It has been two months since our only outspoken lesbian soccer team, the Chosen Few, came back from winning bronze at the International Gay & Lesbian Football Association (IGLFA) tournament in London. This was the team’s second bronze medal after winning at the Gay Games Chicago in 2006. Chosen Few is making African herstory for all of us.

Fast forward now to last Wednesday, October 22, when the Federation of Gay Games (FGG) held their annual international meeting in Africa’s pinkest city: Cape Town, South Africa. The meeting, which was organized at the Ritz Hotel in Sea Point, took place one day after the 2006 brutal murder of Zoliswa Nkonyana finally went to court in Khayelitsha township, the same place where the 19-year-old lesbian was stabbed, stoned and beaten to death by a group of men for being a female homosexual. Attending both the court hearing in Khayelitsha and the FGG meeting in Sea Point, the racialized and classed dichotomy between grassroots community organizing and international queer membership strikes me yet again. At the Khayelitsha Magistrate Court, it was our black sisters who took the risk of outing themselves to violent homophobes by protesting against hate crimes and the murder of a young lesbian. But these very same women who continue the struggle for social justice and human rights in South Africa were conspicuously absent from the FGG guest and participant list.
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Palestine host their first international football match on their home ground in the West Bank.

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Palestine
Football

*** No surprise poverty in “Africa’s Kuwait”

All Africa reports, “Equatorial Guinea is one of the world’s top 30 oil producers, according to its Ministry of Mines, but corruption watchdog group Global Witness says most in the country still live in poverty.

Global Witness US-based policy advisor, Sasha Lezhnev, told IRIN: “Equatorial Guinea is the dictatorship that no one talks about. The government earns billions in oil every year, yet 60 percent of its population lives on less than US$1 a day.”

** Lenin’s Tomb on the US torturing it’s own prisoners If you can handle the video

The prison guards stand over their captives with electric cattle prods, stun guns, and dogs. Many of the prisoners have been ordered to strip naked. The guards are yelling abuse at them, ordering them to lie on the ground and crawl. ‘Crawl, motherf*****s, crawl.’

If a prisoner doesn’t drop to the ground fast enough, a guard kicks him or stamps on his back. There’s a high-pitched scream from one man as a dog clamps its teeth onto his lower leg.

Another prisoner has a broken ankle. He can’t crawl fast enough so a guard jabs a stun gun onto his buttocks. The jolt of electricity zaps through his naked flesh and genitals. For hours afterwards his whole body shakes.

***Republic of T has created this Timeline using online timeline tools (did you know they existed?)

***Sports journalist, David Zirin, talks about the politics of sport and sport as a battle ground for dissent.

*** Some alternative and more useful ways of spending $700 million

just can’t help wondering what else we could do with $700 billion.

According to the United Nations, the entire debt for the entire continent of Africa was about $320 billion in 2003. Adjusting for inflation and further accumulated debt, let’s call it an even $350 billion.

You could install solar panels on 20 million American homes for $300 billion. (I’m ballparking a rather conservative $15k for full installation of enough solar infrastructure to fully power an average American house; the price would surely come down drastically at that scale.) By the way, 20 million houses is more than one-quarter of the entire stock of occupied detached houses in the U.S.

***Church of England priest calls for gay men to be tattooed on the bottoms

Reverend Peter Mullen wrote: “Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan: SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with: FELLATIO KILLS.”">Reverend Peter Mullen wrote: “Let us make it obligatory for homosexuals to have their backsides tattooed with the slogan: SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH and their chins with: FELLATIO KILLS.”

Maybe the priest should be tatooed with the words “homophobic”

“Yeah, we’re Americans for 10 seconds then we’re just “niggers”! a documentary on the Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico.

Links: Tibet

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1968 Olympics Mexico

May’s International Carnival of Pozitivities is up at dropdeadhappy. Two blog posts stand out - “Myths and misconceptions about HIV and AIDS” by The AIDS Pandemic in which he looks at some of the “old” myths and some more contemporary myths such as HIV is a “black disease” or “two positive people do not need to use condoms” and then all the misconceptions around cure and prevention.

Myths and misconceptions about HIV and AIDS have been around since the very beginning of the pandemic. The first myths stemmed largely from the lack of information on this relatively new disease. ……..These myths have emerged despite the fact that there is now more accurate information on HIV. These new myths also create problems with prevention as people unknowingly put themselves at risk to contract the virus.

The Black Aids Institute post, Adhering to HAART Does Not Remove Risk of Passing on Disease is related to prevention and cure and the kind of news that ends up creating myths and misconceptions.

An article recently published by Switzerland’s Federal Commission for HIV/AIDS states that HIV-positive individuals on effective antiretroviral therapy are not at risk for transmitting HIV to their sexual partners under certain circumstances.

What I fail to understand and find highly irresponsible is why the Swiss AIDS Commission published this since they themselves acknowledge there is no scientific data to support the statement.

The East African reports that lawyers from East Africa and the SADC are to sue China over the arms shipment to Zimbabwe. The lawyers are also planning to “engage the African Union and United Nations into actively addressing the situation”. Whilst African leaders tip toe around Mugabe or worse pander to his madness and violence against his people, African Civil Society has chosen to actively support the people of Zimbabwe in their struggle.

Le Monde diplomatique comments on the inequalities in South Africa highlighted by the preparations for the 2010 World Cup.

South Africa will host the World Cup in 2010 so construction – and corruption – is booming. But almost none of the building or the money can be accessed by the poor who live in shantytowns without proper water, sanitation or electricity.

Speaking of football, the season has ended and once again I havent gotten to see one single live game - next season looks promising though as I have been offered one ticket for a game of my choice (other than the big 4 and the derby game). The best footy blog? The Arseblog for your daily dose of gunner news and which for some strange reason is to become part of Ole Ole from this month. Flamini is off - good riddance, they never learn that the grass for ex-Arsenal players is never ever greener on the other side. Name one ex player that has achieved anything significant after leaving Highbury unless of course it’s the money!