I just watched this disturbing video on recent attacks on Afghan schools. These attacks are nothing new, the education of youth, and especially girls, is seen as a threat to theocratic rule.

It was accompanied by the words of Afghan human rights activist and government official Ranna Tareen on the violence carried out on prominent Afghan women. “I see my death too. What annoys me is to see no one cares about it.”

What saddens me most is that she feels all alone. How about we deploy our soldiers to protect these women of note while they attempt to change their country?

Over at thelongview.ca I’ve put up a link to Transforming Power by Judy Rebick. I only found out, far too late, that she is speaking tonight in Toronto on how mobilizing citizen participation in democracy will increase the number of women in government. That would have been great to hear.

Instead, here is a link to the article she wrote for rabble.ca, discussing the progress of feminism and where we need to go. In the political spirit of this blog, I thought I’d quote this little nugget of information: “A recent report written for the UN by the Canadian Labour Congress and FAFIA states, ‘in 2004 the World Economic Forum Gender Gap Index, Canada was ranked 7th. In the 2009 Gender Gap Index, Canada ranked 25th.’ This shocking drop in the status of women is not only due to a series of policy changes by the anti-feminist Harper government. It is also due to the impact of corporate globalization on social programme, poor people, workers and on the women’s movement itself.” There is still so much work to do.

Thanks to Jim Harris for passing along the rabble link.