Informant38

"information warfare"
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I could be wrong -- my wife and kids assure me I am wrong about most things. But I have at least one scholarly author type on my side, Dr. Morris Berman, who argues that we are indeed seeing the approach of a new Dark Age. I'm willing to bet that the tens of millions living on less than a dollar a day or any of the women and children sold into the world's multibillion-dollar sex-slave trafficking (including those under American auspices of Dyncorp and Halliburton subsidiaries like KBR) feel that it's here already. Not that anyone is asking them or anyone else in the Third World.

Bageant/Counterpunch
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an "academic exercise"
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Senator John McCain came last month; Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, residents say, cannot be far behind.
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Child welfare officials are scrambling to find foster homes for dozens of girls removed from a secretive West Texas religious retreat built by polygamist leader Warren Jeffs after a 16-year-old living there complained of physical abuse.
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"it would not be safe for those children to remain in the compound," she said
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December 2007 - An estimated two million children in Iraq continue to face threats including poor nutrition, disease and interrupted education.
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November 2002 - Child malnutrition rates in the south and center of Iraq have fallen to the lowest level since they peaked in 1996
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"Well, the UN has criticized Israel for human rights abuses in the same breath as they criticized Serbia and Chechnya. You cannot take that seriously," he said with a smirk.
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A woman who claims she was raped by a fellow employee while working for a U.S. contractor in Iraq told House lawmakers Wednesday that her case is far from unique.
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Humanitarian assistance reaches a very small minority of Iraqi refugees in Syria. Many refugees interviewed by Amnesty International said they received no food and that their savings had dried up.
Some Iraqi families have even resorted to forcing their daughters to engage in prostitution to earn money just to survive. Child prostitution and trafficking of Iraqi children is said to be growing, to the concern of the Syrian government.
"The situation of Iraqi refugees is dire and worsening by the day, despite the efforts of the Syrian authorities and local and international humanitarian organizations," said Smart. "The response of the international community must go beyond accepting token numbers of refugees from Iraq - their assistance must constitute a significant part of the solution to this terrible crisis."

AI 26.Jul.07
also AI 25.Jul.07
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Redacted has met mixed reviews and triggered outrage among some conservatives with calls for a boycott (a website, www.boycottredacted.com, was set up) and talk show host and critic Michael Medved claiming it "could be the worst movie I've ever seen."
"It appears that De Palma is just the latest moviemaker eager to foist a heavy-handed anti-war picture on the public, and frankly some of these shrill screeds are starting to look silly," wrote reviewer Kam Williams.
The film's dire performance follows the public's similarly lacklustre response to other recent releases themed around the Iraq war and post-September 11 policy. In the Valley of Elah, from Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis and based on true events linked to the Iraq war, has made less than $7 million since its September release despite a cast including Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon.

TelegraphUK 29.Nov.2007
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The U.S. invasion of March 2003 brought prostitution back to Iraq within a matter of weeks. The Iraq War has now lasted eight times longer than the Gulf War deployments, and is marked by a huge reliance on private security contractors. A U.S. ban on human trafficking, signed by President Bush in January 2006, has not been applied to these contractors.

McNutt/Counterpunch 11.Jul.07
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People should not to be deceived by the media. The US public needs to think of us not as things but as human beings who also have a right to live and have our children educated just like children here. Why were our universities destroyed when they look after your universities so well? Our museums, all the historical and cultural aspects of our lives have been destroyed as well. Why did the occupiers do that?

We don’t represent Iraqi women, we are women from Iraq who have witnessed the occupation and we are here to tell our side of the story. We want people to know how the Iraqi people have not only suffered from the severe sanctions but are now suffering again from this unjust war. Our basic infrastructure such as schools, bridges, hospitals, sewage, and water system have been destroyed. Everything was destroyed completely and only the ministry of oil was saved. In the search for Saddam Hussein, our children, women and men are constantly under bombardment. We ask ourselves how and why did this happen? Iraq is even smaller than the state of California. All this destruction was done under the guise of searching for weapons of mass destruction and toppling Saddam Hussein. Instead, the US administration toppled the whole of Iraq, destroyed houses and the lives of people.
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One of the impacts of wars and sanctions has been a rapid increase in prostitution in Iraq. Prior to 1991, levels of prostitution were relatively low. However, over the last decade prostitution rates have sky rocketed. Many men died in the wars, and sanctions left women in financial difficulty. More and more women, as well as children now, are involved in prostitution in order to make a living. I recently completed a project working with children who are 10, 11, 12 years old -- not even teenagers -- who are working in this industry.

I have seen many cases of violence against women recently. One specific case that stands out is that of a 9-year old girl who was brutally raped and continued to bleed for 10 days and her body was bruised in ways that is hard to even imagine. When I asked her what had happened, she could not even explain to me what she had experienced.

Middle East Women’s Studies Review Fall 2003/Spring 2004