Women Still Second Class Afghanis

Earlier this year, Afghanistan's president Hamid Karzai withdrew a bill that would have required Muslim women in the country to put out for their husbands at least once every four days or be legally raped. Karzai withdrew the bill because the world read it and shouted a collective WTF. But politics being politics, Karzai has to please the conservative Shia base. After all, there's an election coming up. But unlike American conservatives, who are only interested in keeping gays from marrying and making sure you can't afford to see someone about that weird looking mole, Afghani conservatives want to take away all the rights of dirty, dirty women. As such, Karzai has allowed an amended version of the bill to pass into law. Now, men in Afghanistan are allowed to starve their wives for withholding sex, women have to receive their husbands' permission to get a job, and fathers and grandfathers have sole custody of all children. Ain't that swell? And by "swell" I mean "devaluing the deaths of every soldier who was killed fighting the Taliban". More details here.