catholics nearly trebled, from 55 million to 146 million. Vatican statistics show that more than 17% of Africa's population is Catholic.

But at the same time, the region's poverty, conflicts and Aids have posed challenges. Among the thorny issues bishops may raise at the synod is the Vatican's ban on condom use. Many say condoms could help prevent the spread of Aids.

Let me repeat what Pope Maledict said about the groups who also trading in the business of religion and competing with the Vatican Taliban, as they try to indoctrinate and convert MASSIVE numbers of people to their own brand of doctrine in Africa.

"They are doing so in the name of God, but with a logic that is opposed to divine logic: teaching and working not with love and respect for freedom, but with intolerance and violence."

That reminds me of something .... and oh yes, this.

Maternal reproductive health at risk.

Last week we wrote about a campaign in Nigeria to end unwanted pregnancies.

This week, the New York Times looks at Tanzania and what happens there when women have few or no reproductive health options.

Abortion is illegal in Tanzania (except to save the mother’s life or health), so women and girls turn to amateurs, who may dose them with herbs or other concoctions, pummel their bellies or insert objects vaginally. Infections, bleeding and punctures of the uterus or bowel can result, and can be fatal. Doctors treating women after these bungled attempts sometimes have no choice but to remove the uterus.

Pregnancy and childbirth are among the greatest dangers that women face in Africa, which has the world’s highest rates of maternal mortality — at least 100 times those in developed countries. Abortion accounts for a significant part of the death toll.

Maternal mortality is high in Tanzania: for every 100,000 births, 950 women die.

Pregnancy kills one woman per minute.

According to the United Nations, a woman’s chance of dying in childbirth in the United States is 1 in 4,800. In Sierra Leone, it's 1 in 8.

A small amount of Christian love and most of all, money diverted from abortion-criminalizing organizations could do much to help programs in support of maternal health care in the US and in Africa.

Unfortunately, HATE winds up the donation crank in the shrieeekkking masses; their CEOs - men like Randall Terry - like the income and don't want their cash flow impended by restrictions on their marketing techniques.

Conspiracy uncovered! Shrieeek!!!

Today is the day that Notre Dame University, that US bastion of Catholic higher learning, bestows a honorary degree upon President Obama who will then deliver the commencement address.

Conservative Catholics have opposed the university's awarding of a degree to the President, whose views on abortion and stem cell research conflict with the teachings of the church. Their intolerance has provoked a backlash and made this cohort even more Catholic than the pope!

As Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne pointed out, "To the dismay of many conservatives, the Vatican's own newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, offered what one antiabortion Catholic blog called 'a surprisingly positive assessment of the new President's approach to life issues'." The reaction was so positive that a spokesman for the National Right to Life Commitee criticized Pope Benedict XVI's newspaper! Furthermore, two-thirds of Catholics approve of Obama's performance in office and, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, 50 percent of Catholics think Notre Dame was right to invite the President.

Thus it's no surprise that fundamentalist Catholics claim to have uncovered a 'secret' conspiracy or connection that explains why Notre Dame is being led down the road to damnation.

Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., President of the University of Notre Dame, sits on the board of Millennium Promise, an anti-poverty organization which reportedly supports the distribution of condoms and encourages the establishment of abortion services where legal.

“Any Catholic university that supports a program to reduce poverty by eliminating poor children has a serious problem. No Catholic should be taking a leadership role in an effort that distributes contraception or promotes abortion," said Patrick Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society. ...

Millennium Promise works to raise funds from the private sector for “Millennium Villages,” a group working with under-privileged African villages. While these “villages” seem to have laudable goals, a Millennium Villages handbook explains that "family planning and contraception services are critical to allow women to choose family size and birth spacing, to combat sexually transmitted infections, including HIV infection, and contribute to the reduction of maternal morbidity and mortality."

ShriEEEKKK!!!

No wonder those fundamentalist Catholic zygote zealots are going into shrieking paroxysms. It is a well-documented fact that the Vatican Taliban would rather uphold medieval ideology than save the lives of African women and children. In their rabid religious fanatical view, only embryos and fetus are worth saving.

A Royal Cock-up?

The would-be leader of the Socialist Party in France, Ségolène Royal is a well-versed and skilled communicator. Thus her recent performance in Dakar, Sénégal (her birthplace) is neither accidental nor a gaffe.

Former French Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal has sparked a controversy in France during her visit to Senegal, when she issued an apology ... for a 2007 speech by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. [He] had said that African man had never really made his mark in history ... Though well-meant, the speech has been criticized for its paternalistic tone and for reiterating the supremacy of Europe.

“There are some who have come here and said, ‘The African man has not made his mark in history, yet,’” said Ségolène Royal, before a gathering of about 500 people. “Pardon, pardon, pardon, for this humiliating discourse which should never have been uttered and I tell you in full confidence that it does not represent the views of France or the French people.”

Royal has been unfairly compared to Margaret Thatcher; though she is tough minded and does not suffer fools gladly, her personal and public choices stem from a different perspective. For example, when she was 19 years old, she sued her estranged father; even though he had abandoned his family, he refused all divorce proceedings from her mother in order to avoid paying support to finance his children's education. She won the case after many years in court.

During the presidential campaign that opposed Royal to Sarkozy, her political views - particularly with regard to immigration policy - were criticized by La gauche in Europe for their retrograde implications. Nonetheless Ségolène's media-savvy style, which is a blend of the best/worst of macho confrontation and feminine seduction, is a blast of fresh air in the stale environment of male-dominated discourse. Her reputation for throwing spanners in the well-oiled machinery of social and political conventions is well-deserved.

The political cartoon came from this website.

Could the earthquake in Italy be a providential sign?

Though I'm really shocked and appalled that God the Father would cause all those people to die just to get Benedict XVI's attention and to let him know that the Catholic Church is MASSIVELY wrong by not supporting women who, by virtue of their familial role and responsibilities, are most likely to ensure continuity and perseverance of religious faith in Africa.

Most fundamentalist Christians view their God as cruel and vengeful but isn't there another way to let the Pope know that his position on condoms should be revised? Hopefully those members of the Catholic Church that God punished for blind allegiance to ecclesiastical ideology, as well as those who are collateral damage, will experience illumination, healing and divine consolation.

By the way, this post was inspired by the pithy response that the habitually verbose Blob Blogging Wingnut posted at her site on March 24:

Unreported in the MSM: children of abortion chain owner died in MT plane crash...just feet from Tomb of the Unborn Just has that ironic feel about it. But what the news sources fail to mention is... the [cemetery] contains... the Tomb of the Unborn... erected as a dedication to all babies who have died because of abortion.What else is the mainstream news not telling you? The family who died in the crash near the location of the abortion victim's memorial, is the family of Irving 'Bud' Feldkamp, owner of the largest for-profit abortion chain in the nation....It strikes me as a providential sign.Though I'm really sad the abortion chain owner lost his kids. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. I genuinely hope he and his wife experience healing and divine consolation.

Now we wait for the shrieeeking to start, because when progressives try to make sense of rightwingnuttery and attempt to verify if there is any logic to their pontifications by applying them to similar events, fundamentalists become quite wrathful.

Religion never at fault; women's deaths are collateral damage.

Two young women were crushed to death in a crowded frenzy to enter Coqueiros Stadium in Luanda where the Pope was about to have a meeting with Angolan youths as Benedict XVI pontificated about the evils of systemic corruption, witchcraft and discrimination against women.

There's something about that in the Gospels, is there not?

... And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? ... Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye, Matthew 7:1-5.

Absent a sense of irony, it seems the Pope floats in a bubble of sublime abstractions and religious ideology, isolated and protected from the harsh realities that Catholic Church followers confront every day.

... at a meeting with female Catholic groups ... He further emphasised “think about those lands where poverty abounds, zones devastated by war, in many tragic situations resulting or not from forced immigration, almost always women keep human dignity intact, they defend the family and uphold the cultural and religious values”.

Thus the top Catholic Church patriarch can patronize and deign to recognize women's contribution ... but upholds the ecclesiastical opinion that only male power reigns supreme in the clergy.

This imperious personal and Catholic Church position has deadly consequences for women in Africa.

The United Nations magazine, Africa Renewal, quotes an expert who participated in a UN survey of AIDS' impact on young African women. She described the conditions under which most young African women contract AIDS as follows:

"[They] are not in a position to abstain. They are not in a position to demand faithfulness of their partners. In many cases they are in fact faithful, but are being infected by unfaithful partners...A woman who is a victim of violence or the fear of violence is not going to negotiate anything, let alone fidelity or condom use ... Her main objective is to get through the day without being beaten up."

The Pope is correct in saying that AIDS cannot be eradicated by condom use alone. Clearly, when young women are raped or otherwise forced into sex against their will, the men abusing them will not commit to use condoms. But instead of offering these women useless verbiage, the Pope could have offered the vast resources of the Church to distribute anti-viral foam to young married women in AIDS-infested areas. Foam is the only form of AIDS prevention that young wives completely control and can use without their husbands' permission.

From here.

The photo-montage is from this blog.

This is how the Pope's declarations harm women and children.

This needs to be said: the Pope's declarations harm women and children. An African mother who is a practicing Catholic faces the following dilemna: If she requests that her husband use a condom when having conjugal relations, she is going against the Pope's edict, even if she is trying to protect herself and any potential child that she might carry to term from HIV infection. If her husband is a devout Catholic, he may refuse to use a condom.

If this woman decides to not allow sexual intercourse, her husband may beat her, sexually assault her or abandon her and their children. Her priest, if he obeys the Pope's edict, will consider that she sinned.

But if she becomes infected with HIV because she submitted to sex without protection, who will care and take responsibility for her children when she dies of AIDS? The Catholic Church?

Some countries were quick to take action, in response to the Pope's medieval ideology.

Spain said Wednesday it will send one million condoms to Africa to fight the spread of AIDS, one day after Pope Benedict XVI's controversial remarks that they aggravated efforts to battle the disease. "The objective is to advance the prevention of this epidemic, which affects 33 million people all over the world, two-thirds of them in Africa," the health ministry said in a statement. "Condoms have been demonstrated to be a necessary element in prevention policies and an efficient barrier against the virus, according to laboratory studies," it added.

Good for Spain, I hope that other Catholic countries follow its lead in demonstrating compassion for Africans as well as support for medical science.

'Insensitive, Incomprehensible and Lacking in Mercy'

From women's rights flowing from washing machines, to excommunicating doctors who saved the life of a raped nine-year-old, to undermining decades of AIDS work in Africa, the Catholic Church is on a heckuva roll.

A mess of world leaders, scientists, and AIDS activists are all just seething with anti-Catholic bigotry.

Even the New York Times saw fit to slap His Poopiness:

Pope Benedict XVI has every right to express his opposition to the use of condoms on moral grounds, in accordance with the official stance of the Roman Catholic Church. But he deserves no credence when he distorts scientific findings about the value of condoms in slowing the spread of the AIDS virus.

But this has really got to smart:

There were also some signs of dissent within the Church.

"Anyone who has AIDS and is sexually active, anyone who seeks multiple partners, must protect others and themselves," said Hans-Jochen Jaschke, Roman Catholic auxiliary bishop of Hamburg in the pope's native Germany.

To my mind, Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, said it best (on the excommunication fiasco):

"Unfortunately the credibility of our teaching took a blow as it appeared, in the eyes of many, to be insensitive, incomprehensible and lacking mercy."