Wild Earth kitchen, 2006: The kitchen at Wild Earth, June 2006, Newcastle Island BC. Activists share skills at forest defense "boot camp," June 1st through 7th in BC.

What started as a one-week campout on Vancouver Island in 1999 has grown to include more than 800 people and 75 workshops on tree-sitting techniques, blockade tactics, indigenous rights and campaigns, herbal first aid, green anarchy, and more. Operating on a shoestring budget – in some years, no budget at all – a few volunteers put on an event that participants call "amazing."

...[A]s long as the U.S. and British occupation lasts, there will be Islamist forces that, in the name of fighting the occupation, will severely restrict women's participation in public life. Although I am under no illusion that the violence will subside or that women will be better off immediately after troop withdrawal, it will have to be a necessary step on the way to create a sovereign state in which women's rights can be discussed without creating a bigger backlash for women inside Iraq.

The world came into motion in the name of "liberating Afghan woman" and our country was invaded, but the sorrows and deprivations of Afghan women has not just failed to reduce, but actually increased the level of oppression and brutality day by day on this most ruined population of our society...The corrupt and mafia government of [Hamid] Karzai and its international guardians, are playing shamelessly with the intolerable suffering of Afghan women and misuse it as their propaganda tool for deceiving the people of the world.

They wanted me to can-can
To get in lines and show some skin
They wanted to make sure I knew
The pecking order I was in

Montreal Call to Action: International Day Against Police Brutality, March 15

As women we are very familiar with being blamed for our own victimization -- the woman who was raped "asked for it", what was she doing out there anyway? Why was she dressed like that? Milia Abrar, who was murdered in Montreal in 1998, had challenged traditions: she asked for it. The missing women, mostly Indigenous sisters, along the 'Highway of Tears' asked for it. The women at École Polytechnique asked for it. The woman whose partner killed her asked for it. The women who were brutalized by the police on 8th March asked for it!

"Today Iranian women […] have imposed themselves on a male-dominated society which still believes women should stay at home. Perhaps nobody sees us, but we exist and we make our mark on the world around us. I assure you that if you look around carefully, everywhere you will see our footsteps."

--Shadi Sadr, publisher, lawyer, journalist and one of 33 women imprisoned by the Iranian state on March 4 for protesting discriminatory laws against women

"Police began hitting and pushing people indiscriminately. Several people were knocked to the ground with batons and night sticks...[A] 17 year old marcher was hit in the chest with the end of a night stick and thrown to the ground...Her ribs were bruised, she was winded, trembling from shock and her knee was cut open enough that the blood seeped through her jeans. Two other women were also injured..."

...International Women's Day (IWD), which is observed on March 8 is a time not only to celebrate women's lives and achievements, but also a chance to join hands in solidarity with women around the globe and to focus much needed attention on the many problems women face today...[O]n March 8th, we once again affirm the human rights of women throughout the world as well as celebrate their lives and accomplishments.

Artists who unquestioningly use police booking photographs (mugshots) of Vancouver's missing and slain women as an iconographic source for their art risk victimising those women further.

Unrepentant: Kevin Annett & Canada's Genocide

Police are facing calls for an independent inquiry after CCTV footage showed a police officer repeatedly punching a woman during an arrest...The footage shows Ms Comer...writhing around on the ground, which she says was due to an epileptic fit. Police say she was trying to resist arrest...She is later dragged to a police van with her trousers round her knees.

The 8th of March comes this year upon Palestinian women as they face very difficult and harsh circumstances. On the one hand, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) continue to perpetrate human rights violations and war crimes, including killing and destruction of property, that have a direct impact on Palestinian women. On the other hand, the suffering of these women is worsened by the continued deterioration of the human rights situation under the Palestinian National Authority (PNA).

Sexual assault and other forms of violence against women, topics surrounded by cultural silence, are on the rise in Iraq, according to a report released today by Madre, an international women's human rights organization in New York...And the United States, according to the report, bears much of the blame.