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Monday, February 28, 2011

Roman Catholic Church rapes, aborts

Unchecked church crimes
Violating with impunity — 
Bowing down and kissing rings? 
Predator priests and killers of women
Editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett

Vatican reports cite countless cases of nuns forced to have sex, abort priest-caused pregnancies

Some of those victimized by priests “were obliged to take ‘the pill.’”

“Others impregnated by priests “were encouraged to have abortions.”

One case in which the nun “was forced to have an abortion, [the woman] died during the operation — her aggressor [rapist shamelessly] led the funeral mass.”

“Another case involved 29 nuns from the same congregation.” All of these women were impregnated by “priests in the diocese.”

The Catholic Church in Rome has admitted being aware that its priests living in at least “23 countries have been sexually abusing nuns.”

Most of these abuses occurred in Africa.

First, these predator-priests vowed to celibacy used prostitutes.
But that was not enough for them, so they started “[preying] on nuns to avoid contracting the AIDS virus.”


GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER


The Roman Catholic Church [and all religionists involved] let this criminal behavior happen over and over and over for years and in so doing condoned the intimidation, rape, otherwise abuse, and killing of women.

A 2001 Independent (UK) article reported, “… [In] 1998, Sister Marie McDonald, mother superior of the Missionaries of Our Lady of Africa, put together a paper entitled ‘The Problem of the Sexual Abuse of African Religious in Africa and Rome.’ [McDonald] submitted the document to the Council of 16, a group made up of delegates of the international association of women and men’s religious communities, the Vatican office responsible for religious life.…

When [McDonald] addressed bishops on the problem, many of them felt the sisters were “disloyal” to send reports.

“[McDonald] noted that a contributing cause was the ‘conspiracy of silence.’”




Sources

“Sad story out of Africa involving more apparent cover-ups by the Vatican” — The State of the Nation Midday open thread (Dante Atkins for Daily Kos), February 26, 2011, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/26/950008/-Midday-open-thread

“Vatican confirms report of sexual abuse and rape of nuns by priests in 23 countries” (Frances Kennedy in Rome), March, 21, 2001, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vatican-confirms-report-of-sexual-abuse-and-rape-of-nuns-by-priests-in-23-countries-688261.html

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]


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Sunday, February 27, 2011

Righteous indignation late, disingenuous

All eyes watch the unveiling, not necessarily the unraveling, of West-Qaddafi-West complicity in long-developing, cross-continental disasters
Editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett 
Muammar al- Qaddafi (also spelled Muammar Khadafy, Moammar Gadhafi, or Mu’ammar Al-qadhdhāfī, b. 1942, near Surt, Libya), leader of Libya from 1970, a controversial Arab statesman, born in a tent in the Libyan desert, the son of an itinerant Bedouin farmer, 1963 graduate of the University of Libya, 1965 graduate of Libyan military academy, a Muslim and Arab nationalist. As a military captain in 1969, Qaddafi seized control of the government in a military coup that deposed King Idrīs; and “was named commander in chief of the armed forces and chairman of Libya’s new governing body, the Revolutionary Command Council.”

“The United States and other Western nations, including Britain, have very significant business ties to Libya,” led Free Speech Radio News headlines on Friday.

“When diplomatic relations with Libya resumed in 2004, U.S. companies were among those who rushed to stake their claim. Several companies lobbied to ensure their access to Libya’s considerable oil reserves.”

“There was something unusually intimate — craven, even — about the political and business relationship between London and Libya,” Peter Popham wrote in last Wednesday’s Independent (UK). Quoting London School of Economics Professor Fawaz Gerges, he writes, “‘you cannot exaggerate the role played by Blair and Britain in bringing Qaddafi in from the cold.…  In 2004, Qaddafi was still a maverick — someone dismissed as an insane, babbling idiot by most serious people. … [And] by allowing Qaddafi to rebrand himself, [former UK Prime Minister Tony] Blair sacrificed principle at the altar of economic gain. The rest of British business duly followed.’”

Since leaving office, the prime minister, now running an advisory business called Tony Blair Associates, “has travelled to Tripoli on business for JPMorgan Chase, the U.S. bank — and met Col. Qaddafi as recently as last summer.”

40 years’ brutality for oil

“Long-term watchers of Colonel Qaddafi remember the way he toyed with sub-Saharan Africa, championing the notion of Africa United — while his own citizens treated the [other] Africans on their doorstep worse than dirt.” Popham wrote.

“They will remember how he winked at the mass trafficking of migrants from his coast to Italy, to put pressure on Silvio Berlusconi's government to sign a generous deal of wartime reparations – and once it was signed he threw the would-be migrants into his vile jails, to the satisfaction of xenophobic Italians.

“They will remember how he allowed absurd charges to be leveled against a group of Bulgarian nurses in the country and kept the case going for years until he had extracted a sufficiently huge European bribe to let them go. He has behaved, in other words, exactly like a mafia boss.…

“[Yet] Trade between Italy and Libya today is eight times that between Tripoli and the UK. …” French president Nicolas Sarkozy “has received Col. Qaddafi in his capital city, where the Bedouin tent was set up within sight of the Elysée palace. The United States, Brazil and Germany have all rushed to do business with [the Qaddafi] regime.”

Britain’s [Blair’s] foreign secretary Jack Straw in 2004 quoted last week in the Financial Times —

“Libya has oil and so do other countries whose regimes we would not voluntarily choose… The world needs energy and the simple truth is that if we had been more fastidious in our approach, then other countries — notably China — would have moved in to take our place.”

Sir Vincent Fean, UK ambassador to Libya quoted last week in the Financial Times —

“We need to work with what we have in Libya … you shouldn’t be frightened by the name Qaddafi … It goes with the territory.”

Really? 

This mea culpa, “we-have-no-choice” fatalistic fakery, this disingenuousness, is believable but only if we also believe there are no other, indeed greater minds in the world

Minds fresh with constructive ideas there are among us bursting with industry and innovation, resourcefulness and alternatives beyond the oppressive status quo crafted and contained by mass propagandists and makers and traders of lethal weapons. The idea of having no choice falls on its face, but only if the rest of us — owning no propaganda machines or weapons of mass destruction — stop being lazy, hiding in our hovels huddled up to our screens, stop being scared of our shadows.



Sources and notes
Qaddafi, Muammar al-. (2008). Encyclopædia Britannica. Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica
“Libyan revolution at odds with U.S. business interests,” February 25, 2011, http://fsrn.org/audio/libyan-revolution-odds-with-us-business-interests/8094
Independent.co.uk
Libya is peering into a vacuum of Qaddafi 's making (Peter Popham), February 23, 2011, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/peter-popham/peter-popham-libya-is-peering-into-a-vacuum-of-Qaddafi s-making-2222906.html
“Libya: No line in the sand” (James Blitz and Lina Saigol), February 25 2011,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/198e48b4-411a-11e0-bf62-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1F5JqEIye
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/198e48b4-411a-11e0-bf62-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1F5JPoBfw
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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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Saturday, February 26, 2011

Fact, Impact of flawed foreign relations

Re-reporting, editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett

“No man, for any considerable period,
can wear one face to himself,
and another to the multitude,
without finally getting bewildered
as to which may be the true.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, 1850—


U.S. FOREIGN RELATIONS
AFGHANISTAN

Ten people died and 25 suffered wounds today during three attacks on civilians in the Shirin Tagab district, Faryab province of the north and in the Khost province of the east of Afghanistan. Roadside bombs, IEDs, and suicide bombs reportedly caused the deaths. Among the civilian dead were women and four children.

Earlier on Saturday, three rockets fired into the heart of Kabul, the capital, and one landed close to the presidential palace. Last Sunday, five suicide attackers targeted a bank in the eastern city of Jalalabad; 40 people died and 70 suffered wounds in that incident. Last month Taliban suicide bombers attacked two shopping centers in Kabul.
Foreign forces and Afghans are debating who inflicted burns on Afghan children, Afghan parents or foreign forces.

Quoting unidentified sources, the Washington Post “reported Tuesday that Gen. David Petraeus, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, had suggested that Afghans might have intentionally burned their own children to exaggerate claims of civilian casualties.”

On the other side, the director of the health department for Kunar province, Assadulah Fazeli, in his comments on patients from the Ghazi Abad district, said, though he did not know where or when the children had sustained the injuries, “all [the children’] injuries were caused by a bomb. The burns “were consistent with an explosion…. [The children's] are all from the same family and all the injuries they have are multiple wounds from a bomb. This has been determined by the doctors in the hospital that the wounds are from an air strike and each one of these patients has multiple wounds on different parts of their bodies.”

Foreign coalition forces are conducting an investigation into claims that international troops killed scores of civilians in northeast Afghanistan.


U.S. Army Colonel Patrick Hynes is investigating allegations by Kunar province governor Fazilullah Wahidi that U.S.-led NATO forces killed up to 63 people, including women and children in air strikes on suspected rebels and Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s accusations that “about 50 civilians have been martyred during international military forces operations in Ghaziabad district in Kunar province.” 


U. S. Generals’ war according to ROLLING STONE —
 “The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in ‘psychological operations’ to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war,” Michael Hastings writes in a February 23 Rolling Stone magazine article.  “When an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators....

“The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war.

“‘My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave,’ says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders.‘ I am prohibited from doing that to our own people.

“‘When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line.’... According to the Defense Department’s own definition, psy-ops – the use of propaganda and psychological tactics to influence emotions and behaviors – are supposed to be used exclusively on ‘hostile foreign groups.’

“The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an increasingly unpopular war.


U.S. FOREIGN RELATIONS
PAKISTAN

In the latest on this case of impunity, a United States CIA agent and former Blackwater operative accused in the double murder of two men last month “refuses to sign Pakistan’s charge sheet.”

Some 2,000 people protested Friday in Lahore rejecting immunity for Davis and demanding justice in the murder case. Organized by the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party, the rally was attended by family members of all three Pakistanis killed in the January 27 incident.

Agence France-Presse reports the hearing in the murder case against Raymond Davis took place amid high security in Kot Lakhpat jail in Lahore where [Davis] is being held and was adjourned until March 3. Public prosecutor Abdul Samad told AFP, “Davis refused to sign the copy insisting that he be released and claiming that he enjoys immunity.”

Under international laws, embassy diplomats have full diplomatic immunity whereas consular officials are liable for detention in case of grave crimes.

The revelation that Davis was a CIA contractor — when making the arrest after the January 27 shooting, police found a “Glock pistol, four loaded magazines, a GPS navigation system and a small telescope in his car” — has further strained Pakistan’s fragile government and further inflamed “public mistrust of Washington.”


Four people died Friday when militants or rebels in northwest Pakistan, on the outskirts of the city of Peshawar, “blew up at least 11 tankers carrying fuel for NATO troops in neighboring Afghanistan.”

Pakistan closed its main northwestern border crossing to NATO supply vehicles for 11 days last September after a cross-border NATO helicopter assault killed two Pakistani soldiers.

An assistant who had been in the cab of the tanker on Friday and sustained burn wounds told reporters, “Some of [the attackers] had covered their faces with masks and ordered all drivers to get down then began planting some gadgets… They shouted that the tankers were supplying fuel to America, which is our enemy and warned us to leave the tankers, which are being blown up.”


U.S. FOREIGN RELATIONS
Domestic WAR ON TERROR

Foreign Student Arrested on Terror Charges
In the U.S. State of Texas, a Saudi national was arrested on terrorism charges. In the United States on a student visa, Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari was accused of “purchasing chemicals and equipment with the intent to make a bomb, his alleged targets former U. S. president George W. Bush and three former U.S. military officials stationed at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq where scores of Iraqis were tortured.” White House spokesperson Jay Carney announced the arrest.


U.S. FOREIGN RELATIONS
IRAQ

Iraqi protesters not unlike those in other parts of the Middle East took to the streets of Hawija denouncing government corruption and demanding better services. In clashes presumably with government or military forces two people died and 20 suffered wounds. In Ramadi, 15 people died and 21 suffered wounds after a suicide bomb exploded.

An estimated 5,000 Iraqis demonstrated (seven died) on Friday in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, Agence France-Presse reported. Protesters threw stones, shoes and plastic bottles at riot police and soldiers blocking off Jumhuriyah Bridge and “overturned two concrete blast walls, which had been erected to seal off access to Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, home to the U.S. embassy and parliament.”

After the prime minister claimed that Al-Qaeda insurgents and loyalists of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein had organized the demonstrations, security forces imposed a citywide ban on vehicles and brought out water cannons. The government imposed similar curfews on the central cities of Samarra, Tikrit and Baquba, and the western city of Ramadi — all places that endured some of the worst violence after the 2003 U.S. invasion ousted the Iraqi president.

Transparency International has rated Iraq the fourth most corrupt country in the world. Nearly eight years since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of the country, Iraq “suffers poor electricity and water provision, and high unemployment.

Rallies across U.S.-occupied Iraq are calling for “improved public services, more jobs and less corruption, and broader political reforms.”

IRAQ’s OIL
One person died Saturday and an oil refinery in the Iraqi town of Baiji shut down following a fire started by a bomb attack. The Agence France Presse (Jane Arraf) report from Baghdad quoted the deputy director of the state-owned North Oil Company saying that unknown gunmen equipped with silencers infiltrated the biggest refinery in the Baiji refining complex, laid Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in several operational units and fled before detonating them.

Iraq has three major refineries in Baiji (with an overall capacity of 290,000 barrels, operating at 70 per cent capacity before the attack) in the north, Basra in the south, and Dora in south Baghdad with a combined capacity to handle 550,000 barrels per day of crude. Attacks in Iraq “still occur on a daily basis.”


AFRICA

Rising

The editor of Pambazuka Online, an advocacy website for social justice in Africa, writes, “Egypt is in Africa” and warns that we should not fall for attempts by the North “to segregate countries of North Africa from the rest of the continent. Their histories have been intertwined for millennia,” Firoze Manji says.

Globalization and the accompanying economic liberalization create circumstances in which the people of the global South share very similar experiences:

Increasing pauperization, growing unemployment, declining power to hold their governments to account, declining income from agricultural production, increasing accumulation by dispossession — something that is growing on a vast scale — and increasing willingness of governments to comply with the political and economic wishes of the North.

“… Most American media compulsively ignore everything south of the Sahara and north of Johannesburg. A demonstration has to be filmed, photographed, streamed-live into the offices of foreign leaders to achieve everything Egypt’s achieved.” This “journalistic shortcoming, says Nanjala, a political analyst at the University of Oxford, “‘stems from journalists’ tendency to favor explanations that fit the whole ‘failing Africa’ narrative.’”

U.S. President Barack Obama publicly condemns the use of violence in Bahrain, Yemen and Libya but “when was the last time you saw Obama come out and make a statement on Ivory Coast, or Eastern Congo, or Djibouti where 20,000 people protested over the past weekend?”

Twenty African countries among them Zimbabwe and Nigeria have scheduled elections for 2011; but as food prices continue to rise and economic hardship tightens its grip on the region, it is plausible to imagine Africans revolting and using means other than the often-meaningless ballot box to remove their leaders.

“What people want is the democratization of society, of production, of the economy, and indeed all aspects of life,” says Manji. “What they are being offered instead is the ballot box but elections don’t address the fundamental problems that people face. Elections on their own do nothing to enable ordinary people to determine their own destiny.…

“It is difficult to quantify the role of social media in the popular uprisings gaining momentum across the Arab world but it is even more difficult to quantify the effect of the perception of being ignored — of not being watched, discussed and, well, retweeted to the throngs of others needing to be heard.

“Ignoring the developments in Africa is to miss half the story.”



U.S.-led
WAR DEAD?
Casualty sites reporting February 26, 2011
(Accurate totals unknown)
• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003
[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 211]
Wounded 32,967-100,000
U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000
Suicides estimated: 18 a day
Latest update on this site: February 25, 2011
http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
• Iraq Body Count
Worldwide update on civilians killed in the Iraq war and occupation— Documented civilian deaths from violence
99,712 – 108,866
http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties figures:
IRAQ: 4,439 U.S.; 4,757 Coalition
AFGHANISTAN: 1,483 U.S.; 2,341 Coalition
http://icasualties.org/oif/


Migrations in fear fleeing conflict then ostracized and rejected by the West are, in the first instance, caused by the West’s new colonization, invasion and occupation, and by Western-stoked conflict among factions who carry arms sold/trafficked/traded to them by the West.


Consequences of
FLAWED FOREIGN RELATIONS POLICY

Focusing on terrorism and immigration, Western countries have damaged their own interests, says Jeremy Keenan, a research associate at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

“Whether it is the French, the Americans or the British, the preoccupation with Islamists and terrorism has undermined Western intelligence services’ ability to understand political and social dynamics in the region.”

“North African leaders have worked with the West against Islamists and migrants — becoming more repressive as a result.…

Adding fuel to the fire, European Union member nations’ arms exports to Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco rose significantly over the past five years. “Arms export licenses from the EU to the four countries,” according to the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), rose from $1.3 billion to $2.7 billion in 2009.”

Western nations and leaders, acting out of their own interests, have supported anti-democratic leaders, supported corruption, and destroyed peoples and nations.

Uprisings in North Africa lay bare Western governments’ relationships with regimes in the region— relationships long “fixated on anti-terrorism, immigration and oil.” Keenan says, “These states have become more repressive in the knowledge that they have the backing of the West.”

“‘People aspire to freedom, and they haven’t been able to enjoy that freedom, partly thanks to the support of Western countries.

“No man, for any considerable period,
can wear one face to himself,
and another to the multitude,
without finally getting bewildered
as to which may be the true.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, 1850—



Sources and notes
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 15th and 125th anniversary edition revised and enlarged John Bartlett, ed. Emily Marison Beck, Little, Brown and Company, 1980; Also quote variation at Thinkexist.com http://thinkexist.com/quotation/no_man-for_any_considerable_period-can_wear_one/14333.html
Nathaniel (b. ‘Hathorne’) Hawthorne (1804-1864): U.S. writer of short stories, biography and novels born in Salem and spent adult life in Concord, Massachusetts, friend of Henry David Thoreau. Among Hawthorne works Twice-Told Tales (1837); The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851); after European travels, The Marble Faun (1860) and Our Old Home (1863)
“Civilians killed in Afghan attacks — Children and women among at least 10 killed and 25 injured in violence across the country,” February 26, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/02/2011226111723677780.html#
“Tensions rise over Afghan civilian deaths” (Associated Press), February 25, 2011; original URL of this page is:
http://topnews360.tmcnet.com/topics/associated-press/articles/2011/02/25/148469-tensions-rise-over-afghan-civilian-deaths.htm

“NATO accused of killing 50 civilians in air strikes,” February 20, 2011; February 21: (Ben Farmer, Kabul): a “morning blast in the northern province of Kunduz took the death toll from a recent wave of attacks on government buildings and security forces to over 100”;
February 14: “Suicide bomber attacks up-scale market shopping center” Scores of Afghan civilians, police and soldiers have died in recent weeks in a string of bloody bombings.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8338713/Taliban-suicide-bomber-kills-30-in-attack-on-government-office.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8336818/Nato-accused-of-killing-50-civilians-in-air-strikes.html
“Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators,” February 10, 2011,
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/another-runaway-general-army-deploys-psy-ops-on-u-s-senators-20110223
“Pakistan Trial of CIA Operative Adjourns,” Democracy Now headlines (According to Reuters, two U.S. citizens were quietly withdrawn from Pakistan last month after causing a fatal car accident as they came to Davis’s aid. A police report says the pair struck a Pakistani motorist, only to flee the scene. … On Thursday, Pakistan’s main spy agency, the ISI, announced it is scaling back cooperation with the CIA), February 25, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/25/headlines
“U.S. shooter refuses to sign Pakistan charge sheet,” (AFP), http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20110225/twl-us-pakistan-unrest-shooting-court-di-4bdc673.html

“Four die as NATO tankers attacked in Pakistan” (AFP), February 25, 2011, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20110225/twl-pakistan-unrest-nato-northwest-4bdc673.html
“Seven killed on Iraq ‘Day of Rage’ AFP - Saturday, February 26, 2011, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20110225/twl-iraq-politics-unrest-575b600.html
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/25/headlines
“Blast prompts Iraq refinery closure — At least one employee dead after attack sets alight facility that produces 11 million litres of petroleum a day.” February 26, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/02/201122654436778763.html#
Yasmine Ryan, February 25, 2011, Yasmine Ryan on Twitter @yasmineryan, http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/02/201121310169828350.html# 
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/02/201122164254698620.html#

The arms business has a devastating impact on human rights and security, and damages economic development. Large-scale military procurement and arms exports only reinforce a militaristic approach to international problems — The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) in the UK works to end the international arms trade. In seeking to end the arms trade, CAAT’s priorities are

To stop the procurement or export of arms where they might: Exacerbate conflict, support aggression, or increase tension • Support an oppressive regime or undermine democracy • Threaten social welfare through the level of military spending

To end all government political and financial support for arms exports; and 

To promote progressive demilitarization within arms-producing countries

CAAT considers that security needs to be seen in much broader terms that are not dominated by military and arms company interests. A wider security policy would have the opportunity to reallocate resources according to actual threats and benefits, including addressing major causes of insecurity such as inequality and climate change. CAAT values the diversity of opinion amongst its supporters and is committed to nonviolence in all its work, http://www.caat.org.uk/about/


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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]


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Thursday, February 24, 2011

Sadly, NOT ONLY IN LIBYA

Insider trading, dirty politics, torturers — Friends of BHO
Reward high-placed criminals or end masterminds’ impunity? What's it going to be?
Re-reporting, editing, comment by Carolyn Bennett

Will the U.S. president hand out another “Medal of Freedom” to the Bush family?

Among the people the U.S. president handed out the 2010 Medal of Freedom award, an award apparently as meaningless as a Nobel Peace Prize to war mongers, were Middle East invading 41th U.S. president businessman George H.W. Bush; and Goldman Sachs/Bank of America co-conspirator, profiteer in financial crisis Warren Edward Berkshire Hathaway Buffett.

George HW
The nature of “Medal of Freedom” recipient George HW’s character emerges in his insistence, during his presidency, on going to war against Iraq under the guise of protecting Kuwait and invading Somalia until the guise of feeding the hungry.

Campaigning and in office, George H. W. Bush made a name for himself as a dirty-ad political campaigner and a mendacious “flip flopper.”  In his first presidential campaign, he declared that his opponent, Ronald W. Reagan , was spouting raise-revenue/reduce-taxes “voodoo economics”; then threw in with Reagan to win the vice presidency.

Asked in later years about his knowledge of Reagan’s lawless Iran-Contra deal (using funds from the illegal sale of arms to Iran to fund Contra rebels fighting the Marxist government of Nicaragua), Bush claimed he had been “‘out of the loop’ [but he knew] about the arms sale to Iran.”

Still later, closing in on the brass ring, HW accepted the presidential nomination of his party calling his opponent, Michael Dukakis, a “‘card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union’” — echoing McCarthyism, words used during the 1950s Red Scare by Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Also during that 1988 campaign, H.W.’s dirty tricks ad masters made famous felon Willie Horton and hung Horton’s crimes on Governor Dukakis. The Massachusetts legislature had enacted a prisoner furlough program during Dukakis’s tenure as governor and the Bush people claimed, “Dukakis had let Horton loose to ‘terrorize innocent people.’” Father foreshadows son’s “war on terror” yet to come.

Among his presidential promises to garner votes, George H. W. Bush pledged continuance of Reagan’s [trickle-down-union-busting] economic program from which he later attempted to backtrack but the precedent continues in the administration now handing him a “Medal of Freedom.”

WEB
Market manipulating billionaire Warren E. Buffett, likely conspiring with the Obama administration’s Golden Sachs friends, appears to have profited from the global financial crash instigated by those friends.

Private investor and editor of The Rational Walk, Ravi Nagarajan notes, “Within a span of several days [in 2008], Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed into conservatorship, Lehman Brothers was left with no choice but to file for bankruptcy, and Merrill Lynch was forced into the arms of Bank of America.”

In the summer of 2007, Warren Buffett bought Bank of America Corp. and Dow Jones & Co. Inc. and according to his investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, this hiked Buffett’s ownership to “40 stocks” whose value totaled “$61.1 billion.”

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, on October 1, 2008, “purchased $5 billion of perpetual preferred shares in Goldman Sachs, Ravi Nagarajan continues, “paying a 10 percent annual dividend and received warrants to buy $5 billion in common stock at a strike price of $115 per share. … Warren Buffett insisted that Goldman’s top executives agree to limit their personal sales of Goldman common stock until the preferred shares are redeemed or three years had passed from the date of Berkshire’s investment.…

“Berkshire’s investment in Goldman Sachs was executed at favorable terms precisely because Warren Buffett’s “seal of approval” helped to establish confidence that convinced the financial markets that Goldman would be among the survivors of the financial crisis.…

“While future CEOs of Berkshire Hathaway are very likely to have the cash required to pursue large deals during periods of financial turmoil, it is clear that the terms of Berkshire’s transactions during the 2008-2009 financial crisis were substantially enriched by the intangible benefit of obtaining Warren Buffett’s stamp of approval.”

Fathers and sons, insiders, dark precedents and lawlessness

If society or officials in public office allow anyone to breach laws and human rights principles with impunity, then everyone everywhere exists in a global society of lawlessness. Therefore, whoever and wherever the lawbreakers, they must be brought before the bar of justice.

George W
TORTURE INDICTMENTS proposed

Human rights groups in United States of America and around the world are working to hold former U.S. president George W. Bush “accountable for what many international law scholars believe to be human rights abuses and war crimes.”

This George Bush has said in his memoir released this past November that when the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency asked if he would authorize them to proceed with waterboarding a detainee, the former president writes in his book that he replied, “‘Damn right, I do.’” The detainee was then waterboarded 183 times in a single month. Other detainees were then subjected to waterboarding. The way was paved for even more abuses.

Former U.S. President George W. Bush signed a memorandum February 7, 2002, decreeing that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the Taliban or al Qaeda detainees. This included inapplicability of the clause prohibiting “inhumane treatment, an act of torture.” 

A bipartisan U.S. Senate committee report has found that this memorandum “[paved] the way for the abuses of detainees in the war on terror.”

Following its presidential inauguration, the Barack Obama administration — packed with Reaganites and corporate types, lawyers and lawbreakers, and financiers — has circumvented U.S. and international laws and in a real sense has been complicit in lawlessness. Regarding prosecution of these crimes perpetrated by U.S. officials, this president has decreed, “‘we want to look forward; we do not want to look backwards.’ They have decided not to initiate any serious investigation into the criminal responsibility of higher-ups.”

This decree in cowardice, acquiescence, protracted criminality cannot stand. 


Waterboarding is torture. Waterboarding is a crime. Torture is a crime. The masterminds, the deciders, the authorizers of these crimes must be prosecuted.

The jurist and legal researcher with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Claire Tixeire, concludes an interview about human rights organizations’ proposed indictment of former president George W. Bush and Co.

“The Indictment for Torture for Bush,’” the document released by the CCR, “is a living document that we are going to be updating and strengthening. We are going to be looking at where [George W.] Bush is traveling next.

“He is scheduled to go to Canada [in] October so we are going to be working with Canadian groups and seeing what can be done over there.

“We are also looking at other Bush administration officials like former Vice President Richard (Dick) Cheney, former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, or former Director of Central Intelligence in Clinton and Bush administrations George Tenet as well as the administration’s lawyers John Yoo, David Addington or Jay Bybee. We have those cases ready for them and we will pursue accountability wherever and whenever we can.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights, in addition to filing the first cases representing men detained at Guantánamo, has filed universal jurisdiction cases seeking accountability for torture by Bush administration officials in Germany, France and submitted expert opinions and other documentation to ongoing cases in Spain in collaboration with the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR).

The Center for Constitutional Rights, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and the International Federation of Human Rights were joined by more than 60 human rights organizations and prominent individuals who are signatories calling for the prosecution of George W. Bush. In the “Bush Torture Indictment” are 2,500 pages of supporting materials.

Individual signers include former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Theo van Boven, former UN Special Rapporteur on Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Leandro Despouy, and Nobel Peace Prize recipients Shirin Ebadi and Pérez Esquivel. A number of the human rights organizations that signed on are facing the on-going harms of the ‘counterterrorism’ policies advanced under the Bush administration then adopted or employed in their own countries.


Sources and notes
Bush, George H.W. (2011). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton

Warren Buffett Seizes Opportunities During Financial Crisis, February 23, 2011, article excerpt from The Rational Walk’s upcoming report: Berkshire Hathaway: In Search of the ‘Buffett Premium’ http://www.gurufocus.com/news.php/contenido/external/frontend/contenido/ajaxstarrater/db.php?id=123381; Disclosure: Long Berkshire Hathaway; Ravi Nagarajan is a private investor and Editor of The Rational Walk website.

“Warren Buffett Buys Bank Of America Corp., Dow Jones & Co. Inc., Addsto US Bancorp, Sells H&R Block Inc., Pier 1 Imports Inc.”, August 2007, http://www.gurufocus.com/news.php?id=11471

CCR
Attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South founded in 1966 the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change. The Center for Constitutional Rights dedicates itself to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, www.ccrjustice.org. Follow @theCCR.
ECCHR
The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights is an independent, non-profit legal organization that enforces human rights by holding state and non-state actors to account for egregious abuses through innovative strategic litigation, www.ecchr.eu 
FIDH
The International Federation of Human Rights is a non-governmental federation for 164 human rights organizations. FIDH’s core mandate is to promote respect for all the rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Its priority areas include protecting human rights defenders and fighting impunity.

“The Bush Torture Indictment, the official ‘letter of denunciation’ summarizing the case and other materials,” http://ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/bush-torture-indictment.
Interview with Claire Tixeire, jurist and legal researcher with the Center for Constitutional Rights, conducted by Scott Harris

“Bush to face torture case whenever abroad: activist” (GENEVA—Reuters, Stephanie Nebehay), February 7, 2011, http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/07/us-bush-torture-idUSTRE7164IJ20110207

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]


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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

"Speech Acts" under law

U.S. Ayatollahs’ prosecutable offenses
Edited by Carolyn Bennett

“Protections afforded by the First Amendment are not absolute, and we have long recognized that the government may regulate certain categories of expression consistent with the Constitution....” [Justice Sandra Day O’Connor for the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003]

Charles Glass writes in “The Secular Fatwa on Julian Assange.”

The Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in February of 1989 inciting the faithful to murder author Salman Rushdie for blasphemy.  Professional writers convened in London, New York, and elsewhere within a few days of this action to discuss countering the threat.…

Recent incitements from politicians, journalists, and pundits to murder [WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange are a new, secular fatwa threatening the freedom to disseminate information.… Calls for the death of Assange are incitements to murder as much as was the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa.

The question is whether such speech is protectable under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Those demanding murder [e.g., “Assange ‘should be assassinated’ and (the U.S. president) ‘should put out a contract and maybe use a drone’ to kill him] are not merely stating facts or lies, opinions or observations.… [T]hey are acting — their statements are ‘speech acts.’ …

“If someone comes to your house with a firing squad and declares, ‘Ready, aim, fire’ — when the case comes before the court, the First Amendment would provide no defense against a charge of murder.…”

The [U.S.] Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in July 2003 expressly condemned “the idea that incitement to murder is permissible free speech.” The CPA “shut down the Al Mustaqila newspaper for urging death to ‘spies and those who cooperate with the U.S.’”

Again, Justice O’Connor writes for the Court.

“...a State may punish those words “which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.” We have consequently held that fighting words — ‘those personally abusive epithets which, when addressed to the ordinary citizen, are, as a matter of common knowledge, inherently likely to provoke violent reaction’ — are generally proscribable [prohibited, impermissible] under the First Amendment [of the United States Constitution].”

Therefore, Glass concludes, U.S. Attorneys General in the states where public figures have demanded the killing of Julian Assange must investigate whether these incitements to murder may be prosecutable.


Sources and notes

“The Secular Fatwa on Julian Assange” (Charles Glass), December 14, 2010,  pranvera.smith2@frontlineclub.com. Full article in Takimag.com, edited and published by Taki Theodoracopulos, http://takimag.com/article/the_secular_fatwa_on_julian_assange

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, VIRGINIA, PETITIONER v. BARRY ELTON BLACK, ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF VIRGINIA , April 7, 2003,
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court, http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/virginiavblack.html

Also Case Summary for Virginia v. Black Argued: December 11, 2002 Decided: April 7, 2003, http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/faclibrary/casesummary.aspx?case=Virginia_v_Black

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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Monday, February 21, 2011

Not all rape in DRC — Parallels USA

Some may mourn more than celebrate International Women’s Day
March National Women’s History Month (USA)
Re-reporting, Editing by Carolyn Bennett

Brutal weapon of/in 
conflict and war — RAPE


DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC CONGO

“Down the mountain in Sake [eastern DRC], I meet 40-year-old [woman], Stephen Puddicombe reports on CBC’s Dispatches. “She walks with a baby on her back, product of a gang rape by rebels a couple of years ago. Her husband is dead, she tells me. She’s heading for the water pump, yellow plastic jugs dangle from a rope tied to her waist. She asks, ‘how do you think it feels when a woman who has been raped by a rebel now sees that same man in the army or police.’ She carries on with her chores, slowly plodding toward the line for water.”

There are “about a hundred soldiers all with guns,” Puddicombe reports from the villagers, “so they can’t fight back.”

In 2009 alone, people report there were at least 8,300 rapes in eastern Congo. Aid workers say the true toll is much higher. Among the victims were a month-old baby boy and elderly women. The UN peacekeeping force of 18,000 troops, the largest UN force in the world, has been unable to end the violence.

Now a military colonel has been tried and sentenced to 20 years. Lt. Col. Mutuare Daniel Kibibi has stood “accused of ordering his troops on New Year’s Day to attack the village of Fizi, a sprawling community 20 miles (35 kilometers) south of Baraka on an escarpment of mountains covered in banana trees.”

At trial, according to an AP account today from Baraka, Congo, one after another rape survivor “relived their attacks for a panel of judges: A newly married bride flung her torn, bloodied clothing onto the courtroom floor. A mother of six dropped to her knees, raised her arms … and cried out for peace. Nearly 50 women poured out their stories in a wave of anguish that ended Monday with the soldier’s conviction … for crimes against humanity.”  The verdict constitutes “a landmark decision in a Central African country where thousands are believed to be raped annually by soldiers and militia groups — who often go unpunished. This was “the first time a commanding officer has been tried in such an attack.…”

CBC’s Nick Czernkovich last spring spent three weeks in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He visited relief camps and interviewed people who were trying to stabilize the country.

“Most people here are poor farmers, hoping for enough food to feed their families and maybe a little extra to sell at the market,” he reports, “but that already fragile existence is fraught with the uneasy feeling that at any moment their village could be the target of an attack. … These attacks often happen at night. Armed men break down doors, loot, murder and rape indiscriminately. Entire villages have been robbed, sometimes burned to the ground in a show of force and intimidation.…

“Women are also especially vulnerable, because they are usually the ones who fetch the firewood and work the fields. Alone in the countryside, they fall prey to the roving militiamen who happen to stumble across them.… In the vilest way, women and girls are violated, sometimes beaten, mutilated and gang-raped while their families are forced to watch.”

It was around 1 a.m., one woman in a village near Masis, in North Kivu province, related her story to Nick Czernkovich, “‘when three men came into my house. …  They took all my goods and beat me. Then two of the men took turns raping me. When they [had] finished, the third one came in and asked for money. I told him I didn't have any so he beat me again.’”

This woman “was four months pregnant at the time.” Her husband “had been killed in a previous attack in December 2009.” The woman explained, “The group known as FDLR ‘looted our village and told him to carry their loot into the forest.’” Along the way, “‘they killed him.’”


DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC USA

Rape is “epidemic in U.S. armed forces” so much so that women veterans have taken to suing the U.S. Department of Defense. The class action lawsuit was filed last Tuesday in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District in Virginia on behalf of seventeen plaintiffs including two men. The women gave a press conference about the suit at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Democracy Now gave some attention to the issue last Wednesday.

One of the plaintiffs in the suit is Panayiota Bertzikis, a veteran member of the U.S. Coast Guard who was raped in 2006 by a shipmate. She was off duty and on a social hike at the time. Bertzikis is now executive director of the Military Rape Crisis Center in Somerville, Massachusetts.

“The problem of rape in the military,” Bertzikis said, “is not only service members getting raped, but it is the way the military as a whole is deals with it — survivors having to be involuntarily discharged from service [and] the constant verbal abuse. Once a survivor does come forward your entire unit [turns its] back on you. The entire culture needs to be changed.” On the February 16 Democracy News program, plaintiff Kori Cioca of the U.S. Coast Guard said when she informed her command that she had been raped by another member of the Guard, the command did nothing.

“They didn’t do anything to help me,” she said. “It’s like they didn’t care, it wasn’t important—I wasn’t important. The Coast Guard is the life-saving service, yet they didn’t save mine.”

Continuing the story, Democracy Now reported that in another case, “an Army Reservist says two male service members raped her in Iraq, left her with severe bruises, and then distributed a videotape of the attack. The reservist says no charges were filed after her commander concluded [that] she ‘did not act like a rape victim’ and ‘did not struggle enough’ on the tape.”

The lawsuit against the Pentagon calls for replacing military commanders with a newly created “independent third party to handle sexual abuse complaints.”


Sources and notes

“… [I]n the Democratic Republic of Congo, where former rebels are getting away with murder,” Dispatches Featured Audio, CBC, February 17 and 20: from Lampedusa, Italy - Kingi, Democratic Republic of Congo - Uganda - Iran via Washington - Urumqi, China, February 16, 2011, http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/2010season/2011/02/16/february-17-20-from-lampedusa-italy---sake-democratic-republic-of-congo---uganda---iran-via-washingt/

The CBC’s Stephen Puddicombe reports from the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a story of men in uniform, terrorizing the countryside, February 17, 2011, Dispatches, The state has claimed it’s successfully brought former rebels into the national army, in an attempt to pacify them but people there tell Stephen something else.

“Congo colonel gets 20 years after rape trial” (Michelle Faul— Baraka, Congo — AP), February 21, 2011, http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/congo-colonel-gets-20-years-after-rape-trial-1270578.html?printArticle=y

Sake is a town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the eastern province of North Kivu. It is located at the northwestern extremity of Lake Kivu, 25 kilometers (15 miles) west-northwest of Goma on National Road No. 2 at the edge of the volcanic lava plains in the bottom of the Great Rift Valley, western branch, at an elevation of about 1500 m. The western escarpment of the rift valley rises to 800 m above Sake. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goma

“The sexual violence that fuels a twisted war - Canada - CBC News” (Nick Czernkovich CBC News), August 3, 2010, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2010/07/30/f-congo-sexual-violence.html

“Class action lawsuit,” http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pentagon-faces-class-action-suit-exposing-military-sexual-abuse-crisis/legal-issues/2011/02/15/1743
http://servicewomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/R-SASH-Quick-Facts
-02_12_11.pdf

“U.S. Army ignores rape epidemic within its military and makes it difficult for victims to seek justice — US vets file abuse lawsuit against military,” http://www.wikio.co.uk/video/army-ignores-rape-epidemic-military-justice-5055022


“Veterans File Class Action Suit over Sexual Abuse in Military — Over a dozen U.S. veterans have filed a class action lawsuit seeking to force the Pentagon to reform its handling of sexual abuse. The group of more than a dozen women and two men each claim to have been victimized by rape and other abuses within the military. The suit alleges that sexual crimes generally go unpunished and that victims are often forced to continue serving alongside the perpetrators,” February 16, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/16/headlines#9


Entire text of lawsuit, http://servicewomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/48879866-Military-Rape-and-Sexual-Assault-Litigation.pdf
http://servicewomen.org/our-work/litigation/class-action-lawsuit/

Rape, Sexual Assault, and Sexual Harassment in the Military

The Quick Facts, Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN, Brittany L. Stalsburg), February 2011

Author’s Note: The phrase Military Sexual Trauma (MST) is the official term for the psychological trauma that may result from military rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment.

SWAN considers the term a euphemism and prefers to call these crimes and violations what they are—rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. The term MST masks the severity of this crisis, and it is important to properly name these egregious acts committed against our men and women in uniform.

CRISIS
3,230 military sexual assaults were reported in 2009, an increase of 11 percent from fiscal year 2008.  
215 sexual assaults were reported in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009. 
While sexual assaults are notoriously under-reported, this problem is exacerbated in military settings. The Department of Defense (DoD) estimates that 80 percent of sexual assaults in the military go unreported. This means that in 2009 alone, approximately 16,150 sexual assaults occurred in the military. 
Prosecution rates for perpetrators of rape and sexual assault are astoundingly low 
In 2009, less than 18 percent of reported cases went to trial.

CONSEQUENCES of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) 
Rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment are the primary causal factors of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for women, whereas combat experience is the strongest predictor of PTSD for men. 
 Rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment and their attendant consequences are often risk factors for homelessness among women veterans. 
40 percent of homeless women veterans have reported experiences of sexual assault in the military. 
Stress, depression, and other mental health issues that accompany surviving rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment make it more likely that survivors will experience high rates of substance abuse and will have difficulty finding work after discharge from the military.

AFTERMATH — problems with accessing benefits and treatment 
Rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment survivors who have used Veterans Health Administration (VHA) services report experiencing a ‘second victimization’ while under care, often reporting increased rates of depression and PTSD.  
Female rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment survivors who have used VHA services reported a lower quality of care and dissatisfaction with VHA services compared to women using outside care.  
Women are less likely to receive a PTSD diagnosis compared to men, most likely because PTSD is strongly associated with combat experience.

COSTS of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) 
In 2009, the VHA treated 65,264 patients in connection with MST. 60 percent of survivors were women. This means that 40 percent of patients being treated for conditions associated with MST in 2009 were men.  
The Veterans Administration (VA) spends approximately $10,880 on healthcare costs per military sexual assault survivor. Adjusting for inflation, this means that in 2009 alone, the VA spent almost $820 million dollars on sexual assault-related healthcare expenditures. 
The Department of Defense (DoD) estimates that legal expenses that result from military sexual assault cases average $40,000 per case. 
With 181 sexual assault-related courts-martial in 2007, DoD legal expenses totaled more than $7 million dollars.  
Of women seeking VA disability benefits for PTSD, 62.9 percent of combat veterans and 74.5 percent of noncombat veterans reported an in-service sexual assault. Sexual harassment increases turnover risk by up to 32 percent. Adjusting for inflation, the average cost of attrition per service member in 2010 ranges from approximately $34,621 to 53,251

Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) is spearheading a national movement to end rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment in the military using litigation, legislative remedies, and grassroots public education through —

National help lines, providing legal referrals, counseling referrals, and peer support to both service women and service men, veterans, and family members of survivors of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment in the military. SWAN advocates for justice and healing the wounds
P.O. Box 1758, New York, NY 10156-1758, www.servicewomen.org
Phone: (212) 683-0015 x324, http://servicewomen.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/R-SASH-Quick-Facts-02_12_11.pdf

“U.S. Army ignores rape epidemic within its military and makes it difficult for victims to seek justice — U.S. vets file abuse lawsuit against military,” http://www.wikio.co.uk/video/army-ignores-rape-epidemic-military-justice-5055022


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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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