Category: Violence

Spying, sabotage, subversion, people-smuggling: the brave women who resisted the Nazis through non-violence

Many people think Nazi Germany was beaten only through military violence, and mainly by men. As Barack Obama said in 2009: “Nonviolence could not have halted Hitler’s armies”. In fact, non-violent action was widely used in resisting Nazism. Brave women often led it. They later got little recognition, though this is now changing.

Some German women used overt, concentrated tactics – such as those who were thrown into jail for speaking out against Hitler, and the “Rosenstrasse” group, who protested in Berlin in 1943. These non-Jewish women shouted for their Jewish husbands to be set free, despite the threat of being machine-gunned. Amazingly, they succeeded – at least in the short term – with about 2,000 men released. Most of these men survived the war.

Resistance campaigns ranged from those waged by individuals to those involving large sections of the population. For example, about 10,000 Norwegian teachers, supported by around 100,000 parents, successfully resisted the Nazification of schools. Dutch strikes in 1941 and 1943 involved hundreds of thousands.

But secret, dispersed tactics were more common.

Flyers were written by Sophie Scholl’s White Rose group and posted around the country. Scholl was a kindergarten teacher, philosophy student and daughter of an ardent Nazi critic. She founded White Rose with her brother Hans and a group of like-minded friends in 1942.

She and Hans were arrested after dropping flyers into a courtyard at a Munich university. Convicted of high treason by the Nazis, she was executed in Munich on 22 February 1943, aged just 21.

Women led smuggling operations, hiding Jewish people and other evaders from the Holocaust. Individuals like young Dutchwoman Hannie Schaft hid people in their homes.

Groups like the National Movement Against Racism, led by Suzanne Spaak, a wealthy Belgian based in Paris, smuggled many children to remote villages.

Spying, though non-violent, often helped the Allies carry out violence.

Some women were pacifists, such as SOE radio operator Noor Inayat Khan. She came from Indian Muslim royalty, and would be shot in Dachau concentration camp. She had struggled with the moral questions of war, as her brother Vilayat explained:

[We] had been brought up with the policy of Gandhi’s nonviolence, and at the outbreak of war we discussed what we would do. She said, ‘Well, I must do something, but I don’t want to kill anyone.’

Resistance came at a cost. Exact figures are hard to establish, but it’s thought that more than 4,000 women of various ages were hanged by Nazi forces (separate to those who died in the Holocaust). Many more were shot or guillotined. Although terrible, this is a tiny fraction of the 68 million or more killed by military violence during the war.

Military violence is expensive, consumes resources, has a huge carbon bootprint, and continues cycles of violence.

Non-violent action led by women is never easy. But it causes far fewer deaths and is more sustainable. Could it ultimately replace military violence?

Source: Spying, sabotage, subversion, people-smuggling: the brave women who resisted the Nazis through non-violence

 

Paul Denyer could be granted parole next week – The Age

Frankston serial killer Paul Denyer could be released on parole as early as next week, his victims’ families have been told.

A former prison guard, a veteran homicide detective and family and friends of two victims have all expressed fears Denyer has not reformed and will be a threat to the community.

Denyer murdered Elizabeth Stevens, 18; Deborah Fream, 22; and Natalie Russell, 17, over seven weeks in June and July 1993.

Originally sentenced to life in prison with no minimum term, Denyer was re-sentenced on appeal to serve a minimum of 30 years, but victims’ families have been told he could be eligible for parole as early as Tuesday.

The former prison officer detailed how Denyer began referring to himself as “Paula” and fashioned female attire from prison greens in a violation of jail rules, though prison insiders said he now identified as male.

Former homicide detective Charlie Bezzina, who helped put Denyer behind bars, said he believed he would “absolutely” kill again.

“There is no doubt in my mind,” he said. “He is programmed that way.”

Source: 12ft | Paul Denyer could be granted parole next week

What happened to the Senate inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women?

Public inquiries are held to inform the public of misconduct and begin discussion on how to address issues. So why have we heard nothing about the inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women?

The Senate inquiry closed public submissions last December. There is no known future schedule of public hearings, and the inquiry’s methods and ways of working have not been made known to the public. Only one media release – announcing its formation – has ever been issued.

The inquiry itself seems to have gone missing, which worsens the crisis it aims to investigate. This silence speaks to the conditions that make it possible for so many Indigenous women to go missing and be murdered.

In our submission to the inquiry, we highlighted that missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and gender diverse people are never simply “missing”. They do not just vanish from their homes, families and Country. They are violently disappeared.

This is significant because when we examined police investigations into the disappearance of Aboriginal women, the term “missing” seemed to bring with it a pattern of inaction. Missing Indigenous women are typically framed as responsible for their own disappearance.

They do not get afforded the same effort and attention in media and investigations afforded others.

Because of this inaction, there is rarely accountability for violence against Indigenous women. This sets a dangerous pattern where perpetrators know they can get away with acts of violence. We argue this is the underlying cause of the high rates of all forms of violence experienced by Indigenous women.

Source: What happened to the Senate inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women?

Please don’t ’embrace equity’ this IWD. You’re being duped

One week out from International Women’s Day and the press releases about women “embracing equity” and information regarding upcoming events exploring the theme are coming hot into the inboxes of any reporter with a slight interest in women.

The only problem is that ‘Embrace Equity” is not the official theme for IWD 2023, rather the official UN Women’s theme is “Cracking the Code: Innovation for a gender equal future’.

As I wrote last year, Google “International Women’s Day” and you’ll come across a very official-looking, we-own-all-of-this website, that claims to determine each year’s theme. The website continues to share very little information regarding who is behind it, how it’s funded and how and why it determines its theme. There is no “About Us”, no names listed or clear contact information given – other than a form you can fill out regarding sponsorship opportunities.

However, it does list a number of “corporate partners” and declares the “global campaign theme” continues all year to encourage action, and proudly declares that International Women’s Day “has been around since 1911”.

John Deere is a “proud part of International Women’s Day” – its own ad is featured there on the website. Other partners include engineering firms and at least two weapons manufacturers on the IWD partner list, including Northrop Grumman, which “specialises innovating low-cost, highly reliable and precise weapons and ammunition for artillery and mortar systems”.

So who is behind the non-official internationalwomensday.com website, that will support your event with merchandise, determine what it believes should be the theme for the year and choose official charity partners?

Scroll to the end, and it lists its “contact” details – a generic email address, followed by a postal address with a company name: Aurora Ventures (Europe) Limited.

Google Aurora Ventures and you’ll land on options for getting in contact for some “women’s equality marketing” services.

As I suggested last year, perhaps the slogans are even worse. A weapon of distraction intentionally designed to enable big businesses and governments to avoid addressing more challenging political matters around the 8th March every year.

Source: Please don’t ’embrace equity’ this IWD. You’re being duped

EXCLUSIVE: Australian Woman Left Disabled Following Attack By Trans Activist – Reduxx

A woman in Melbourne, Australia was hospitalized and left with horrific injuries following a brutal attack from a trans activist over what she speculates was retaliation for her gender critical views.

On September 24, 2022, Ruby* and her partner were attending the Punks Pub Crawl, an annual barhopping event for those in the punk rock scene which has been held in Melbourne since 1982.

“I had only just arrived with my partner sometime around 3 p.m. There were about 70 people or so attending the crawl. The whole group of us stopped at Carlton Gardens for a group photo,” Ruby recounts, explaining that immediately after the photo was taken she would have an incident that has since left her with a debilitating injury.

“I was walking away, talking to a friend when I noticed one male walking beside the group but in the opposite direction to the rest of us,” Ruby says. “As he passed me he shoulder-barged me hard, and I stopped to address him.”

“I said something very close to, ‘Is there a problem here? Do you and I need to have a conversation?’ He started denying and gaslighting. He claimed it was an accident and one of his friends backed him up. It was clearly no accident so I replied, ‘No, he just shoulder-barged me as hard as he could.’”

Ruby says the onlookers immediately seemed to take issue with the pronoun she had used for the man.

“I heard a few murmurs of ‘He?’ Like people were offended at my choice of pronoun,” she says. “I stood facing him for another [few seconds] waiting to see if he was going to kick off, but he seemed to have nothing to say so I turned and walked away.”

But just as she did, Ruby says she was suddenly attacked from behind, with the man pushing her onto the concrete with tremendous force.

“I was wearing a heavy studded leather jacket so I went down hard and fast. I put my left arm out to break the fall with anything other than my head and the impact reverberated all up my arm, shattering my shoulder and breaking my arm at the joint.”

Despite having provided Melbourne Police with two witness statements as well as the identity of her attacker, Ruby explains that it took months for Cadzow to finally be charged in a process that initially left her feeling abandoned.

On January 25, almost exactly four months after the incident, Cadzow was finally handed charges related to Ruby’s assault. He is currently scheduled for a hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on April 14.

Source: EXCLUSIVE: Australian Woman Left Disabled Following Attack By Trans Activist – Reduxx

Domestic abusers have gun rights too, US appeals court rules | Australasian Lawyer

The judgment claimed that DV perps are “part of the political community entitled to the Second Amendment’s guarantees”

The decades-old US law barring Americans who commit domestic-violence from possessing guns contradicts the nation’s “historical tradition” of access to firearms even for people who aren’t “model citizens,” a federal appeals court ruled.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta called the decision “dangerous”, noting that “firearms are used to commit more than half of all intimate partner homicides in the United States”.

Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, said in a statement that the 5th Circuit decision should be overturned.

“This extreme and dangerous ruling is a death sentence for women and families as domestic violence is far too often a precursor to gun violence”, Shannon said. “When someone is able to secure a restraining order, we must do everything possible to keep them and their families safe – not empower the abuser with easy access to firearms.”

The case is USA v. Rahimi, 21-11001, US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (New Orleans).

Source: Domestic abusers have gun rights too, US appeals court rules | Australasian Lawyer

Trans killer now identifies as infant and demands dummy, nappies and baby food in jail

 

A transgender killer now identifies as an infant and demands nappies, a dummy, and baby food in prison, it is reported. Sophie Eastwood, 36, formerly known as Daniel Eastwood, was sentenced to life in prison in 2004 after using shoelaces to strangle her(sic) cellmate.

Eastwood, who has lived as a woman in Polmont prison in Brightons, Scotland, for four years, is now demanding prison staff treat her like a baby.

Sources told the Daily Record she has told the prison governor she wants to wear a nappy, have her food pureed like a baby, and has even been supplied with a dummy.

Prison bosses are said to be taking the demands seriously.

The killer even demands officers hold her hand when she is escorted from her cell, according to reports.

A source told the Daily Record Eastwood is “difficult” and “manipulative”.

The source said: “This prisoner has been difficult and manipulative over the years, which is why she is still behind bars after 17 years.

 

Source: Trans killer now identifies as infant and demands dummy, nappies and baby food in jail

Iranian chess player Sara Khadem ‘warned not to return to Iran’ after competing without hijab

Sara Khadem reportedly received several phone calls warning her against returning home after a chess tournament in Kazakhstan.

Iran has been swept by demonstrations against the country’s clerical leadership since mid-September, when 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini died in the custody of morality police who detained her for “inappropriate attire”.

Laws enforcing mandatory hijab wearing have become a flashpoint during the unrest, with a string of sportswomen competing overseas appearing without their headscarves in public.

Source: Iranian chess player Sara Khadem ‘warned not to return to Iran’ after competing without hijab

Dana Rivers guilty: Oakland jury takes less than a day to return triple-murder verdict

Dana Rivers, 67, of San Jose, murdered Charlotte Reed, 56, her wife Patricia Wright, 57, and Wright’s 19-year-old son, Benny Toto Diambu-Wright, the jury found.

OAKLAND — An Alameda County jury convicted a San Jose transgender activist of murdering three family members inside their Oakland home after less than a full day of deliberations.

Dana Rivers, 67, of San Jose, murdered Charlotte Reed, 56, her wife Patricia Wright, 57, and Wright’s 19-year-old son, Benny Toto Diambu-Wright, on Oct. 11, 2016, the jury found. Now, the case has moved on to the sanity phase — set to start Dec. 5 — where the same jury will rule whether Rivers was legally insane at the time of the murders. If so, state law dictates she’s(sic) sent to a mental hospital until she’s(sic) cured and/or for as long as she’d(sic) serve in prison for a triple murder conviction.

The evidence against Rivers was hard to refute; when police arrived at the victims’ home on Dunbar Avenue in Oakland, Rivers was standing outside, drenched in the victims’ blood, having just gotten onto a motorcycle containing one of at least three murder weapons. Prosecutors alleged she(sic) shot and stabbed Reed and Wright, then shot Diambu-Wright when he came to investigate what was happening. Diambu-Wright staggered outside the home and collapsed, dead, in the middle of the street.

Before her arrest, Rivers was best known as a schoolteacher who became an international news story when she(sic) came out as transgender to her students in a high school in Antelope, Calif. She(sic) was subsequently fired for sharing details of her transition, then sued the district and received $150,000 in a settlement. In the aftermath, she(sic) became an activist for transgender rights, and ultimately moved to the Bay Area to restart her(sic) life as an educator.

Source: Dana Rivers guilty: Oakland jury takes less than a day to return triple-murder verdict

The speech and the reason for the speech

The women’s estate represents just 4-5% of the entire prison population in the UK at any time and women are imprisoned overwhelmingly for non-violent offences.

Women are not drawn to crime – we represent just under 15% of all arrests. We tend to like order, stability and safety, so when crimes ARE committed and we’re sent down it’s inevitable that the significant factors leading to those crimes will involve untreated mental illness, health issues, substance misuse and financial difficulties.

We know that 95% of violent crime is committed by men, so what of that 5% of female violent offenders? In my experience of serving some of my sentence on a lifer’s wing I met women serving life sentences for murder. I can’t speak for every murderer in the prison system of course but every last one of those women – who again, I counted as my friends – were there because they’d killed their male abusers, after months and years of rape, torment and violence. Every. Last. One.

They had no proclivity to kill, nor did they enjoy it. It was purely for survival. I’m telling you this to highlight again that MEN AND WOMEN ARE DIFFERENT.

Contrast this with male patterns of offending. One of the MOST common reasons men are incarcerated is violent crime, 40% of which are offences against women. Men rape, maim and kill for sport. They enjoy doing it. Tied up in this already atrocious statistic is that a full 18% of men in prison in the UK are there for serious sex offences.

Of this 18% of rapists and paedophiles, guess what? Half of them say they’re women, and they’re routinely moved to the women’s estate, penis and all.

So WHY should a woman serving a short sentence for failure to pay parking tickets have to accept intimidation and terror as part of her already disproportionate punishment? WHY should an 18 year old girl on remand for shoplifting expect the potential for rape and assault by a man in a wig during her stint? WHY do these questions even need to be asked, and WHY after multiple instances of exactly this happening is this policy still being enacted? Is it simply a fear of being called transphobic? You would have thought after Karen White that ship might have sailed, but apparently that’s still a worse prospect than deliberately endangering women and girls.

We have sex segregated prisons because MEN AND WOMEN ARE DIFFERENT and women have a right to be kept safe from men. The ease with which men claiming transgender status has steamrollered basic safeguarding principles should alarm all of us. Violence in the male estate is not women’s problem to solve.

Women cannot rape. We rarely kill. We do not commit violent crime at the prolific, industrial scale that men do, and we are having our reputations dragged through the mire by the men who would wear our skin. These are not our crimes, and our prisons are no place for these revolting, duplicitous men. We will not stop shouting about this until every last one of these deviants is identified and returned back to the male estate WHERE THEY BELONG.

Source: The speech and the reason for the speech