Please Help with LegalZoom Contest

LegalZoom, which is the wonderful service we used to incorporate the AAAP is having a contest for its customers, and the AAAP has submitted an entry.

Would you be so kind as to help us by visiting their contest site and voting for our entry, then asking as many of your friends and family members as possible to do the same?

You can make the search process easier by selecting the Non-Profit category from the drop down menu and looking for the one titled "Triple AP Put on your boots".

We get points every time a vote is cast, as well as for every time the video is played.

The grand prize is $5,000 cash, which we can definitely use, especially to pay for our 501 (c) 3 paperwork.

There is also an opportunity for the winner to appear in a national commercial for LegalZoom, which would be a tremendous help to our efforts to spread the word about the human rights abuse of polygamy taking place in America.

http://www.legalzoom.com/contest/ratevideos.aspx

Documentary channel airs Damned To Heaven

To watch "Damned To Heaven" click here:

http://www.sling.com/video/show/238041/41/Damned-to-Heaven

The Victim Game

I'm not a big victim fan. I am, however, a huge fan of survivors. That's one reason I loved Flora from the moment I met her. She started life as a victim and fought her way out of it until she was free. That made her a survivor.

That said, I have noticed in people who express genuine concern for the victims of American polygamy a disturbing pattern emerging. I call it "the never ending victim".

Perfectly reasonable people who understand that most pedophiles were abused as children themselves, and have no problem sending men to prison once they have crossed the line from victim, over to abuser, want to brand the women of polygamy as completely helpless victims who should not be held accountable for their actions.

I find this to be a blatantly anti-feminist and misogynistic way of thinking. Everyone knows that abuse is a cycle. Everyone knows that just because a boy grows up in an abusive home where his father is an alcoholic wife beater he is never excused or given a free pass once he begins to engage in the same behavior.

As I read more about polygamy around the world I understand that women are not only a necessary part of the victim cycle, they are also a necessary part of the polygamy abuse cycle.

Take these two quotes, both from national news stories about polygamists this week:

By JON GAMBRELL
Associated Press Writer

On the Tony Alamo Case:

"One woman even testified that she was "married" to Alamo at age 14 during a visit to him in prison, with a group of other "wives" blocking guards' view as he groped her".

Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Associated Press

On the Elizabeth Smart case:

"At a hearing last month, Smart said that within hours of the abduction, Mitchell took her as a polygamous wife and then raped her. Smart said Barzee washed the teen's feet and dressed her in robes before the ceremony."

In both cases women were facilitating the abuse occurring within their respective polygamous practice.

Why do some act as though it is a big mystery how the abuse cycle, any abuse cycle, works?

Is it not evident that polygamy needs a very strong matriarchal structure to function? How would it continue without the cooperation and active participation of the women themselves?

Why, when over two hundred Texas children were identified as having been the victims of abuse, were they sent back to the very women who facilitated it? These women blatently attempted to obfuscate facts as simple as their names and ages when questioned by Texas authorities. Why?

Because they completely understand this country's laws against polygamy and have made the conscious decision to break the law, no matter what it ever costs them.

Now, I'd like to know exactly what other felony crime a woman can commit in this country with complete immunity from prosecution? Never mind when she hands her child over to a polygamist she is earning her heavenly brownie points, or upping her standing within the community. Do you really think there is no reward in giving her children over for rape? Do you really think there is no reward in preventing her little girl from ever knowing about the freedoms and opportunities she is born entitled to in America?

Every time you excuse one of these women in the name of "she's just a victim", you are spitting on little Flora Jessop as she tries to cross a desert to get away, because she knew it was all wrong.

They all know it, they've just made different choices, illegal choices.

Oh Canada, "Thank you"!

Canadians support polygamy prosecutions

Only 18 per cent of those surveyed believe practice is protected under Charter of Rights and Freedoms

By Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun October 30, 2009

Most Canadians believe Bountiful residents should face prosecution for polygamy and that their leaders, Winston Blackmore and James Oler, should go on trial, according to a new Angus Reid poll.

The online poll found 64 per cent, or almost two-thirds, of the 1,001 Canadians surveyed believed polygamy -- being legally married to more than one person at a time -- was a criminal offence and residents of Bountiful should face the law.

About 53 per cent of those surveyed also said they believe the government should pursue a case against Blackmore and Oler, who were charged with polygamy earlier this year, while 23 per cent thought the case should be abandoned.

The online survey comes just weeks after the B.C. Supreme Court in September quashed the case against the two men, saying it disagreed with the way the issue was handled by former B.C. Attorney General Wally Oppal.

The B.C. government has since asked the B.C. Supreme Court to rule on whether Canada's anti-polygamy law violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Blackmore has 19 wives, nine of whom were 18 or younger when they married. Oler is married to three women.

B.C. residents were more vehement when it came to prosecuting those involved in polygamy, the survey said....

Our Canadian cousins are ahead of the curve on this, due in very large part to the work of Nancy Mereska of Stop Polygamy in Canada. Their journalists are much better educated to the most common abuses of the practice, worldwide.

For more, please visit the Vancouver Sun at: http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Canadians+support+polygamy+prosecutions/2161358/story.html

Hard Evidence is Bountiful

For the full story: http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Bramham+hard+evidence+polygamy+damage+bountiful/2223717/story.html

Bramham: The hard evidence of polygamy's damage is bountiful

By Daphne Bramham, Vancouver SunNovember 15, 2009

B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman has taken it upon himself to be the one who rules on the ground-breaking constitutional case involving polygamy when it goes to trial sometime next year.

Bauman, who was appointed in September, will decide whether polygamy is a justifiable limitation on religious freedom. Regardless of what he decides, it's almost certain that this case will be appealed first to the B.C. Court of Appeal and then the Supreme Court of Canada.

Lawyers for both the B.C. and Canadian governments will argue that polygamy should not be allowed because of its inherent harm to women and children.

So, before the case even gets to trial, Bauman will have to decide whether to appoint someone to argue that the practise of polygamy is protected by the guarantee of religious freedom.

Until six years ago, the B.C. government held the view that the polygamy law was unconstitutional. As a result, for more than a decade it refused to lay charges against fundamentalist Mormon leaders in Bountiful.

The province's about-face gives some idea of how controversial and difficult the case is likely to be.

In law, harm doesn't have to be imminent. In two disparate cases -- Malmo-Levine, where the criminal offence of marijuana possession was upheld, and a child pornography case involving Vancouverite John Robin Sharpe -- the Supreme Court of Canada said it was enough that both generally cause harm.

Still, government lawyers need to show harm. They might start by looking at the medical research.

Dr. Susan Stickevers, an assistant clinical professor and residency program director at State University of New York with a longstanding interest in ensuring that polygamy remains criminalized, is certain the evidence is there.....

Please read the full story at:

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Bramham+hard+evidence+polygamy+damage+bountiful/2223717/story.html

Dr. Susan Stickevers serves on the AAAP board of directors. Daphne Bramham is the author of The Secret Lives of Saints: Child rides and Lost Boys in Canada’s Polygamous Mormon Sect.

When Mother's Culture Pimps Daughters

From the OWFI site... Iraq's Unspeakable Crime: Mothers Pimping Daughters

http://www.equalityiniraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=110:iraqs-unspeakable-crime-mothers-pimping-daughters&catid=35:articles&Itemid=55

She goes by Hinda, but that's not her real name. That's what she's called by the many Iraqi sex traffickers and pimps who contact her several times a week from across the country. They think she is one of them, a peddler of sexual slaves. Little do they know that the stocky auburn-haired woman is an undercover human-rights activist who has been quietly mapping out their murky underworld since 2006.

That underworld is a place where nefarious female pimps hold sway and where impoverished mothers sell their teenage daughters into a sex market that believes females who reach the age of 20 are too old to fetch a good price. The youngest victims, some ages 11 and 12, are sold for as much as $30,000, while others can go for as little as $2,000. "The buying and selling of girls in Iraq, it's like the trade in cattle," Hinda says. "I've seen mothers haggle with agents over the price of their daughters."

The trafficking routes are both local and international, and most often connect to Syria, Jordan and the gulf (primarily the United Arab Emirates). The victims are trafficked either illegally on forged passports or "legally" through forced marriages. A married female, even one as young as 14, raises few suspicions if she's traveling with her "husband." The girls are then divorced upon arrival and put to work.

Nobody knows exactly how many Iraqi women and children have been sold into sexual slavery since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003. There is no official number because of the shadowy nature of the business. Baghdad-based activists like Hinda and others estimate it to be in the tens of thousands. Still, it remains a hidden crime, one that the 2008 U.S. State Department's Trafficking in Persons report says the Iraqi government is not combating. Baghdad, the report says, "offers no protection services to victims of trafficking, reported no efforts to prevent trafficking in persons and does not acknowledge trafficking to be a problem in the country."

While sexual violence has accompanied warfare for millenniums and insecurity always provides opportunities for criminal elements to profit, what is happening in Iraq today reveals how far a once progressive country (relative to its neighbors) has regressed on the issue of women's rights and how ferociously the seams of a traditional Arab society that values female virginity have been ripped apart. Baghdad's Minister of Women's Affairs, Nawal al-Samarraie, resigned last month in protest of the lack of resources provided to her by the government. "The ministry is just an empty post," she told TIME. "Why do I come to the office every day if I don't have any resources?" Yet even al-Samarraie doesn't think sex-trafficking is an issue. "It's limited," she said, adding that she believed the girls involved choose to engage in prostitution.

That's a view that infuriates activists like Yanar Mohammed, who heads the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq. "Let me take her to the nightclubs of Damascus and show her [trafficked] women by the thousands," she says. To date, the government has not prosecuted any traffickers. And for the past year it has prevented groups like Mohammed's from visiting women's prisons, where they have previously identified victims, many of whom are jailed for acts committed as a result of being trafficked, such as prostitution or possessing forged documents....

The rest of the article can be found here: http://www.equalityiniraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=110:iraqs-unspeakable-crime-mothers-pimping-daughters&catid=35:articles&Itemid=55

RANIA ABOUZEID / BAGHDAD

Source: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1883696,00.html

Campaign to stop polygamy in Kurdistan-Iraq

For more information: http://www.equalityiniraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=100:campaign-to-stop-polygamy-in-kurdistan-iraq&catid=34:campaigns&Itemid=54



Campaign to stop polygamy in Kurdistan-Iraq

-To the Kurdish Parliament and the Kurdistan Regional Government

We demand the repeal of polygamous marriages and all other discriminatory laws against women in Kurdistan.

On October 27, 2008, legislation allowing polygamous marriages was passed in a parliamentary session in Erbil, the capital city of Kurdistan. This legislation is part of a constitutional draft proposing to replace the old family status law, in use since 1958. It was changed partially, under Saddam Hussein, to subjugate women’s rights further.

After the fall of Saddam’s regime in 2003, a new constitution was written and passed in Iraq. This constitution was solely based on Islamic Sharia Law and openly stated its support for gender apartheid against women. We clearly see that the proposed constitution for the Kurdish region is no better than the Iraqi one. In fact, it is just a smaller version.

The current family status law was reactionary enough—being purely based on discrimination against women and their treatment in society as second class citizens—but now the Kurdish Regional Government wants to change it further, and not for the better.

Women in Kurdistan have been subjected to all kinds of violence and discrimination throughout their history. Under Saddam’s regime, they endured all kinds of hardship, torture and abuse. They have fared no better under the current Kurdish rule. “Honour killings”, female genital mutilation, forced marriages, bullying women to commit suicide and the denial of civil and individual rights have been the main characteristics for almost the past two decades.

The approval of this current legislation will assist in the oppression of women and lead to a huge increase in violence against women. This is a historical mistake. We hold the Kurdish parliament and its government responsible for the violations of women’s rights in this region, due to these discriminatory laws.

Therefore, we call upon every concerned organisation and individual to support us in this campaign to repeal this law. We also call for unconditional equal rights, freedom and equality for women in Kurdistan to be enshrined in law.

Yours Truly,

-Yanar Mohammed: President of Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq

-Houzan Mahmoud: representative abroad of Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq-UK

-Michael Eisenscher: National coordinator of US labour against the war

-Diana Namie: Director of Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation

-Maria Hagberg: President of Network against honour crimes - Sweden

-Rega Svensson: Head of Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq-Sweden

-Nancy Mereska, Coordinator, Stop Polygamy in Canada

-Professor Fabienne Charlotte Orazie Vallino: Vietterbo University-Italy,

-Joe Tougas: Journalist, Human Rights Activist - USA

-Jennifer Kemp: OWFI board member in USA


-Daniel W. Smith: Journalist— Baghdad, Iraq/ New Haven, Connecticut-USA

-Maryam Namazie: Spokesperson, Equal Rights Now – Organisation against Women’s Discrimination in Iran

-Joanne Payton: International Campaign against Honour Killings

-Thomas Unterrainer: Nottingham

- Sam Azad: Socialist campaigner

- Anne R. Grady, Massachusetts, USA

-Ingrid Ternert: Representative of the Peace movement in Gutenberg.

-Ruth Appleton Co-ordinator Santé Refugee Mental Health Access Project

-Anna-Lisa: Björneberg- Wilpf Sweden

-Aase Fosshaug: Sweden

-Heidi Maugué-Aebi: Women for peace Switzerland

Agnes Hohl: Women for peace Switzerland

Annamaria Traber: Women for peace Switzerland

Beatrice Fankhauser: Women for peace Switzerland

Lini Culetto: Women for peace Switzerland

- Gulzar Ali Kadir: Organisation of women’s Freedom in Iraq – Denmark

-Sara Mohammed: Never forget Fadime and Pela Organisation-Sweden

-Nabaz Xalid: Worker Communist party of Iraq- Sweden

-Maria Rashidi: Kvinnorsrätt - Sweden

-Ali Mahmud Mhamad: Writer Holland

-CHAK organisation: www.chaknews.com

-Zana Kurdistani: General Supervisor of Kurdistan Truth Party