A year after publishing the first electronic LOLA, we are now putting LOL@ 2 on the web. Meanwhile LOLA 14 and LOLA 15 have been published in their usual printed format. We enjoyed the whole process of developing a virtual LOLA and hope you like it, especially the new one.

Soon after you load this digital LOLA onto your PC, there will be a LOLA seminar on "sexism, racism and xenophobia," with experts from Africa, Latin and North America, Europe and Asia. It will be held August 27th and 28th, 2001 in Durban, where two other important events will take place: the NGO Forum (28 August - 1 September) and the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance - WCAR (31 August - 7 September). Have a look at the datebook and related links.

The main topic of LOL@2 is racism, with contributions from Helma Lutz, Marian Douglas, Pía Díaz, Ana Radebe and Prishani Naidoo dealing with different aspects. Helma Lutz explores European and colonial history in relation to different forms of racism, nationalism, ethnicism and gender in a "New Europe". In "The trafficking of Black women," Marian Douglas investigates what happens all too often when African and Black, brown, tan women and girls venture away from home and out into the world. Pía Díaz, Ana Radebe, and Prishani Naidoo are living in South Africa and share their different views on women's situation in this country. Pía Díaz spoke to young women in Soweto, twenty-five years after the uprising: in 1976 some twenty thousand school pupils decided to march in protest against the imposition of the Afrikaans language in schools and thereby started a movement that culminated in the freedom of Nelson Mandela in 1992. Ana Radebe, who has been living in Soweto for the past 33 years, writes about the history and current conditions of women in Soweto. Prishani Naidoo looks at the legacy of Apartheid today with a special focus on the majority of women who are black and poor.

The second main issue is sexual and reproductive rights. Lucy Garrido presents the campaign to achieve a Convention on Sexual and Reproductive Rights, while Ximena Machicao B. and Elizabeth Salguero C. focus on the rule re-imposed by the Bush Administration to globally obstruct the population programme of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). And Anissa Hélie reports on an issue which has been largely untouched: homophobia and sexuality in Arab Countries.

No LOLA without culture and / or cultural politics. Regina Michalik interviewed Judith Butler who spoke about the links between feminism and philosophy, new kinds of kinship, and biotechnology. Cherríe Moraga takes a close look at Mexican / Chican@ mythology and the mythical figure of La Llorona (the crying woman) in whom she sees the insatiable woman. Adelheid Scholten went to see a lot of films made by Heddy Honigmann, and spoke with the filmmaker about her art, life and politics.

An important event next year will be the World Earth Summit in 2002, which is why Minu Hemmati discusses what people are doing to prepare for it and the preliminary discussions within the women's movement.

We hope you'll enjoy this LOL@, although you can't take it with you on the beach, into bed or in the bath tube. That's why the regular LOLA, the paper LOLA, will keep coming out. The next paper issue - November LOLA 16 - will provide you with eye-witness reports from the Durban conferences on racism and the international LOLA seminar on sexism, racism and xenophobia, though we wish that more of us could go personally!
With warm greetings
your LOLAs from Europe