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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