a particularly unhelpful graph [about UN Water Conferences]

Tigray emergency

bad news for reproductive rights

Last week, when reading about Japan [late in] coming close validating drug induced abortion, I found out that both surgical and medical abortions in Japan do require [by law] the consent of the woman’s partner! As denounced by both the World Health Organisation and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, this is an appalling restriction, a violation of reproductive rights, and  a potential tool for partner abuse.

And then came the news of Poland setting a database of pregnancies, reported by medical personnel. Which is of course worrying in a country where abortion is essentially illegal. As the über conservative Polish authorities could use the database to hunt and prosecute women who have self-administered abortions….

Meanwhile, Oklahoma governor just signed a law making abortion illegal at conception, following another law turning abortion practice into a felony… Not even waiting for the SCOTUS [likely] abrogation of Roe v. Wade.

Прусские ночи [sexual war crimes]

The mounting evidence of of mass rapes and sexual war crimes perpetuated by Russian soldiers in Ukraine has led the [appallingly ineffective] U.N. to call for investigation

The allegations of sexual violence raise serious questions about possible war crimes. International humanitarian and human rights law, which categorically prohibit rape and all forms of sexual violence and inhumane treatment, must be fully complied with by all parties to the conflict. Orders should be immediately issued through their respective chains of command prohibiting rape and other forms of sexual violence, with concrete, timebound preventive measures as explicitly outlined in Security Council resolutions 2106 and 2467.

and is a reminder of the systematic policy of mass rape enforced by the Red Army in its advance through East Germany in 1945. As recalled in the Prussian Nights poem of Solzhenitsyn, who witnessed these crimes as a artillery captain in the Soviet offensive towards Berlin. (He was arrested three weeks after the offensive had started and sent to a gulag.)

Дом не жжен, но трепан, граблен.
Чей-то стон стеной ослаблен :
Мать – не на смерть. На матрасе,
Рота, взвод ли побывал –
Дочь-девчонка наповал.
Сведено к словам простым :
НЕ ЗАБУДЕМ ! НЕ ПРОСТИМ !
КРОВЬ ЗА КРОВЬ и зуб за зуб !

—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: from Prussian Nights (1974)

total elimination of nuclear weapons