Rape: A Weapon of War

Patrick Mac Manus
Patrick Mac Manus Blog


A Congolese rape victim, left, at the Heal Africa clinic
in Goma on August 8, 2009.

Violence against women, especially rape, has added its own brand of shame to recent wars. From conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina to Peru to Rwanda, girls and women have been singled out for rape, imprisonment, torture and execution.

Rape, identified by psychologists as the most intrusive of traumatic events, has been documented in many armed conflicts including those in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cyprus, Haiti, Liberia, Somalia and Uganda.

Systematic rape is often used as a weapon of war in ‘ethnic cleansing’.

More than 20,000 Muslim girls and women have been raped in Bosnia since fighting began in April 1992, according to a European Community fact-finding team. Teenage girls have been a particular target in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia, according to the State of the World’s Children 1996 report. The report also says that impregnated girls have been forced to bear ‘the enemy’s’ child.


Israel's Jerusalem Master Plan 2020

Stephen Lendman


The Matrix of Control -Angela Goldstein from Israeli Com-
mittee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) explaining
about the various settlements in East Jerusalem. (HGL)

A November 10 Qatar News Agency article headlined, "Israel Plans to Rebuild Old Jerusalem - Palestinian Official," saying:

Attorney Ahmed Al-Ruwaidi, "responsible for the Jerusalem unit in the Palestinian Authority (PA), said Israel plan(s) to build new settlement homes in old Jerusalem where the ancient walls of the city will be overshadowed by modern bridges, synagogues and gardens spreading from the Arab neighborhoods of Sheikh Jarrah to Wdi Al Joze and Suwaneh."

The scheme involves home demolitions, dispossessions, and new settlement construction to solidify

"the capital and spiritual center of Israel and the Jewish people (by creating) a world city which attracts the souls of millions of believers across the globe."

Projects completed so far are part of the plan, to completely transform Jerusalem's Old City, Al-Ruwaidi adding:

"All the settlement projects in Jerusalem during the past three years, some of which have been practically implemented, fall under the (plan's) framework, including a decision to erect a thousand new settlement units in Jebel Abu Ghunaim aimed at completing the isolation of the city with a wall of settlements."

"Israel announced previously it will build 50,000 new units in the city. The implementation of 20,000 of (them) has been initiated practically under projects that have been approved from time to time for political objectives linked to political and international action."

So far, 20,000 Palestinian housing units face demolition, to accommodate new settlements, Old City excavation projects, and other Jews only development. As a result, Palestinians will be dispossessed and excluded.


America's Dirty Secret: AfPak War Not Winnable

Stephen Lendman

Before dying, Richard Holbrooke admitted it, saying "You've got to stop this war in Afghanistan." The Washington Post reinterpreted it, saying:

"Holbrooke's death is the latest complication in an effort plagued by unreliable partners, reluctant allies and an increasingly skeptical American public."

They're not alone. Include noted analysts, administration officials, the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and Pentagon top brass. An earlier article discussed it, accessed through this link.

A recent article remembered Chalmers Johnson, best known for calling America's global wars and imperialism a "suicide option" unless reversed. Access it through this link.

Naming us our own enemy, he called our policies

"arrogant and misguided," America's condition dire, and it's "too late for mere scattered reforms." We can choose democracy to survive or perish under current policies.

He said America is plagued by the same dynamic that doomed past empires unwilling to change, what he called:

"isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy," combined with authoritarian rule and loss of personal freedom.


Richard Holbrooke: Long-time operative for US imperialism

Patrick Martin
WSWS

[KLA's Godfather - Richard Holbrooke -Holbrooke, Clinton's "troubleshooter", was the KLA's godfather. It was not his only "pact with the devil" (as he called bringing the mujahedins into Bosnia in his memoirs). How this saxophone-policy by Western pragmatists can come back to haunt the West was demonstrated on Sep. 11 in a very graphic way (Photo of Holbrooke with KLA gunman in Kosovo, summer 1998) (Kosovo.net)]

There is no reason to pull any punches in regard to Richard C. Holbrooke, the long-time US diplomat who died Monday night in Washington. He was a bully and a liar for the most rapacious and militaristic power in the world, a man steeped in the commission and cover-up of bloody crimes. He devoted his life to defending the worldwide interests of American corporations and banks, and became personally wealthy as a consequence.

The obligatory tributes pouring in from the US political establishment—from President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Bill Clinton, the editorial page of the Washington Post, and politicians and pundits galore—amount to a self-indictment of the character and “morality” of these gentlemen and ladies. As for the bouquets from foreign leaders, from British Prime Minister David Cameron to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, it is a mafia tradition to send flowers to the funeral.

As far as the Washington press corps was concerned, Holbrooke’s was a death in the family. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen blogged about a recent encounter with this “extraordinary man,” when Holbrooke visited Cohen’s beachfront home last summer. Judy Woodruff of PBS and Al Hunt of Bloomberg News visited the dying envoy in the hospital.

The gushing by the press reveals an important feature of American political life—the incestuous relations between Wall Street, the Washington power structure and leading circles in the media, cemented by vast sums of money. Holbrooke personified this relationship, shuttling back and forth between investment banking and the State Department, squiring Diane Sawyer about Manhattan and then marrying Kati Marton, the ex-wife of ABC anchorman Peter Jennings.

While the obituaries and tributes gave first place to Holbrooke’s role in the Balkan crisis of the 1990s, where he brokered the Dayton Accord that ended open warfare in Bosnia, this was only one of the many episodes in a career that spanned nearly 50 years, from Vietnam to Afghanistan.


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