Politics

NOVANEWS By Janine Jackson Global Research The New York Times‘ vision of women in the workplace. (Anna Parini) Familiar, frustrating construction from today’s New York Times (5/26/15): It turns out that generous maternity leave and flexible rules on part-time work can make it harder for women to be promoted — or even hired at all. That’s one way to put it, and the article, by “Women at Work” columnist Claire Cain Miller, puts it that way repeatedly. Women are paid less in Chile as a “result” of the law that requires employers to provide childcare for working mothers. Maternity leave measures “have meant that” European women are less likely to achieve powerful positions at work. Policies intended to mitigate the penalty women pay for their traditional “dual burden,” the Times says, “e...

NOVANEWS By Ajamu Baraka Global Research The Black Lives Matter movement has another martyr, as it prepares for a national conference in Cleveland, this weekend. Sandra Bland’s murder in Texas shows, once again, that “defending one’s dignity in an encounter with the police is a crime that that can lead to a death sentence.” The emerging movement must be clear on the political nature of Bland’s death, and that only real power in the hands of the people can break the cycle of oppression. “Authentic justice and liberation will only come when there is authentic de-colonization and revolutionary power in the hands of self-determinate peoples’ and oppressed classes and social groups.” During the struggle in South Africa black activists who were captured by the state had a strange habit of...

NOVANEWS Review of Two Recently Released Films: “Scheherazade: Tell Me a Story” and “Before and After the Spring Revolution” By Barbara Nimri Aziz Global Research Do you remember one reason Washington gave for invading Afghanistan in 2001? It was to liberate women. Watching pictures of ill-treated Afghan women, previously uncommitted Americans heartily joined the cry for war. (No possibility of doing that in Saudi Arabia. Or Egypt. Since no good friend of America would suffer that kind of liberation.) Hidden from war headlines are hundreds of millions of women from Japan to the USA fighting for justice within their legal system, for parity in media portrayals, for equality in the office, and for respect in their own homes and bedrooms. They include Arab –or if you prefer, Muslim—wo...

NOVANEWS Rocket scientist, inventor, cancer pioneer, human computer, bomber pilot, judo master. Why do we have to read their obituaries to know about them? By Joyce Chediac Global Research Did you know that satellites stay in orbit because rocket scientist Yvonne Brill discovered how to keep them there?  Or that environmental science was made possible by the research of one botanist, Ruth Patrick? Neither did this reporter, until she read their obituaries. There are many such women whose life work inspires.  Some have received important recognition in their fields. But they are not the national figures and the role models that they should be. Ironically, most can only learn about who these women were, what they did and how they did it after they die, by reading their obituaries.  I...

NOVANEWS By Garikai Chengu Global Research Unbeknown to many, most of human history took place in Africa, where women were equal, if not superior, to men. For thousands of years, African societies were matriarchal and they prospered. By bringing an oppressive form of Colonial Christianity to Africa, Europeans replaced millennia of prosperous matriarchy with oppressive patriarchy. The world’s first civilizations arose from the spiritual, economic and social efforts of African women and African women, in turn, went on to lead those Matriarchal societies. Feminist artist Lauren Webber’s works on traditional fabrics at the First Floor Art Gallery in Zimbabwe explore the complex relationship between the past and present condition of African women, by exposing the continent’s long histor...

NOVANEWS By David Swanson Global Research   Accepted wisdom in U.S. culture, despite overwhelming evidence, holds that the two nuclear bombs dropped on Japan shortened World War II and saved more lives than the some 200,000 lives they took away. And yet, weeks before the first bomb was dropped, on July 13, 1945, Japan sent a telegram to the Soviet Union expressing its desire to surrender and end the war. The United States had broken Japan’s codes and read the telegram. U.S. President Harry Truman referred in his diary to “the telegram from Jap Emperor asking for peace.” Truman had been informed through Swiss and Portuguese channels of Japanese peace overtures as early as three months before Hiroshima. Japan objected only to surrendering unconditionally and giving up its emperor, but t...