Stars mark women's day in India

Actresses Jane Fonda and Marisa Tomei marked International Women's Day by staging a performance of The Vagina Monologues in India.

The show was set up by the V-Day Foundation, a charity run by Monologues author Eve Ensler which raises awareness of violence against women.

"Violence comes in many forms and affects women all over the world," Fonda said after the performance.

"Behind the closed doors of my marriage, I would give up all my power. I would silence my own voice to be accepted," she said.

Fonda's last marriage was to Ted Turner, the billionaire media mogul who set up satellite TV service CNN. They married in 1991 but divorced 10 years later.

"It's important to honour the point of view of the other half of the population and hear the voices of those who are not normally heard," she said.

In the UK, a group of Labour MPs are also staging a performance of the play at London's Criterion Theatre on Monday.

Labour's Oona King (Bethnal Green and Bow), Caroline Flint (Don Valley), Margaret Moran (Luton South), Linda Gilroy (Plymouth Sutton) and Joan Ruddock (Deptford), Tory Caroline Spelman (Meriden) and Liberal Democrat Sandra Gidley (Romsey) have been rehearsing in the Houses of Parliament.

Actress and model Jerry Hall, comedy performer Rhona Cameron and socialite Tamara Beckwith met the MPs in the afternoon for rehearsals.

PALM-BACK V SIGN

Gesture: The peace sign, but reversed so the palm faces the recipient
Location: Jolly 'Ole England

If an American was visiting England and saw someone give them the palm-back V sign, they'd probably mutter, "Damn hippies". Yet the Englishman wasn't offering a symbol of peace, but instead telling you, "up your bum!".

In the British Isles, the palm-back V sign has the same meaning as the finger, but with a cockney accent. It's use can be traced back to the 16th century, but it's hard to pin down. Whether it was first used as a variant of the cuckold's devil's horns, or as a variant of the more ancient middle finger, but with some extra fingers thrown in to make it that much more painful is unknown.

In 1941 Winston Churchill made what we now know as the 'V-for-Victory sign' famous. He made no distinction between the forward and palm-back V sign until the latter part of the war when someone probably pointed out he was telling the masses to, "piss off". As always, those wacky elites really had no idea what the peasants were cooking up. This general confusion was exploited by American antiwar protesters in the 60's who used the palm-back sign to secretly tell the police to fuck off without getting themselves a one-way ticket on the Kent State Express.

"ranging from a communist holiday to a U.N.-sponsored event" - What's new???

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/womensday1.html

International Women's Day
March 8th commemorates women's rights and peace

by Borgna Brunner

In its various incarnations, ranging from a communist holiday to a U.N.-sponsored event, International Women's Day has been celebrated for almost 90 years.

Inspired by an American commemoration of working women, the German socialist Klara Zetkin organized International Women's Day (IWD) in 1911. On March 19, socialists from Germany, Austria, Denmark and other European countries held strikes and marches. Russian revolutionary and feminist Aleksandra Kollontai, who helped organize the event, described it as "one seething trembling sea of women."

Womens Rights and Peace

As the nascent annual event developed, it took on the cause of peace as well as women's rights. In 1915, Zetkin organized a demonstration in Bern, Switzerland, to urge the end of World War I. Women on both sides of the war turned out.

Women and the February Revolution

Both Zetkin and Kollontai took part in the most famous International Women's Day—the March 8, 1917, strike "for bread and peace" led by Russian women in St. Petersburg. The IWD strike merged with riots that had spread through the city between March 8–12. The February Revolution, as it became known, forced the Czar Nicholas IIto abdicate. (Russia switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1918, which moved the dates of the February revolution [Feb. 24–28, old style] to March.)

The "Heroic Woman Worker," Soviet Style

Kollontai, a minister in the first Soviet government, persuaded Lenin to make March 8 an official communist holiday. During the Soviet period, the holiday celebrated "the heroic woman worker." Today it is still a Russian holiday—celebrated in the fashion of Mother's Day with flowers or breakfast in bed—in which men show appreciation for the women in their lives.

International Women's Day in the United States

IWD was commemorated in the United States during the 1910s and 1920s, but then dwindled. It was revived during the women's movement in the 1960s, but without its socialist associations. In 1975, the U.N. began sponsoring International Women's Day

Sounds to me like it STILL has its socialist associations. It's just that the left lies about them in America.

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