Afghan parliament ousts female lawmaker

Source: AP

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's lower house of parliament voted Monday to oust an outspoken female lawmaker who has enraged former mujahedeen fighters now in President Hamid Karzai's U.S.-backed government.

The lawmaker, Malalai Joya, compared parliament to a stable full of animals in a recent TV interview.

The video clip was shown in parliament on Monday, and angry lawmakers voted to suspend her from the body, said Haseb Noori, spokesman for the parliament. No formal vote count was held, but a clear majority of lawmakers voted for her suspension by raising colored cards, Noori said.

A parliament rule known as Article 70 forbids lawmakers from criticizing one another, Noori said.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070521/ap_on_re_as/afghan_lawmaker_ousted

I got it.
interesting ethics there.

.......Joya, a women's rights worker from Farah province, rose to prominence in 2003 when she branded powerful Afghan warlords as criminals during the Loya Jirga.

Many of the commanders who fought occupying Soviet troops in the 1980s still control provincial fiefdoms and have been accused of human rights abuses and corruption. After ousting the Soviets, the militias turned on each other in a brutal civil war that destroyed most of the capital, Kabul.

Some faction leaders, like former President Burhanuddin Rabbani and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, a deeply conservative Islamist, have been elected to parliament. Others, like northern strongman Abdul Rashid Dostum, were appointed by Karzai.

Sayed Alami Balkhi, a lawmaker from the northern province of Balkh, said the speaker of the upper house of parliament sent a letter to the lower house on Sunday saying that Joya had humiliated and attacked both houses.

The men there have been wanting that for ages and ages... well, I'm sure they want to do worse than just expelling her, even. I hope it goes no further than that. I don't expect it, but that is my hope.

She toured Canada last year, partly in an effort to get our government to back off escalating military action (Harper has manipulated Parliament and changed the mission) and go back to development and diplomacy.

She told us about the time the warlords and the other criminals in government called out for her to be raped. Public cries to rape an elected member of Parliament.
Know what? I'd have a few words of criticism, too.

What an enormously strong woman! I wish her well.

(The occasions when I was fortunate enough to hear her were the federal NDP convention in Quebec City where she was a guest speaker, and as a guest lecturer for a course on activism at the University of Ottawa.)

another 250,000 -- Must be nice being an NDPer these and supporting Bush's oil wars, huh?

Just curious, how are we doing in Haiti?
What's the NDP's position on the Lancet's report of upwards of 35,000 rapes in Haiti since the illegal coup.
You might find this http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11107">woman's plight also interesting. You might also find the complicity of prominent Canadian news agencies involvement in the smear campaign.

Rather odd that even in your own Parliament this womens' comment would have been censored in Hansard if she spoke it in Parliament. Is there a different standard you are using for Afghanistan? Or do you just hate Muslims that much?

So are the NDP still supporting Harper's government?

Troop withdrawal halted by Tories, NDP
Hamilton Spectator

Did you miss that debate, huh? Withdrawal by 2009 is no longer NDP policy? What up with that clown you have running your front...old Yuppie Jack? Has he ripped up anymore of the NDP foreign policies positions like withdrawal from NATO? Is your party even democratic or do you still believe that some pigs are more equal than others?

If you support the racist imperialist Bush war, then you ain't left. Wither NDP.

We don't need them electing Tory governments simply because they have to in order to continue to survive as a failed political party whose time past long ago.

..and some Afghan women might want oblige them- by leaving, not that leaving is within their means.

...when they wanted to have children...do themselves?

Dubya has the most wonderfull allies, right?