Global Peace Treaties and the Meaning of Macaroons

I’m experiencing a moment of serendipity, one hopefully understood in Les Artistes.

Posting now a story in our International Women’s Rights channel about Women of the Wall, a group of Jewish women long protesting the exclusion of women from the primary place of worship in Jerusalem, I discover a movie that they’ve made.

Praying in her own voice

There’s a NYT photo with the story and I’m struck by the orange and green umbrellas in a sea of black ones. I realize this is another reason that I don’t like burqas and the coverings of women in some countries.

Black is so sad, so lacking in joy.

So I go looking for a more expressive photo — perhaps there’s a Google news photo of the “Women of the Wall” protesting in Jerusalem.

Instead I find this gorgeous National Geographic photo of women sitting on the wall in Pushkar, Pakistan. The American US terror suspect David Coleman Headley was in Pushkar, allegedly planning the Mumbai massacre.

More thoughts:

via Flickr’s Susanl2008- In IWR my next story posted is about a direct appeal to women bombers from the wife of Al-Qaeda’s second in command. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s Egyptian deputy and second-in-command, encouraged Muslim women to join jihad as an “obligation.” Umaima Hassan is challenging women to become terrorists as an obligation of Islam.

- Last night I posted a photo of women in India making progress through elections with a quote system for women. It, too, is colorful and gorgeous.  All these bright colors make me hopeful, and I think that liberating women is our only major hope for the future.

Global Macaroon Party

- I absolutely love macarons (macaroons) from Paris. Stumbling into this Flickr page last night, I was as satisfied by the photo, as if I had eaten a plate of macarons. Indeed, art can be about simple pleasure that not only ignite our imaginations, but give us hope in a black world.

— This past week I’ve been very sad, coming to grips with this fact that religion is the biggest stumbling block in liberating women. Religion mostly seeks to keep women in their places. That includes Catholicism, which is hijacking health care in America. I do believe that Roe vs Wade will be overturned in the US. American women have no will on women’s rights any more.

— I so hope that the women of India won’t kill the women of Pakistan — or vice versa. And I hope that the bishops won’t take over America, putting women back where they belong — according to the big guys in Rome.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if peacemaking women not only ran the world, but could get together and enjoy a plate of macaroons at the Jerusalem wall, where all this horrible nonsense seems to have begun? 

Good men could join us — but by invitation only. I have no desire to spoil our color-drenched, happy day, global macaroon-sharing party.

Oh yes — just for once, fashionista black and burqas, too, are banned for the occasion.  Anne