War Porn: Occupation, Sex, Prostitution

Several years ago I linked to articles that report the rise of prostitution among young Iraqi girls. Many of these prostitutes serviced US military men in Iraq.



As usual, the press has ignored this story, as it has much of the reality on the ground, such as the sexual hrassment of femake US soldiers by their male comrades, the use of chemical weapons in Falluja, the atrocities committed by US soldiers, the toll on civilians of the air campaign and so on.

Now a story out of Syria, where almost a million Iraqi refugees have fled, documents a flourishing sex trade that exploits penurious Iraqis. Reuters writes:

A score of young Iraqi women in tight, shimmering gowns shuffle across the nightclub dance floor under the hungry eyes of Gulf Arabs at nearby tables.

The band blasts out Iraqi songs into the early hours as the watching youths join the dancing or summon girls to sit with them -- there is little pretence about what gets transacted at this neon-lit nightspot half an hour's drive north of Damascus.

The dancers, some in their early teens, do not want to talk, but one said she had no other way to support her family. "My father was killed in Baghdad and our money is finished," muttered the dark-haired girl in a black and silver dress.

The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR calls it "survival sex", a desperate way to cope for Iraqi refugees whose savings have run out since they escaped the violence at home.

As I noted before, the human toll of war expands far beyond destruction of lives and property. It destroys human spirits. Read more!

War Porn: A New Genre of the Dead

The spectacle of the tyrant, the most despised man on earth--as Americans like to think of their country--is over. The tyrant is dead, long live the tyrant. America the tyrant killer, the castrater of dictators, the lyncher of Babylon, regains its renown for frontier justice in a shoddy, sometimes despicable, affair that the politicians call justice, though a few call it what it is: a piece of theater whose genre has increasingly become known as Iraqi snuff films. ...

Like many an egotist, I imagine, who blogs, I watch my sitemeter readings religiously. Perhaps the best interpretation of this is that I--with my background in marketing and business writing--want to perform a minute by minute audience analysis so I can gauge the reading habits, the likes and dislikes of those poor souls who happen upon these pitiful postings.

Early on in this blog's evolution, I picked up on articles that piqued my fancy and either provided a blurb about the piece or simply quoted it and provided a link. One of those pieces was on an article about Iraqi war porn, which was first brought to my attention by Helena Cobban. I wrote some chatter about it and provided a link to the pages where these XXXXXXXX porn pictures were (once) housed.

(Also see Occupation, Sex, Murder, and Prositution, and Trophy Video.)

If I were to rate the most entered page on my blog--according to my maniacal site meter reading habit--it would have to be this posting about Iraqi porn. I know this because sitemeter provides a listing on the search terms that the visitor used on the search engine that pointed them to my blog posting. I can only imagine their consternation when they see that the posting contains some tripe about how immoral this type of porn is.

I first became aware from a Law and Order: CI show that there's a subculture that's grown up around this type of porn. The issue is rather tangential to the storyline of the show, but it's interesting nonetheless that the phenomenon has reached a level where it can form part of the action of the characters in the plot.

The genre of War Porn itself became known in the wake of the Abu Ghraib torture revelations. The couple involved in that torture were filming their acts and hording them, along with their own personal BDSM porn.

The fascination of BDSM porn is best exemplified by the David Cronenberg's film, Videodrome. There the main character (played by James Woods) is a small-time cable owner trying to find content that will increase his audience share. The famous scenes of moderate masochism with Blondie singer Deborah Harry is only a prelude to more and more violent forms of sadomasochism.

In one scene, the James Woods character is watching the torture of naked women and says something along the lines of, "I can't take my eyes off of it. There are no production costs. It's genius."

The moral of the story is that the signal carrying the can't-take-your-eyes-off-it video causes cancerous tumors in the viewer. The whole thing turns out to be the effort by a zealous Christian-style group who wants to kill off anyone who doesn't have the moral sensibility to react in revulsion at the pictures and instead becomes hooked on it like heroin.

I doubt that our own theocrats are smart enough to carry off anything similar to the one shown in Videodrome, especially given their anti-scientific prejudices. Yet, the underlying premise--that a normal, god-loving individual will find such acts shameful and therefore will turn in revulsion--that our god-given shame shields us from such temptations, is one that many Xtian believers assume, though they rarely state it.

(See my postings on Martha Nussbaum's work [here, here, and here]. She has documented this type of argument that is marshaled by those on the right to defend a conservative legal agenda.)

Yet, the film's message makes a powerful statement about the attraction of violence to a sensory-hungry public whose jaded palates crave more and more stimulating images that go farther and farther into depicting the dehumanization of other human beings.

Having said this, let me make a confession. I wanted to see the execution of Hussein on television. I think that it should've been beamed into every household in America and the world. If the man was a monster, and American justice was triumphing in having this execution go forward, then there should have been no qualms about televising it.

Perhaps this is the lesson then: Americans are so dishonest that we can't or won't face the products of our own violence in Iraq. Instead, we want to cover it up, hide it away, make like it didn't happen. But this type of repression is how neuroses form, not to mention psychoses.

Or is the repression itself an indication of the mass psychosis that realizes itself in a delusory world where the horrible deaths of men, women, and children become fantasy attractions for a libidinous tyranny that refuses to acknowledge its own depravity?

And maybe Videodrome is more realistic and prophetic than I imagine.

PS Sorry to all you folks on bloglines who'll see this posting twice; but anyway: I just remembered something I heard on a show dealing with Richard Ramirez, the so-called Night Stalker, who terrorized LA during the mid-19080s. According to one source interviewed for the expose, as a young teen Ramirez used to visit a former ViteNam vet with whom he did drugs. The Vet also showed Ramirez pictures that the Vet had taken of his rape, torture and mutilation of Vietnamese women.

With the prevalence of war porn on the web, it makes you wonder how many young Ramirez's are being formed for future night stalkings and that unique brand of American terrorist, aka serial killer. Read more!

of rape lesbians and vps dead having sex

lynne oh lynne:cheney thy imagination doth protest too much. in attacking webb and his truthful take on what he's seen in real life thou deniest thy own secret dark and deep insecurities. why not own up to the passionate that lurks beneath thy cold and harried exterior. the despair of sexual inertness plants a dead rose in the heart of america. ...

thou should at least give the webb-ster credit for having been there seen that in his realistic accounts of life lived in the dangerous zones where your own soul:or that of thine bedizened husband with the dead heart: would indeed fear to tread.

or is it that the dead pere who leads thy clan hath found a little chickadee on the side whose hot and writhing arms jerk the premature shots that wound even friends and lead all to believe that this is a man who indeed one does not fuck with?

Later, Cheney criticized Virginia Senate candidate Jim Webb for including sexually explicit material in his novels. Asked whether her own novel Sisters had “lesbian characters,” Cheney said, “no, not necessarily. This description is a lie. I’ll stand on that.” In fact, her novel did contain multiple scenes describing a lesbian love affair.

as a man who has lived in a glass house i dare say that ms cheney thou shouldest refrain from casting stones. Read more!

Responsibility (Again)

The situation in Iraq gets worse every day. From militias crusing like gangs through ethnic neighborhoods and killing others at random and simply because they belong to a different sect to continuing attacks on US troops--Iraq is a hell house that few except the Donald Rumsfeld and Pres. Bush can call "democracy at work."

Riverbend, a blogger in the heart of Iraq has been describing the growing civil war ever since the US invasion. On the current ethnic cleansing under way, she writes:

...Why don't the Americans just go home? They've done enough damage and we hear talk of how things will fall apart in Iraq if they 'cut and run', but the fact is that they aren't doing anything right now. How much worse can it get? People are being killed in the streets and in their own homes- what's being done about it? Nothing. It's convenient for them- Iraqis can kill each other and they can sit by and watch the bloodshed- unless they want to join in with murder and rape.

I think the sense of responsibility espoused by Pres. Bush and many in his administration--or who gets the body bags dropped off on their front step--is sorely immoral but typically 'Merican. Everyone knew that Iraq was a Pandora's box. Hussein maintained power because he understood the tribal dynamics at work and how ruthlessly murderous they were.

That's why the US supported him for so long. They used him to maintain control over a region that fit into US interests in the region. They were willing to look the other way because previous admins understood the chaos that would ensue were he to lose power.

Either through ignorance or in a deliberate attempt to destabilize the region, the Bush admin lifted the lid off of this Pandora's box. Either way, they are complict in every murder, assassination, and killing that the insurgents or terrorists do or indeed our own soldiers perpetrate. Read more!

White Guilt, Military Justice, and Massacre

Shelby Steele recently made waves with an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal that, among other things, said that the reason the US is losing the war in Iraq is because its military is fighting with its hands tied behind its back. Steele attributes this situation to a reluctance on the military's part to appear to others as racists, specifically in relationship to Arabs. The solution, Steele asserts, is to forget the guilt trip and wage all-out war, thereby ensuring victory for US troops. ...

No doubt, one of the effects of this policy would teach the rest of the world that when the US goes to war it doesn't fuck around; it takes names and addresses and visits devastation and despair on anyone who stands in our way.

Referring to past sins committed by the US and other western colonialist powers, Steele writes:

So when America--the greatest embodiment of Western power--goes to war in Third World Iraq, it must also labor to dissociate that action from the great Western sin of imperialism. Thus, in Iraq we are in two wars, one against an insurgency and another against the past--two fronts, two victories to win, one military, the other a victory of dissociation.

Steele's solution to what he terms minimalist warfare is for the US to recognize that it has defeated racism at home. It should not give in to guilt feelings associated with the past but instead incorporate the vastly superior moral integrity gained by the US in defeating racism and thereby eschew this guilty conscience when the US promotes and fights for democracy in the rest of the world.

One is forbidden to speak thus, but it is simply true. There are no serious advocates of white supremacy in America today, because whites see this idea as morally repugnant. If there is still the odd white bigot out there surviving past his time, there are millions of whites who only feel goodwill toward minorities.

This is a fact that must be integrated into our public life--absorbed as new history--so that America can once again feel the moral authority to seriously tackle its most profound problems. Then, if we decide to go to war, it can be with enough ferocity to win.

I've emphasized that last bit about fighting with ferocity to highlight the reason I put these words together. The connection between America recognizing its own battle with and supposed victory of over racism does not seem inherently connected to fighting a war.

Isn't it just as likely, for example, that the reason that the US does not wish to visit the terrible might of its ferocious war machine on others is because its simply too terrifying to think of the products of that strategy? Whether or not one believes that America is racist (I do) or not, the simple fact seems to be that the capacity to create misery and carnage with modern weapons is morally repugnant--whether or not you're racist.

Beyond Mr. Steele's specious and tendentious argument, many perceived his comments to be a call for a glove's off policy with regard to the Iraq war effort. This is understandable since neoconservative pundits made similar calls a few weeks before and after Steele's piece.

In what may seem a bitter irony, though, it does appear that the US soldier understood exactly what Steele and the neoconservatives meant. In fact, they'd been practicing such a no-holds barred war for some time. As reports of massacres committed by US troops come to light, we have to begin to admit that the grunts on the ground were way ahead of the eggheads once more.

The recent revelation in the news that four or five soldiers planned and executed the rape, killing, and cremation of a young Iraqi woman, as well as the cold-blooded murder of her family, including a child, confirms that all appearances aside, this war's execution is no more about white guilt than the war itself is about the spread of democracy.

PS Born at the Crest of the Empire notes the following about the recent story of massacre from Iraq:

I find it surprising that there's been little mention that the five US soldiers currently under investigation for the rape and killing of a woman and three family members, now being reported as premeditated, were from the same platoon as the two soldiers who were captured, tortured, and beheaded.

The alleged rape murder took place in March, while Pfc. Tucker and Pfc. Menchaca were captured June 16.

The investigation has thus far not made any connection between the two events, but it was the killings which prompted the investigation. "The official said the mutilation of the slain soldiers stirred feelings of guilt and led at least one of them to reveal the rape-slaying on June 22."

Related Links

• Amid War, Some Violence May Be Personal
  
• U.S. reaps what the Army sows
  
• What's an Iraqi Life Worth?
  
• Haditha Probe Finds Leadership Negligent
  
• Four More U.S. Soldiers Charged in Iraq Attack
  
• Thrill of the Kill
  
• Ex-Soldier Pleads Not Guilty to Raping Woman and Killing Family in Iraq
  
• America the Dangerous?
  
• U.S. Nationalism Run Amok
  
• Ex-Soldier Charged in Rape, Slayings in Iraq

Read more!

Afghan Women Bare It All

In a letter from inside Pakistan, Afghan women celebrate international women's day...

in tears and ashes, fear and trembling as the fundamentalists and American sycophants continue the oppression, rape and abuse, robbery and degradation of their honor.

According to an email, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA):

Let’s rise united and resolute for liberation and against the fundamentalism!

Another Eighth of March has arrived but still the Afghan women are hostage to the fundamentalists’ claws. The continuation of traitor-loving policies of Mr. Karzai and his sympathetic friends by the indication of US government is still like spears entering deeper and deeper into the injured face of our unfortunate people. Whenever the criminal “Emirs” and their commanders commit another heinous crime, instead of being sued, they are rewarded and receive higher posts.

Murder, robbery, kidnapping and the rape of women and children has become the routine. There is a high rate of women committing suicide and an ever expanding cultivation and trafficking of narcotics, all while billions of dollars of foreign aid and public resources are squandered away. Unemployment and homelessness is on the rise. Opening of Kabul Serina Hotel and other hotels of this type in a country with the lowest rate of income per capita in the world doesn’t mean development but it is indeed providing sensual environment for criminals and mocking about the miserable life condition of majority of our nation. The compromising government is unable even to solve smallest of these issues. The country is in chaos.

The last four years of experience in our Afghan nation has confirmed the point that for the government of Karzai, the will of our oppressed nation is not the priority but it is the interests of criminals. Mr. Karzai doesn’t want to and can’t destroy the band of criminals from Afghanistan because the interests of both parties are intertwined.

In the presidential elections the majority of our people gave their votes to Mr. Karzai in the hope that he will prosecute and punish all the criminal fundamentalists for their crimes and atrocities. But he betrayed the vote of the people. That is why in the parliamentary elections, our deceived and hopeless people knew whether they vote or not, the composition of parliament will be made behind the scenes. Jehadi executioners were placed into parliament in order to guarantee the ability to pass and enforce laws that oppress the common people and the country, legitimize the signing of the "Strategic treaty between USA and Afghanistan" and other similar oppressive treaties.

RAWA has stated several times that the government, the court and parliament under the domination of the criminal “Northern Alliance”, the Taliban, Gulbuddini, Parchami and Khaliqi traitors, will never do any good for our bereaved people. Against the unsubstantiated accusations of collaborators that RAWA’s criticisms and attacks on government are always from a negative point of view, treacherousness and corruption has meshed around the roots of government so deeply that its nasty smell has not only been published in the world’s most respected publications; but even Habibullah Qaderi the so called minister of anti-narcotics and Ali Ahmad Jalali, former interior minister, have been forced to confirm that the government is dominated by the mafia.

It is clear in these circumstances, that the grant of more than 10 billion dollars promised during the London Conference will not be used for the masses, but instead like the previous 12 billion dollars, will fill the pockets of the “Northern Alliance” to buy their loyalty to the US.

In the situation when, by the support of criminals the innocent blood of Rahimas, Aminas, Nadias, Gulbers, Saimas and … pours on the ground, the presence of pro-fundamentalist women in the cabinet is nothing but a tool in the hand of government to say to the world and people, “Look at Afghanistan, Women have gained so much freedom!” The mentioned women, like most of the women in the parliament, are as much indifferent to the plight of Afghan people as Sayyaf, Rabbani, Qanonni, Gulbuddin, Mullah Omar and their partners.

The “Northern Alliance”, who gave shelter to Assadullah Sarwari until now, today they want that by punishing him to death, the Afghan peoples’ desire to prosecute the filthier criminals than him, will willow in despair and vanish forever.

Our people and especially the mournful women will not abandon the pursuit of the trial and punishment of religious fascist and Soviet puppets for any price or condition, because they have realized this now more than ever before, that until these unchaste felons are thrown off the throne, they will not be witness to the dawn of freedom, democracy and prosperity in their Afghanistan.

We are not alone in our difficult and tumultuous struggle against the “Northern Alliance” and their Gulbuddini, Talibi and Al-Qaeda brothers. Women of Iran, Kurdistan, Palestine, Turkey, Latin America and other countries are in combat for democracy and against the plague of fundamentalism and war. We sympathize with them and we must assist the movement of women in rest of the world by intensifying our decisive struggle against fundamentalism and their supporters in the region.

Regards to the imprisoned freedom-loving women in Iran and all over the world!

Long live the solidarity between the resilient women of Afghanistan and other countries!

Down with all fundamentalists, the most evil enemies of Afghanistan and human beings!

Hold high the glorious flag of RAWA and all organizations and persons supporting democracy against criminal fundamentalists!

Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)
March 8, 2006 – Kabul

Related Links

• Suicide Car Bombing Kills 4 in Kabul

Read more!

How-to Book on Hating Your Islamic Neighbor/Enemy

It seems that Bruce Bawer believes that Islam is the worm that eats at the heart of Europe's superior culture. ...

According to this review of Bawer's book, While-Europe-Slept:

Bawer asserts that the reality — confirmed for him by the resistance of European Muslims to assimilation, and the marked presence in their communities of honor killings, homophobia, polygamy, marital rape, forced marriage, and intolerance of democracy and pluralism — is that European Muslim leaders, with demographics on their side, still harbor the millennial hope of taking power in Europe, and see the European attitude as both weak and hostile. It is “political correctness,” Bawer writes, that has “gotten Europe into its current mess.”

Read more!

Women Soldiers Afraid of Being Raped Die of Dehydration

If true, this story should shock you. It seems that several female soldiers in Iraq would not drink water in the afternoon for fear of having to go to the latrine at night where they might be raped by male soldiers. ...

Truthout reports:

Last week, Col. Janis Karpinski told a panel of judges at the Commission of Inquiry for Crimes against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration in New York that several women had died of dehydration because they refused to drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid of being assaulted or even raped by male soldiers if they had to use the women's latrine after dark.

The latrine for female soldiers at Camp Victory wasn't located near their barracks, so they had to go outside if they needed to use the bathroom. "There were no lights near any of their facilities, so women were doubly easy targets in the dark of the night," Karpinski told retired US Army Col. David Hackworth in a September 2004 interview. It was there that male soldiers assaulted and raped women soldiers. So the women took matters into their own hands. They didn't drink in the late afternoon so they wouldn't have to urinate at night. They didn't get raped. But some died of dehydration in the desert heat, Karpinski said.

Karpinski testified that a surgeon for the coalition's joint task force said in a briefing that "women in fear of getting up in the hours of darkness to go out to the port-a-lets or the latrines were not drinking liquids after 3 or 4 in the afternoon, and in 120 degree heat or warmer, because there was no air-conditioning at most of the facilities, they were dying from dehydration in their sleep."

"And rather than make everybody aware of that - because that's shocking, and as a leader if that's not shocking to you then you're not much of a leader - what they told the surgeon to do is don't brief those details anymore. And don't say specifically that they're women. You can provide that in a written report but don't brief it in the open anymore."

For example, Maj. Gen. Walter Wojdakowski, Sanchez's top deputy in Iraq, saw "dehydration" listed as the cause of death on the death certificate of a female master sergeant in September 2003. Under orders from Sanchez, he directed that the cause of death no longer be listed, Karpinski stated. The official explanation for this was to protect the women's privacy rights.

Sanchez's attitude was: "The women asked to be here, so now let them take what comes with the territory," Karpinski quoted him as saying. Karpinski told me that Sanchez, who was her boss, was very sensitive to the political ramifications of everything he did. She thinks it likely that when the information about the cause of these women's deaths was passed to the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld ordered that the details not be released. "That's how Rumsfeld works," she said.

"It was out of control," Karpinski told a group of students at Thomas Jefferson School of Law last October. There was an 800 number women could use to report sexual assaults. But no one had a phone, she added. And no one answered that number, which was based in the United States. Any woman who successfully connected to it would get a recording. Even after more than 83 incidents were reported during a six-month period in Iraq and Kuwait, the 24-hour rape hot line was still answered by a machine that told callers to leave a message.

Read more!

Afghanistan Circles the Drain

Remember the day when George Bush had Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan over for dinner? Remember the parties and fetes thrown for the victory over the Taliban and Osama bin-Laden in that country? Well, it all seems to have been a desert mirage, another rhetorical dust-devil stirred up by the Bush/Pentagon propaganda machine.

As I posted several months ago, I received several emails from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA). These reports suggested that contrary to the hype and fanfare, not only were the conditions for Afghan women deteriorating, the country itself was sinking into chaos. ...

Now comes this report from The Independent confirming those RAWA emails:

A suicide bomber yesterday rode into town, killing at least 20 in the deadliest insurgent attack since the US invasion. More than 1,600 were killed in 2005, and the murder rate is rising. The rule of law has collapsed. The government is trapped in its own fortified compound in the capital. Soon, Britain will commit another 3,500 troops to a dangerous mission with no clear goals or exit strategy...

While the US decided that it had bigger fish to catch, the people of Afghanistan waited expectantly for democracy and US aid to pour in to the country. Unfortunately, without the proper military and economic support, the country now seems headed to the state of affairs that existed before the Taliban came to power: rape gangs, social anarchy, fundamentalist violence, and indiscriminate violence towards women.

At the beginning of the so-called War on Terror, when the US attacked Afghanistan, it was attacking one of the poorest, least sustainable countries in the world. Through years of warfare and invasion the country's infrastructure had collapsed to a barbaric level. This in a country that during the 60s was as modernized and secular as any in the mideast.

Such are the tragic consequences of adventurism and imperial crusades. The US has always acted irresponsibily towards other countries that do not meet its color criteria or that it considers too small in the grand scheme of things. After the US-backed Taliban defeated the Soviets, the US allowed these fundamentalist fanatics to take over the country. Every amount of aid supplied to the country dried up and it slid into a backwater chaos of human despair.

If there is any question about why mideasterners are suspicious of the US intentions in the region, all they have to do is to look at Afghanistan to see what it means to do business with the US.

My Related postings on Afghanistan:

• Bush to Request $1.1B in Aid to Afghanistan
  
• Afghans Find Key Promises Unfulfilled
  
• Afghan Province's Problems Underline Challenge for U.S.
  
• Attacks Strain Efforts On Terror
  
• Afghani Women Tribute

Read more!

Court Tells Military to Release Abu Ghraib Photos

In a story that did not make it into your newspapers today--not even the liberal press--a US court ordered the military to release previosuly unseen photos and videos from Abu Ghraib. The government has been trying to keep this material from the US public ever since they came to light. We got to see some of them, but the most disturbing pictures were kept out of the media.

It's reported by respected journalist Seymour Hersh that the material show the rape of a young boy by US soldiers, as well as other brutal acts of sexual and physical torture...

Al-Jazeera reports:

Pictures of detainee abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison must be released despite government claims that they could damage America's image, a US federal judge has ruled.

US District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein on Thursday said "terrorists" in Iraq and Afghanistan have proved they "do not need pretexts for their barbarism".

The government will appeal this ruling, so don't expect to see the photos soon.

What purpose could publishing this material serve? I believe that we must see the actions that our government commits in our name. This relates to televising capital punishment executions as much as it does to showing pictures of our dead soldiers'coffins and the civilian deaths that result from aerial bombing.

If the government can't deal with the consequences of the actions that its leaders make, then they should not do them. If these photos are published, then perhaps these decision-makers will work harder at making sure that these results do not happen. Otherwise, there is no accountability--just faceless victim and victimizer which adds further to the irreality of this war. Read more!

Afghani Women Left to Clean Up Mess of US Invasion

I received another email update from RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan). These are the courageous women who have fought for their dignity against the Soviets, the warlord rape squads, and the Taleban.

Their photos of the atrocities committed by all sides in Afghanistan have been shown around the world. Their most famous video, you may remember, is of a woman being shot in the head in a soccer stadium. George Bush and the US press used that video over and over to justify the invasion of the country.

Indeed, Mr. Bush just boasted at Elmendorf, "From the deserts of Iraq to the mountains of Afghanistan, America's Arctic Warriors are leaving their mark, and leaving a legacy of freedom."

You will also remember the cant and crowing of Pres. Bush about Afghanistan's women now being free. Unfortunately, according to RAWA, since the US went off to destroy Iraq, women in Afghanistan continue to suffer brutality and bestiality...

The most recent communique from RAWA paints a tragic picture of women under the heel of warlords, former Taleban become American sycophants, and fundamentalist fanatics. Reporting at the Kwangju Forum for Asian Human Rights in South Korea, RAWA representative Mariam Rawi told the conference participants

"People of the world should know that in the so-called 'liberated' Afghanistan, Afghan women are still suffering harshly," she said, citing the case of Amina, an Afghan woman stoned to death under a local court decree in northern Afghanistan in April this year.

"One elderly government official wanted to take a nine-year-old schoolgirl as his third wife, because his other two wives were uneducated and he wanted a literate wife."

In August, an 18-year-old girl was reportedly arrested in Herat province for running away with her boyfriend and was gang raped by officers at the police station. None of the cases documented by RAWA have been taken to court.

"The majority of women in Afghanistan are not happy - statistics show more than 95 per cent of the women have depression problems. Every 30 minutes, a woman dies in pregnancy, childbirth or from other gynaecological problems."

Ms Rawi said RAWA's main weapon against Islamic fundamentalist oppression was education. About 86 per cent of women in Afghanistan are illiterate.

I ask you to pass on this story. Visit their web site and see for yourselves the atrocities and barbarity these women have suffered. Ask yourself why the US left the job of liberating Afghanistan undone, to such tragic consequences. Read more!

Remember Afghanistan?

I just received an email from RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. Remember that the US went to war against the Taliban there and replaced it with its own strongman President? (Actually, he is not so strong, and things have reverted to the chaotic situation that was in place before the Taliban came to power: rape, poppy growing, and tribal warfare.)

I have not heard from these courageous women in a long time and was worried that they might have been destroyed by either the warlords or the weak govt. or even the Taliban (who still have much power).


Here's what they have to say on recent events. As always, they are giving voice to the oppressed and dispossessed in that country. This time it is the women and children who are forced to work 18 hours a day. They make those beautiful Afghan carpets that sell for thousands of dollars in chic American stores.

Most of them spend up to 18 hours a day working in poor conditions, with many becoming ill or taking drugs to relieve pain, said campaigner Nilofar Sayar, releasing the findings of a months-long survey of about 300 weavers.

Yes, these are the same women that Pres. Bush and his wife once said that the US war had liberated. Liberated for what? To make carpets for peanuts to sell to rich folk in the west?

Bush and his minions left this country like a seducer does a deflowered virgin. I guess they did leave some money on the table as they laughed from the doorway on the way out. That's something, isn't it? Read more!

The Iron Wall of Israel: A History of Lies and Deceit

The following link provides a rather rambling account of "new Israeli historian" Avi Shlaim. It is interesting because it provides some point-counterpoint between Shlaim's own hetreodox views and those of another hsitorian who disagrees with some of his main points.
------------------
Avi Shlaim: No peaceful solution
MERON RAPOPORT
Ha'aretz, 13 August 2005

And apparently, despite his very innocent appearance, with his curls and his slow speech, Avi Shlaim - the third and least familiar member of the group of new historians - knows that he is a sort of enemy of the people, and even enjoys it with refined British enjoyment. And now he has come to Israel, armed with his book, "The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World."

After reading the 573 pages of the book, one can understand why Sharon and Livnat do not want Shlaim to be taught here: in very readable prose, based on facts, he surveys the history of Israel's contacts with the Arab world from 1948 to 2000, and states decisively ("The job of the historian is to judge," he says) that the Israeli story that Israel has always stretched out its hand to peace, but there was nobody to talk to - is groundless. The Arabs have repeatedly outstretched a hand to peace - says Shlaim - and Israel has always rejected it. Each time with a different excuse.

. . . . . . . . .

At the start of his academic career, says Shlaim, he made a deliberate decision not to deal with the Middle East conflict. Slowly but surely, however, he was pulled into it. An article here, an article there. In 1982 he came to Israel with a stipend to write a study on the influence of the Israel Defense Forces on Israeli foreign policy. Just then the archives dealing with the 1948 war were opened, and Shlaim found himself sitting in the State Archive for days on end. "Then my eyes were opened," he says. "I had the knowledge acquired in childhood, and I believed in Israel's purity of arms, I believed that Israel was the victim. I discovered documents that showed me other things."

Benny Morris once told me that when he found a document that proved an act of massacre or murder, he was happy about the historical discovery, but felt shame as an Israeli. What did you feel?

"I didn't sit in the IDF archive and I wasn't exposed to documents about acts of murder or rape. I worked with diplomatic papers. I didn't feel shame, but I was astonished. I knew that in every country there's a gap between rhetoric and practice, but I don't know of any country where the gap is as great as in Israel. All the leaders speak about peace, Golda Meir used to say that she was willing to travel anywhere in the world to make peace. But these were not truthful words. In the archive, in the Israeli papers, I found that all the Arab leaders were practical people, people who wanted peace.

"Take, for example, Hosni Zaim (the Syrian chief of staff who took over the government in 1949 and was deposed a few months later - M.R.). He said that his ambition was to be the first Arab leader to make peace with Israel. He proposed an exchange of ambassadors, agreed to absorb a quarter of a million Palestinian refugees in Syria, but demanded that the border pass through the middle of Lake Kinneret. He didn't issue any ultimatum about the rest of the refugees. I was astonished by the Israeli reaction. Ben-Gurion said: First we'll sign a cease-fire agreement with Syria, then we'll see. That destroyed my childhood version. It's not that Ben-Gurion didn't want peace, he wanted peace, but on the basis of the status quo. Israel said at the time that there was nobody to talk to. The truth is that Israel was actually saying that there was nothing to talk about."

Based on this statement, which took shape among the shelves of the State Archive in Jerusalem, Shlaim wrote his book "Collusion in Transjordan," which was published the same year as the books by Morris, Pappe and Flapan, those same famous - or infamous - "new historians," depending on the eye of the beholder.

In an article by Shlaim a few years ago, he summarized what seemed to him the five main arguments of the new historians:

* The official version said that Britain tried to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state; the "new historians" claimed that it tried to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state

* The official version said that the Palestinians fled their homes of their own free will; the "new historians" said that the refugees were chased out or expelled

* The official version said that the balance of power was in favor of the Arabs; the "new historians" said that Israel had the advantage both in manpower and in arms

* The official version said that the Arabs had a coordinated plan to destroy Israel; the "new historians" said that the Arabs were divided

* The official version said that Arab intransigence prevented peace; the "new historians" said that Israel is primarily to blame for the dead end.

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Separation of Lambs and Goats

There is a separation of the goats and the lambs going on here. As the neo-cons and their religious apologists continue to plunder and destroy the American dream--Is that bright city on a hill we see burning now in New Orleans?--the ugly reality of what Americans call home has been exposed to the light of the day.

I imagine there'll be those who are concerned about what the rest of the world thinks. But that is simply a dodge to turn one's own consciousness of responsibility for this debacle. What is important is how we as Americans stand by and accuse the poor for being stupid and fat and deserving of the suffering inflicted on them. How does the statement go? As you treat the least of these, so you treat me?
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Government reflects the priorities of its people. Fine, if you think the government shouldn't help these people, cut back on the funding; then don't talk so self-righteously about the fact that this is people's fault--it's the fault of a govt. who feels that world domination is more important than helping its own people.

On the other hand, if the govt. doesn't want to reflect the ethic of being one's brother's keeper, then stop mouthing Xtian platitudes. Stop running on platforms that supposedly are Xtian-based. Give it up--it's all a lie and hypocrisy of a spiritually and morally bankrupt party that uses Xtianity as a facade to hide the continued rape and pillaging of the American experiment. Read more!

Nonsense that Heralds Meaning

There are no grand unified solutions to the current political and cultural upheavals in the world as we know it today. The issues are simply incapable of being addressed on a one-size-fits-all model. Instead, there will be particular remedies in situations as the times demand. These "solutions," however, will not be real solutions. Instead, they will simply reiterate the growing destructiveness and helplessness that individuals experience before a nihislistic juggernaut.

The Internet, "reformation," fundamentalism, secularism, etc. are symptoms of a far greater and deeper problem. What many philosophers and theologians in the west have addressed, and Muslim thinkers are now facing is the phenomenon of levelling. This is a malaise whose symptoms include spiritual anomie, political and cultural alienation, and rampant materialism. Secularism is itself a symptom and not a cause. Many religionists believe that they can resolve the problem by returning to a purer form of their religious heritage--this is an illusion because the modern disease simply hollows out any meaning from these traditions and either incorporates them into a useless and meaningless cliche or serves as the armature for more evil and insidious motives.

Those who suffer from this disease--and we all do--are faced with two alternatives: either become one with the faceless masses, that phantom of secular mythology "humanity," or take on the task of finding one's self in the face of a a transcendent reality whose existence is never given and ostensibly is non-existent. If you have seen Tarkovsky's film, "Stalker," then you are familiar with the absurd emptiness of the modern spiritual landscape, as well as the individual "seeker's" status in this landsacape.

Politicians will attempt grand unified solutions. To no avail. We have seen in the past what these political solutions germinate: the concentration camps, gulags, Rwandas, cultural revolutions, education camps, rape camps--all simply represent the way that the modern homunculus envisions solution. Since all is quantifiable, then mass society itself must run according to rigorously definable formula and theorems. All must conform to a faceless anonymity, since difference upsets the calculation and produces incoherent blanks in the smoothly running machinery of political expediency.

All must achieve sameness because anything else threatens the uniformity of the solution. Difference implies specialness-specialness implies non-standard treatment--non-treatment implies a desire to get something for oneself that others cannot have.

Bin-Laden et al. represent a romantic response to the facelessness of this evil. Harnessing the energy of violence and holy terror, they hope to run the locomotive of levelling off its track. What the romantic terrorist does not realize is that they are simply manifestations of this greater spiritual void. Even were they to win, their solution would simply be a mirror image of the demon they hope to vanquish. They would create a state in which the individual supposedly would find their ultimate home; but there is no home in the void. There is simply a camp that is set up to quash all individual responsibility in the name of a greater truth embodied in a doctrine whose authority is assured not by individual experience of its truth but by communal indoctrination and totalitarian regimentation.

We in the west, of course, fare no better. We have lived with the consequences of levelling and have visited its rapacious lusts on other peoples, exporting thereby the evil that lurks in our hearts. We have hoped to cleanse ourselves of the ugly face of human deceit and murderous resentment by sanitizing our own lands and homes and casting the demons into a wilderness that we ourselves create in lands we deem unenlightened and undemocratic.

There are certainly manifestations of this evil at home, but it only lives within the hard-wired minds of serial killers. We image the truth of this evil in our stories and shows and it serves as entertainment for our young and at our evening meals. Although we know that the evil is a biological malfunction, we secretly delight in numbering how many bodies are buried under the house or discarded along the roadside like so much trash.

The greatest boost to faceless anonymity is the internet, where we can live and dream as disembodied spirits, without responsibility and without facing the consequences of our actions. Again, the dream of living a life without friction and pain is an anodyne whose unreality simply makes it more alluring. We lose ourselves in becoming what we are not, and assuming roles that we could never achieve in real life. And thereby the notion of real life loses its meaning; all becomes simply a concatenation of ones and zeroes whose meaning is that it is.

The internet promises that information solves problems. But not all problems involve information. Life's problems demand blood and sweat and emotional and intellectual harmony--but when the mind becomes a computer all is turned into an algorithmic series of routines that find fulfillment as simply as the belly finds fullness. The internet promises debate and openness so that all is accessible to all and no one is denied access to the information that they need to find answers. But when there is no one there and the questions that need to be asked are not asked, what is the use of a universe of information?

The point of this post is that these words I write are simply meaningless, but will also seem to herald a meaning that touches something that cannot be put into words. Read more!