IRIN

Insecurity and the threat of violence limits women's freedom.

The improved political representation of women in Iraq is in sharp contrast to their broader disempowerment, as highlighted by the persistence of domestic violence and early marriage, according to a new report by the UN Inter-Agency Information and Analysis Unit.

Women may hold 25 percent of seats in the Iraqi parliament, but one in five in the 15-49 age group has suffered physical violence at the hands of her husband. Anecdotal evidence alleges that “many women are being kidnapped and sold into prostitution”, and female genital mutilation is still common in the north, the report notes.

“The situation many Iraqi women and girls face is beyond words,” journalist Eman Khammas told IRIN in a telephone interview. “Before, I was a journalist, a professional; now, I am nothing.”

Khammas noted an underlying political climate of intolerance that has become increasingly poisonous for women. She was forced to flee Iraq after receiving death threats that effectively stopped her - like thousands of other Iraqi women - from working. She now lives in Spain.

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Stephen Lendman

The New York Times got left out of getting advance access
to the latest round of leaked cables. (Associated Press)

On November 28, WikiLeaks began releasing over 250,000 leaked State Department and US Embassy cables (many designated "secret"), dating from 1966 through end of February 2010. Their content ranges from embarrassing to important revelations about US spying on allies and the UN, ignoring corruption and human rights abuses in "client states," corporate lobbying, backroom dealmaking, disparagements of foreign leaders, and overall revealing a much different America than its public persona. Most of all, it offers more proof of a sham democracy, a lawless imperial state rampaging globally though little, if anything, of a smoking gun nature was disclosed.

Unsurprisingly, the London Guardian said the documents

"reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network, with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material. Classified 'human intelligence directives' issued in the name of Hillary Clinton or her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, instruct officials to gather information on military installations, weapons markings, vehicle details of political leaders as well as iris scans, fingerprints and DNA."

Washington's "most controversial target was the leadership of the United Nations." One document requested "the specification of telecoms and IT systems used by top UN officials and their staff and details of 'private VIP networks used for official communication, to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, (and) personal encryption keys."

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Dirk Adriaensens
War Is A Crime.org

Forced disappearances and missing persons: The missing persons of Iraq. -Always someone’s mother or father, always someone’s child.

A forced disappearance (or enforced disappearance) is defined in Article 2 of the Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly On 20 December 2006, as the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law. Often forced disappearance implies murder. The victim in such a case is first abducted, then illegally detained, and often tortured; the victim is then killed, and the body is then hidden. Typically, a murder will be surreptitious, with the corpse disposed of in such a way as to prevent it ever being found, so that the person apparently vanishes. The party committing the murder has deniability, as there is no body to prove that the victim has actually died. [1]

Article 1 of the Convention further states that No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for enforced disappearance.[2]

Neither Iraq, nor the USA have signed or ratified this convention.[3]

The United States refused to sign, saying that the text "did not meet our expectations", without giving an explanation.[4]

Once again the United States placed itself outside the provisions of International Humanitarian law.

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Gordon Duff
Veterans Today

Let’s begin with one fact. We are using expensive, dangerous and illegal scanners in our airports for one reason. A year ago, a single “terrorist,” really a moronic dupe with a defective bomb in his crotch, was escorted onto a plane for Detroit, no search, no passport, not even a ticket, placed on a plane by an airport security officer who is a former IDF “commando.”

These are the facts, plain and simple. The government depends on you not knowing this so you will let them either radiate you or grope you, you get to choose, next time you fly. In order to get away with this affront to decency and common sense, they hid the fact that their “terrorist act” never really happened. Everyone involved, airline personnel, security, all the video, the statements, the names of those who smuggled the “Crotch Bomber” through Schiphol Airport, all missing, vanished into thin air, along with the civil rights of over 300 million Americans.

All we have is a story, more comedy than reality, the scraps of a bomb that could never work, could never damage a plane, a bomb we are supposed to believe traveled 15,000 miles from Yemen through Ghana, Nigeria, the Netherlands to Detroit to burn a hole in someone’s pants. We know security escorted our criminal mastermind onto the plane.

There is a 99.9% chance that they also gave him the bomb. Maybe it was in a Duty Free bag. Nobody ever asked, nobody checked, nobody is asking, nobody is reporting about it. Who has that kind of power?

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Stephen Lendman

"Since WW II, all US wars have been illegal."

Noted analysts on both left and right see America's empire in decline. In his 2009 book, "Global Depression and Regional Wars," James Petras said:

"All the idols of capitalism over the past three decades have crashed. The assumptions and presumptions, paradigms and prognosis of indefinite progress under liberal free market capitalism have been tested and have failed. We are living the end of an entire epoch (and are bearing witness to) the collapse of the US and world financial system," and with it America's empire.

On August 16, Paul Craig Roberts headlined his article, "The Ecstacy of Empire: How Close Is America's Demise," saying:

America's profligacy "is running out of time...." Yet "2010 has been wasted in hype about a non-existant recovery." Government-manipulated reality masks the internal rot. Wall Street handouts and imperial wars are bankrupting the country.

"US military spending reflects the unaffordable and unattainable crazed neoconservative goal of US empire and world hegemony....If the wars are not immediately stopped and the jobs (not) brought back to America, the US is relegated to the trash bin of history....Without a revolution, Americans are history."

Indeed so.

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Stephen Lendman

[A crowd watches before a Christmas tree is lit on Pioneer Courthouse square Friday night, Nov. 26, 2010 in Portland, Ore. Federal agents in a sting operation arrested a Somali-born teenager just as he tried blowing up a van full of what he believed were explosives at the crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony, federal authorities said. The bomb was a fake supplied by the agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said. (AP Photo/The Oregonian, Torsten Kjellstrand) (Salon.com)]

November 27 major media headlines accused him, including New York Times writers Colin Miner, Liz Robbins and Erik Eckholm triple-teaming him in their article titled, "FBI Says Oregon Suspect Planned 'Grand' Attack." Their saying so becomes accepted fact, according to corporate media reports - guilty by accusation.

It happens repeatedly. It's usually strategically timed, in this case to defuse anger over enhanced airport screening. It's also nearly always against Muslims, America's target of choice - of course, to justify imperial wars against Muslim nations. The topic was addressed often in previous articles, including one accessed through THIS link.

It explained how America's war on terrorism exploits and vilifies them. Hollywood and corporate media reports especially portray them stereotypically as culturally inferior, dirty, lecherous, untrustworthy, religiously fanatical, violent, dangerous gun-toting terrorists, wrongfully against Western values, high-mindedness, and moral superiority.

The Times recounted the latest accusation as follows:

"A Somali-born teenager who though he was detonating a car bomb at a packed (Portland, OR) Christmas tree-lighting ceremony downtown here was arrested by the authorities on Friday night after federal agents said that they had spent nearly six months setting up a sting operation" - to entrap him, what Times writers didn't say, or that it's standard FBI practice to snare innocent victims.

They're then wrongfully accused of crimes they either had no intention to commit or wouldn't consider without FBI provocation. In this case, an implied attack against Christmas and Christian values was alleged, or, in other words, "violent" Islam against "peaceful, morally superior" Christianity.

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David Walsh
WSWS

WikiLeaks not only has the legal right, it has the moral obligation to do anything in its power to disrupt these bloody operations. It is to the everlasting shame of the mainstream media that it has not exerted any of its efforts along the same lines.

The batch of 250,000 US classified documents released by WikiLeaks to several news outlets, some of whose content was made public Sunday, sheds new light on the sordid nature of American imperialist intrigue and conspiracy around the globe.

The WSWS will analyze the documents more thoroughly in a subsequent article, but “highlights” published by the Guardian and the New York Times are revealing.

The leaked material consists of classified cables from US embassies, some dispatched as recently as early 2010. The cables, most of which date from 2007-2010, contain US officials’ comments on foreign governments and leaders and speculation about the activities and maneuvers of the latter, as well as details about American foreign policy operations.

In a revelation that should surprise no one, the US State Department and American diplomacy in general turn out to be a vast nest of spies.

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Stephen Lendman

Overall, America's major media fails the test. It is biased, shameless, and irresponsible with "everything to sell and nothing to tell" as a noted US media critic once said. It delivers a daily diet of managed news (propaganda), infotainment, and junk food news, a worthless mix, treating people like mushrooms - well-watered, in the dark, and uninformed about what matters most. No wonder greater numbers opt out, consuming less broadcast "news" and print media, the kind no one should waste time or money on.

No paper has more clout than the New York Times. Media critic Norman Solomon once called its front page "the most valuable square inches of media real estate in the USA" - in fact, anywhere because its reports circulate globally.

In his April 1998 article titled, "All the News Fit to Print (Part I): Structure and Background of the New York Times," Edward Herman called The Times "an establishment newspaper," serving wealth and power interests, a record dating from 1896 when the Ochs-Sulzberger family took control. Its agenda "persist(s) to this day" as two earlier articles explained, accessed through the following links, here and here.

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David Michael Green
The Regressive Antidote

A Message From Dear Leader Palin:

Comrades, your attention please. As we come now to mark a dozen years spent as your Dear Leader, I thought it might be worthwhile to take stock of our achievements. And as Thanksgiving time rolls around once more, I thought it only proper to take stock of our blessings, and give thanks to the Lord Jesus for all he has given us.

We should be thankful, to begin with, for our unity as a nation. Many of us remember well the ugliness of the democracy our parents suffered under, with all its messy dissent and nasty name-calling. That is now over for good. In our last election (which was, truly, our last election), fully one hundred percent of the population of God’s chosen country voted in favor of making me Dear Leader For Life, an astonishing show of unanimity and national will. No more ugliness, no more division, no more worrying “Should I vote for Tweedledee or Tweedledum?” choice. We are one people now, with one Leader, as God always intended.

We must be thankful as well for our freedom from freedoms. I know I speak for all of those from my generation who can remind you younger patriots of how destructive it was to the national peace when anyone could say anything, when people could disrupt our family prayer hour with demonstrations on the street, when sexual deviants could undermine our wholesomeness by getting married or serving in our military, or when Muslims defamed the name of our Lord Jesus by their very presence in America. We are so much freer now without these infernal threats to our well-being and our perfectly rigid belief structure. And we are so much truer to what our blessed Founders had in mind when they wrote our Christian Constitution.

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Stephen Lendman

After the 1898 Spanish-American War, the US took over the Philippines, Guam, Samoa, Hawaii, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Canal Zone, assorted other territories, and Puerto Rico. On September 29, its Governor-General, Manuel Macias y Casado (a Spanish general), ceded control to Washington, its current status today as a colony.

In 1966, then University of Puerto Rico economics associate, Dr. Antonio J. Gonzales said:

"The Puerto Rican Independence Party bases its struggle in favor of the independence of Puerto Rico on the conviction that we continue to be a (US) colony, thus being denied (our) right to freedom and sovereignty."

After taking over in 1898, America

"never granted Puerto Ricans the total control of their lives and destiny. Sovereign powers have never been transferred to us in order to be able to decide in all those areas that affect the collective life of our nation."

For over 112 years, America's had total control, Puerto Ricans virtually none, forced to "accept the dispositions of laws imposed" by a colonial power.

In its relationship with America, Puerto Rico is called "Estado Libre Asociado" (Free Associated State or Commonwealth). Under international law, it's a colony, seeking independence. Therein lies the roots of its struggle, Oscar Lopez Rivera imprisoned for supporting it.

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Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com

Famous euroskeptic Nigel Farage (as seen previously here), in just under 4 brief minutes tells more truth about the entire European experiment than all European bankers, commissioners, and politicians have done in the past decade. As we have already said pretty much all of this before, we present it without commentary:

"Good morning Mr. van Rompuy, you've been in office for one year, and in that time the whole edifice is beginning to crumble, there's chaos, the money's running out, I should thank you - you should perhaps be the pinup boy of the euroskeptic movement. But just look around this chamber this morning, look at these faces, look at the fear, look at the anger. Poor Barroso here looks like he's seen a ghost. They're beginning to understand that the game is up. And yet in their desperation to preserve their dream, they want to remove any remaining traces of democracy from the system.

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Gordon Duff
Veterans Today

[Poverty in Chongjin - North Korea -Chongjin is the third town of North Korea. It is an industrial place where very few foreigners were allowed to go. [F]rom my hotel room, in the center of the town, I could see hundreds of people going to work in the early morning, carrying packs of heavy stones to rebuild the roads. During the hunger in the 90's hundred thousands died in this area. Image + Text: Eric Lafforgue (flickr)]

Two imaginary nuclear programs, one criminal conspiracy

Former President George W. Bush planned to invade Iran in 2007, even though America’s military was exhausted and overstretched by two unsuccessful wars. His own popularity, at a real 8%, was the reason, that and the economic collapse that he was trying to push back until he left office. He believed a war would have saved his presidency, buried the $3 trillion dollars stolen by his friends and given him a legacy to be proud of, even if every family in America suffered.

Bush brazenly admits prettymuch exactly these things in his ghost written autobiography, an incoherent rant, that rambles between blithering and megalomaniac delusion . The only thing that stopped this disaster was the National Intelligence Assessment, (NIE) that proved categorically, that Iran had no nuclear weapons program whatsoever. Even then, Bush tried to hide this report and demanded that falsified intelligence be created as he had done for 9/11, Afghanistan and Iran. However, as a lame duck and failed president, nobody listened. Integrity won out over insanity, greed and corruption this time. It wouldn’t last.

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Patrick Mac Manus
Patrick Mac Manus Blog

What does Colombian political prisoner Liliany Obando have in common with Mumia Abu-Jamal, Lynne Stewart and the Cuban Five? All of them are incarcerated in prisons built by the U.S. government. Since the mid-1990s, seven new military bases and a rash of state-of-the-art prisons have been built in Colombia. Under the pretext of the “war on drugs and/or terrorism,” the U.S. has funnelled billions of dollars into Colombia’s efforts to crush dissent.

The U.S. government has been intervening in the affairs of Colombia since the 1950s, providing military training and economic aid to combat primarily two armed reformist organizations — the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN).

Liliany Obando, a sociologist and independent filmmaker, was arrested in 2008 and charged with “rebellion” against the government and aiding the forces of FARC, which has been declared a “terrorist” organization.

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Bill Van Auken
WSWS

This week marks the 60th anniversary of China’s entry in force into the Korean War. The attack carried out by some 300,000 Chinese troops resulted in one of the most stunning defeats suffered by the US military in its entire history.

What followed was a protracted and bloody stalemate that ended only with the armistice declared in July 1953. The war had claimed the lives of more than four million people, the vast majority of them Korean civilians.

Six decades after US and Chinese troops waged bitter hand-to-hand combat south of the Yalu River, tensions on the Korean peninsula are arguably at their highest since the end of the Korean War. They are being fed by and are in turn exacerbating great power conflicts between Washington and Beijing.

The arrival in the Yellow Sea this weekend of a naval battle group led by the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington, signals another escalation in the current crisis.

The dispatch of the giant warship was announced in the immediate wake of the North Korean shelling Tuesday of the island of Yeonpyeong, killing two South Korean marines and two construction workers.

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Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (Press Release)

Majdi Abu Jumma, a suspect in the 1984 Bus 300 hijacking, being
led to his death by Shin Bet officers. (Photo: Alex Levac)

"I smashed their skulls," [on orders from Shin Bet head Avraham Shalom, and] "I'm proud of everything I've done." [Yatom said he put the men on stretchers into a van.] "On the way I received an order from Avraham Shalom to kill the men, so I killed them." (1996) "I acted for the security of my country." (2001) ~ (Shin Bet officer) Ehud Yatom

General Attorney of Israel refuses to disclose file of the Bus 300 Affair

Wednesday, 06 November 1996

In a letter dated 8 September 1996, the Attorney General of Israel disregarded a request by the Palestinian Centre for full disclosure of the case file of the Bus 300 affair.

Interest was revived in the Bus 300 affair following the 26 July 1996 publication in Yediot Ahronot of an interview with Ehud Yatom, a former agent in Shabak (Israeli Security Services), which introduced new evidence that had not been previously disclosed by stating his direct involvement in the extrajudicial killing of Subhi and Majdi Abu Jamea.

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Stephen Lendman

This is the latest update since Haiti's cholera outbreak, previous articles accessed through the following links, including the most recent on Sunday's sham election, an exercise in imperial control: here, here, here, here and here

On November 24, Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres - MSF) reported it continues increasing its efforts in response to Haiti's deepening crisis.

From October 22 to November 21, MSF teams treated 29,000 people in cholera treatment centers (CTCs), established in Port-au-Prince, Artibonite region (where the first outbreak occurred), North, and Northwest with a 2% or less case fatality rate.

A remarkable record showing that cholera is easily treated when done effectively in time. Otherwise, it's fatal, a major problem for growing numbers unable to access care, including because of heavy rain in some areas turning roads to mud.

On November 24, Al Jazeera headlined "UN revises Haiti cholera estimates," saying:

Officials say it's "spreading faster than originally estimated and could infect hundreds of thousands." A new World Health Organization (WHO) assessment estimates 200,000 cases in three months, 400,000 in a year. All 10 provinces are affected.

The UN's Haiti humanitarian coordinator, Nigel Fisher, expects

"literally hundreds of thousands of cases. The medical specialists all say that this cholera epidemic will continue through months and maybe a year at least...."

On November 25, Haiti Libre reported 27,933 confirmed cases, 1,523 official deaths, and too little capacity to handle growing needs, saying:

"The situation in Haiti is urgent and will get worse and worse in the coming weeks." In total, 36 CTCs operate with a 2,830 bed capacity, far below what's needed. The areas (departments) most affected are Artibonite, North, Northwest, West (including Port-au-Prince), and Northeast. Daily, dozens more cases are reported.

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Stephen Lendman

On November 23, Washington Post writers Jon Cohen and Ashley Halsey III headlined, "Poll: Nearly two-thirds of Americans support full-body scanners," according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, even though "half of those polled say enhanced pat-down searches go too far."

A new Zogby (11/19 - 22) poll disagreed, saying:

At 61% opposed, "(i)t's clear (most) Americans are not happy with TSA and their enhanced security measures recently enacted. The airlines should not be happy with 48% of their frequent fliers seeking a different mode of transportation due to these enhancements."

Neither should passengers facing molestation and harm to their health. More on that below.

Calling enhanced screening a "virtual strip search," the ACLU also objected, saying:

"We need to act wisely. That means not trading away our privacy for ineffective (and overly intrusive) policies. Ultimately, it is up to the American people to figure out just how much privacy they want to abandon....The ACLU represents those who value privacy in this debate."

AP reported it already received over 600 complaints, passengers saying

"they were subjected to humiliating pat-downs at US airports, and the pace is accelerating, according to ACLU legislative counsel Christopher Calabrese."

He added:

"It really drives home how invasive it is and (harassing) they are....All of us have a right to travel without such crude invasions of our privacy....You shouldn't have to check your rights when you check your luggage."

Public outrage also makes headlines, passengers complaining about intrusive screening, especially being groped. The more often they fly and endure it, the louder perhaps disapproval will grow, especially for techniques some critics call ineffective.

Reports also call them heavy-handed. A Michigan bladder cancer survivor, wearing a body bag to collect urine, said its contents spilled on his clothing after a Detroit airport security agent patted him down aggressively. He called the experience "absolutely humiliat(ing). I couldn't even speak." Other accounts are also unsettling, and for what!

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Laurie Penny
New Statesman

"I didn't understand quite how bad things had become in this country until I saw armed cops being deployed against schoolchildren in the middle of Whitehall."

It's the coldest day of the year, and I've just spent seven hours being kettled in Westminster. That sounds jolly, doesn't it? It sounds a bit like I went and had a lovely cup of tea with the Queen, rather than being trapped into a freezing pen of frightened teenagers and watching armed police kidney-punching children, six months into a government that ran an election campaign on a platform of fairness. So before we go any further, let's remind ourselves precisely what kettling is, and what it's for.

Take a protest, one whose premise is uncomfortable for the administration - say, yesterday's protest, with thousands of teenagers from all over London walking out of lessons and marching spontaneously on Westminster to voice their anger at government cuts to education funding which will prevent thousands from attending college and university. Toss in hundreds of police officers with riot shields, batons, dogs, armoured horses and meat wagons, then block the protesters into an area of open space with no toilets, food or shelter, for hours. If anyone tries to leave, shout at them and hit them with sticks. It doesn't sound like much, but it's effective.

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Hobbes
Scragged.com

"After nearly a decade, the TSA has yet to catch one single terrorist using any of their airport inspections - all the terrorists who've been caught, have been caught by intelligence agencies using surveillance and counterintelligence techniques, not goons with gloves and wands."

Are we a free people or are we not?

The recently-escalated battle between the American people and the TSA is far more important than it first appears. The final outcome of this argument will determine whether we still live in a nation "of the people, by the people, for the people", or whether we have become a soft tyranny where our democratic forms of elections and representatives have been reduced to a meaningless veneer as in the old Soviet Union or Red China.

The Consent of the Governed

If America has a single founding principle, it is this: no government has any authority to take any action without the consent of the governed. Our Founding Fathers did not object to the principle of paying taxes per se; they objected strongly to the idea of being forced to pay taxes to a government where they had no input. Freedom's cry was not "No taxation" then, and it isn't now; it was "No taxation without representation." The same goes for any other intrusive regulation.

The concept of "the consent of the governed" means more than just voting, however. A hundred years ago, Prohibition was enacted scrupulously according to democratic forms: Congress and then the required number of states passed a constitutional amendment allowing it, and then Congress and the President passed the Volstead Act enforcing it.

However, events quickly revealed that Prohibition did not have the consent of the governed, or at least a very sizable minority of them: whole sectors of American society insisted on having their booze no matter what the law said. The end result was vast wealth poured into crime syndicates; eventually Prohibition was repealed with the nation much the worse off for the experience.

There are many laws on the books today which do not really have the consent of the governed, but the government enforces them with a light touch so as not to provoke a backlash. Consider speed limits: almost everybody speeds, and the police almost never ticket people for going just a hair over. You usually have to be speeding by a good bit, and even then, getting caught is relatively rare. If the police seriously tried to ticket every single speeder, voters would demand that the limits be changed. -Or so we've always assumed - after all, government ultimately answers to the people, doesn't it?

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Bill Van Auken
WSWS

"The ruling establishment and its military have no intention of leaving Afghanistan. They are determined to continue their bloody efforts to annihilate the Afghan resistance in order to secure Washington’s control of the country and further US designs on establishing hegemony in the oil-rich and strategically vital region of Central Asia."

Violence has reached record levels in Afghanistan, and the resistance to the US-led occupation is more widespread than ever, according to a report issued by the Pentagon.

The semiannual report, required by Congress, provides a grim assessment of the US war, now in its tenth year, giving the lie to rosy public statements issued by the Obama administration and senior military commanders.

The report, released this week, is titled, “Progress toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan,” but its contents suggest that in doubling the number of US troops deployed in Afghanistan since taking office, President Barack Obama has only created a deeper quagmire for the US military.

With nearly 100,000 American soldiers and Marines and another 50,000 other NATO and foreign troops participating in the occupation, the report found that security conditions in 124 districts viewed by NATO as “key terrain” remained “relatively unchanged.”

The report states, “Progress across the country remains uneven, with modest gains in security, governance and development in operational priority areas.” It described progress as “slow and incremental.”

What has changed sharply, however, is the number of Afghans dying and the level of violence, which has risen in tandem with the increase in the number of foreign troops deployed in the country.

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