UN peacekeepers sexually abused hundreds of Haitian women & girls

Another one of those articles highlighting how UN "peacekeepers" took advantage of vulnerable people in vulnerable situations. Regardless of who stoops so low in the society, helping someone to gain sexual favours is always wrong. However, if this would've been done by non-UN & some groups in Middle East or Africa, not only that group of people is maligned but the whole religion is dragged through the mud & dirt. But when UN "peacekeepers" do the same thing, it's a back-page news (assuming it's considered news at all in the first place). Western hypocrisy at its peak !!!

When the 2011 movie, "The Whistleblower," showed how UN "peacekeepers" sexually abused girls in war-torn Bosnia, & how UN tried to cover up the whole scandal, the world didn't demand answers from UN for what it has done wrong. UN "peacekeepers" realizing that their actions carry no adverse consequences for themselves or for UN, carried on, business as usual. Now, although, the allegations of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers have spread out from Cambodia to Central African Republic to Haiti; thanks to Western media, UN & the world public still won't take any substantive corrective measures & punish those who did wrong.

Well, UN "peacekeepers" will keep doing what they do best; sexually abusing women, girls, & boys in countries where they are sent to serve & protect the vulnerable general public. Doesn't it seem like that UN is starting to become better in hiding scandals nowadays than to actually prevent wars & chaos in the world?
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https://www.rt.com/news/266179-un-peacekeepers-haiti-sexual/

According to a new UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) report obtained by the news agency, a third of alleged sexual exploitation & abuse involved minors under 18.

The shocking conclusions were revealed after investigators interviewed 231 people in Haiti who claimed they were forced to perform sexual acts with UN peacekeepers in exchange for basic necessities.

“For rural women, hunger, lack of shelter, baby care items, medication & household items were frequently cited as the 'triggering need,'" the report says. Those living in the city or in its vicinity had sex in exchange for “church shoes, cell phones, laptops & perfume, as well as money,” report says.

“In cases of non-payment, some women withheld the badges of peacekeepers & threatened to reveal their infidelity via social media,” the report says.

The UN explicitly bans the “exchange of money, employment, goods or services for sex,” & discourages relationships between UN staff & those who are under their care. However, only 7 of the interviewed victims “knew about the United Nations policy prohibiting sexual exploitation & abuse,” the report states.

The report ... makes no reference to the time frame of the alleged violations, but the 7,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti started in 2004. The investigation also does not mention the number of peacekeepers involved.

The report says that the lack of any clear action is “demonstrating significant underreporting,” while noting that assistance to those that suffered is “severely deficient.” The average investigation by OIOS takes more than a year, according to AP.

Sexual abuse by peacekeeping troops, some 125,000 of which are currently deployed around the world, has undermined the credibility of their missions. A rapid increase in prostitution & abuse in Cambodia, Mozambique, Bosnia, Sudan & Kosovo were documented after UN peacekeeping forces moved in.

Earlier this year it was revealed that UN peacekeepers raped & sodomized starving & homeless boys in the Central African Republic, some as young as 9.

However, the number of documented cases of sexual abuse & exploitation by members of UN peacekeeping missions was 51 in 2014, down from 66 the year before, according to the secretary-general's latest annual report on the issue.

Education is a basic human right - which is why private schools must be resisted

Nothing much for me to say in this blog post, since whatever the UN rapporteur on the right to education said in this op-ed, I said some similar points in my previous blog post how privatisation of education hurts the poor, but then, that's the main objective point of modern businesses involved in the education business worldwide; privatise all levels of education everywhere & tell parents that you better provide private & high quality education to your kids (even if they need to kill themselves to produce the money for school fees) or your kids will never prosper economically (which, in itself, is a complete lie).
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/apr/23/education-is-a-basic-human-right-why-private-schools-must-be-resisted

At the beginning of the new millennium, the international community made a commitment to achieve universal primary education for all boys & girls. Today, 15 years later, we find huge gaps between these commitments & reality.
 
Across the world, 58 million children still don’t have access to schools, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa & South Asia. Millions more fail to graduate, or fail to learn what they need to participate in society meaningfully.
 
Capitalising on the inability of governments to cope with rising demands on public learning, private education providers are mushrooming. I see this not as progress, but as an indictment of governments that have failed to meet their obligation to provide universal, free & high-quality education for all.
 
Education is not a privilege of the rich & well-to-do; it is the inalienable right of every child. The state must discharge its responsibility as guarantor & regulator of education as a fundamental human entitlement & as a public cause. The provision of basic education, free of cost, is not only a core obligation of states but also a moral imperative.
 
Privatisation cripples the notion of education as a universal human right & – by aggravating marginalisation & exclusion – runs counter to the fundamental principles of human rights law. It creates social inequity.
 
The admission policy in private schools is based on the ability to pay, & on the socio-economic background of parents. As a result, private schools lack the diversified system of learning & cultural plurality that is so necessary today. They promote market economy values rather than the humanist mission of education.
 
Disturbingly, some in the international community are pushing for greater privatisation in education. The World Bank, a longstanding supporter of the approach, has recently been joined by other international bodies. At the end of 2014, the African Development Bank, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Union commission, & the UN Development Programme released a report promoting increased private sector involvement in education. The study concluded that “Africa must build a vibrant private sector that supports the development of a dynamic primary education system”. This call has been echoed by some government officials in Africa & elsewhere.
 
In the 1980s & 90s, when developing countries first made significant cuts to their public health & education spending under structural adjustment, international financial institutions, along with the largest donors, promoted user fees & increased private sector service delivery. The World Bank’s current policy of encouraging & supporting profit-seeking multinationals that provide education is a matter of serious concern, given the devastating impact this strategy has on the right to education.
 
As a recent Oxfam briefing paper has suggested, governments should not allow low-fee private schools, & should restore education as an essential public service. As private education becomes big business, learning must be protected from the forces of privatisation.
 
According to a study on private education by the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID), a potentially very large number of low-fee private schools, which target poorer families in developing countries, are unregistered. These schools save costs by hiring ill-trained teachers & running large classes in substandard school buildings. Such “edu-businesses”, as they have come to be known, are an unsatisfactory replacement for the good public education governments should be providing.
 
Huge commercial publicity often tempts parents to opt for private schools in the expectation that their children will receive a better education. They believe that private schools are more efficient, & that competition improves outcomes.
 
However, such beliefs are rarely supported by evidence. The DfID study, for instance, suggests private schools do no better than state ones.
 
The cost of privatising education lies not just with school fees but also with the damage done to the public good. Fees, however small, hit the poorest & most vulnerable hardest. Sometimes, this means the oldest son receives an education while daughters stay at home. Inequalities in society grow when the poorest are excluded.
 
In the worst cases, corruption undermines the system. Headteachers may require special payments to accept students, & teachers may charge for private tutelage. We must constantly remind states of their obligation under human rights law to establish conditions & standards for private education providers, & of the need to maintain a transparent & effective system to monitor these standards, with sanctions for abusive practices.
 
Parents, community, teachers and students must be encouraged to speak out against the commercialisation of education, acting as vigilant observers & reporters of abusive practices. Governments must empower human rights institutions, watchdogs & other mechanisms to investigate alleged violations of the right to education.
 
I’m not saying traditional public schools are the only solution. Community schools, locally organised & run with state support, can meaningfully complement government efforts to provide education & are an alternative to privatisation.
 
Governments must face the education challenge head on. Investment in education must be prioritised, using at least 4% of GDP, & reform priorities should be established with assistance from civil society & international donors, development banks & the UN.
 
Leaving these challenges to the private sector may seem easier. But when we ask what kind of world we want, we do not say one for those who have, & another for those who don’t. Let’s not create education systems that promote inequality – there is enough of that already. The international development agenda must aim to eliminate private schools, not champion them.
 

Kishore Singh is the UN special rapporteur on the right to education.

DfID accused of heightening inequality through support for private sector

A great article highlighting how Department of International Development of UK is investing millions of aid money, in poor / developing countries, in private health & education projects. Although, the article is focused on UK's department of international development, I am very certain that Canadian, American, Australian, & other European countries' departments of international development use their aid money to invest in similar private projects in developing countries.

This way, not only, these countries show to the world & their own public that they are heavily investing aid money in developing countries. But what they don't show that that aid money is not actually helping any poor person but a few people are becoming rich with that aid money. This is evident in the end result of all these millions of aid money is still unable to fight poverty & millions of people in developing countries are further falling into poverty.

The article also confirms what I've been saying about Malala for quite a few years now. Malala is the poster child of private education industry. It's a huge industry on a worldwide scale. Education keeps getting unaffordable for the masses. But the society is being programmed to think that education is necessary if you want your descendants to do better economically (which is, in itself, is hogwash, since your network will get you a good job, not your education or qualifications).

Malala wants more & more girls to be educated in Pakistan. That, in itself, is a very noble idea. But, companies like, Pearson, has taken that noble idea & made it that more & more Pakistanis should get their kids (boys & girls) into education, which, is private education & not free & affordable public education. Private education businesses increase their businesses.

Private education is an exploitation business. When a poor family has only enough money to send a few kids to school, the sons are preferred over daughters. Is it fair? No. Is it necessary? Yes.
 
Sons in countries like India, Pakistan, China are considered bread winners for the family & will, most likely, take care of their old parents & their own families. Daughters, on the other hand, are married off to another family & will, most likely, cannot take care of their old parents.

The best way to provide affordable & quality education to ALL kids in the developing world is to provide them with FREE education; not private & fee-based, regardless of how low that fee is. If you are going to provide fee-based education, you are either going to exclude a large part of the public from ever accessing that education level or you need to uplift the economic conditions of the masses through jobs & livable wages.
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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/apr/24/dfid-private-sector-support-inequality-global-justice-now-report

The UK government is driving inequality in the world’s poorest countries by “dogmatically” funding private sector health & education projects instead of using aid money to boost public systems, a report has said.
 
Rather than addressing the needs of the world’s poorest people, the Department for International Development’s (DfID) close relationship with the private sector is filling the pockets of big corporations, according to Profiting from poverty, again, a study published on Friday by the campaigning group Global Justice Now (GJN).
 
Nick Dearden, director of GJN, said: “Aid should be used to support human needs by building up public services in countries that don’t have the same levels of economic privilege as the UK. So it’s shocking that DfID is dogmatically promoting private health & education when it’s been shown that this approach actually entrenches inequality & endangers access.”

The report also questioned DfID’s appointment of Sir Michael Barber, a senior executive at Pearson, the world’s largest maker of textbooks & academic materials, as its chief advisor for education in Pakistan, saying it presented a conflict of interest. DfID oversees an ambitious £350m health & education programme in Pakistan & has partnered with Pearson on a project in Tanzania & Zimbabwe.

“It seems highly inappropriate that executives from a company like Pearson can be acting in an official capacity at DfID, while their company provides commercial services that would directly benefit from the type of decisions being taken by DfID,” Dearden said.
 
A DfID spokesman said: “We have firm policies in place to prevent any conflict of interest in our work.”

Pearson, which operates in more than 70 countries, launched its affordable learning programme in 2012. The initiative is a for-profit venture fund that uses capital investment “to help millions of children in the world access a quality education in a cost effective, profitable & scalable manner”, according to the company.
 
On Friday, a group of US, British & South African NGOs & teachers’ groups issued an open letter to John Fallon, Pearson’s CEO. The letter read: “By supporting the expansion of low-fee private schooling & other competitive practices, Pearson is essentially ensuring that a large number of the world’s most vulnerable children have no hope of receiving a free, quality education.”

The open letter was released on Friday to coincide with the company’s annual general meeting. It was signed by the American Federation of Teachers, the UK’s National Union of Teachers, the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, the Association of Teachers & Lecturers, Action Aid UK & the National Education Association.
 
The UK has invested more heavily in private sector projects than other rich countries, drawing criticism from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (Icai). “DfID often seems to behave more like a hedge fund [than an aid agency], investing capital alongside banking partners like JP Morgan,” GJN said.
 
DfID is working with companies including Coca-Cola, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) & Adam Smith International & is promoting the role of private sector partners in its biggest health & education projects, according to GJN.
 
The GJN report said DfID’s efforts to promote low-cost private schools in poor countries are “misplaced & dangerous”.

The Girls’ Education Challenge, a £355m DfID programme designed to get more girls in school, is managed by PwC & includes a partnership with Coca-Cola in Nigeria.
 
In Kenya, DfID has partnered with Adam Smith International in a £25m project that seeks to get 5,000 Kenyans enrolled in low-cost private schools.
 
DfID has also channelled millions of pounds into the harnessing non-state actors for better health for the poor (Hanshep) scheme, which promotes private sector investment in the health sectors of poor countries.
 
Kishore Singh, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to education, is among those who have expressed reservations about private education. “I see [the growth of private education] not as progress, but as an indictment of governments that have failed to meet their obligation to provide universal, free & high-quality education for all,” said Singh.
 
A DfID spokesman said: “The UK strives to get the best possible outcomes for poor people & takes a pragmatic stance on how services should be delivered. In some circumstances (parts of India, Kenya, Nigeria & Pakistan, for example), this includes developing partnerships with low-fee private schools.

“DfID works with the private sector in situations where the public sector is not sufficiently present (the slums of Nairobi for example) or where state provision is so weak that the private sector has stepped in to fill the gap. Recognising that fees are still a major barrier to access for the poor, DfID’s support includes voucher schemes that subsidise access to low-fee private schools for the poorest.”

Are Universities complicit in sexual violence?

So, while government leadership of Canada, US, European nations, Canadian provinces, & US States, invade or want to invade South Asian, Central Asian, Middle Eastern, & African countries to liberate those women & get those women justice, women in their own countries are suffering sexual assaults & not getting justice from their own leaders.
 
International Women's Day is celebrated with so much fanfare in Western countries, which by the way, are also known as "civilized" & "developed" countries, but be it the rights of Native women in Canada or students in universities all over North America, or the rights of female officers in Canada's RCMP or North American military forces, they are being trampled with nary a peep from civilian leadership.
 
Their rights of justice & fair treatment are not an issue because these women are not considered equal in society. They suffer even more if they are a minority, & not a middle-class / upper-class Caucasian woman. Civilian, judicial, & even military leaderships of all these Western countries enthusiastically harp about equal rights for both genders, but few, if any, walk the walk.
 
But, hey, we had to invade Afghanistan to liberate those women & get them those rights which are not apparently available to women in North America. Or we can't have veil wearing Muslim women in Canada because Canada is a transparent & open society where everyone is equal & a veil & hijabs are misogynistic pieces in a backward religion, practiced in backward, uncivilized, barbaric countries? It seems to me that Afghani, Iraqi, & Muslim women are far more luckier than North American non-Muslim women because so many powerful leaders of the Western countries are looking out for them. (sarcasm intended)
 
So, how about we clean up our own act first before point fingers at other countries & religions & purport to lecture them on treatment of women before we haven't cleaned up our house. All those commitments & acts of liberation of women sound a bit hollow when your own house is full of rubbish.

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Columbia University student Emma Sulkowicz garnered worldwide attention last year when she started lugging her dorm mattress around campus to protest the university’s decision that the man she says raped her in her dorm room was “not responsible” for the assault. Known around the world as Mattress Girl, she’s become an icon in the discussion around sexual assault on campuses & how universities are failing to take complaints of abuse seriously.
 
Since then, several female students from Canada have followed her lead & opened up about their own experiences.
 
Now, a new U.S. documentary about sexual assault on campus, The Hunting Ground, features interviews with dozens of women who were attacked on US campuses & who say that the only thing worse than the assault itself is how the university mishandled their cases after they reported them.
 
The film’s director, Kirby Dick, who also directed 2012′s The Invisible War—a film about rape in the US military—... talks about his latest project, how universities are complicit in perpetuating sexual violence on campuses, & what needs to change.
 
Q: What do you hope the outcome of the Title IX investigation will be? And will it change the way university administrations treat sexual assaults on campus?
 
A: ... no one in higher education wants sexual assaults to happen on campus, but they are so incentivized to keep it covered up. Maybe this film will help switch the incentive so that people–alumni, parents, students–will start demanding that schools be more transparent, that they take responsibility. What I’d really like to see is college presidents coming forward, on the record, on television, saying that this is an important issue at our school. I would like to see college presidents acknowledge that they have failed in the past & say they will personally take responsibility for making sure that changes take place. I think they could also apologize to the hundreds, if not thousands, of survivors on campus who have been mistreated over the past few decades. When you see college presidents going on the news talking about it in this way, that will signal that change has happened.
 
Q: There has been intense national attention in the US on the issue of sexual assault. The White House recently released PSAs about it, universities are introducing ‘Yes Means Yes’ sexual assault protocols, & the federal department of education is cracking down. Do you think the time has come when we will see permanent changes, or are you worried this is just a fad?
 
A: I’m very worried. I’m hopeful, but also worried. A lot of people thought this issue was addressed in the ’70s. People are shocked that it’s still happening on campuses. And of course it wasn’t, & not only that, it was buried again. This is an issue that will take at least a decade to change. This is not something that will happen overnight. It’s going to take a national effort & hopefully the film plays a role, but there’s a lot of other people that need to take control. It should be society’s responsibility.
 
Q: The film is full of deeply personal stories from women—& a couple of men—who experienced horrible abuse. What have you taken away from this?
 
A: When you’re doing the interviews, you’re just struck by how courageous these women are, in most cases, & sometimes men. And also just how vulnerable they were when they were assaulted & came forward, & still are, because they are young women taking on a centuries-old institution. It’s a combination of being very saddening & very enraging. I think that’s what you see in the film. Then of course, you see the hopeful piece with the students coming forward & taking action. As a filmmaker, I really want to be able to present, in a powerful & profound way, the truth of what is happening so that we can, as a nation, finally address it.

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/movies/the-hunting-ground/

'Sugar Babies': Students turning to dating websites for university fees

Where are all those feminists when you need one?
 
So, the West fought, & still fighting, for equal rights for women, & the new generation for women, in the West & in East (e.g. it happens in Pakistan, UAE, India etc too), opts for selling their bodies.
 
There was a time when the word, "Prostitution," used to conjure up images of dark alleys, seedy motels, poor & abused women servicing several men a day. That still happens & sexual slavery & human trafficking thrives on that (as I have blogged previously on that topic). But, now, well-off women are also getting into the glamourized industry of prostitution. There are several stories of young, bright girls leaving their jobs on Wall Street for Porn industry.
 
Now, girls have found a seemingly easier way to enjoy their lives. They get almost free, if not completely free, education, fulfill their needs for a companion by selling themselves to a rich guy, & get a taste of the high life.
 
But several questions arises from this phenomenon:

1. Do these girls delay their graduation, just so they keep enjoying the luxurious life?

2. How do these girls adjust their lifestyle after graduation? (they have gotten a taste of that luxurious life, after all).
 
3. Can these girls ever get satisfaction from a guy, of their own age, who may like to have a relationship with them? What if he can't provide the same luxurious amenities of life their sugar daddy provided them while they were a student?

My thoughts / answers:

1. These girls may never "graduate" from their student stage of life. They are getting everything they need or want, so why ever graduate. Delay one degree for as long as possible. If graduation does take place, then enroll yourself in another degree ... all the way up to PhD.
 
2. Far more important, I think these girls won't be able to adjust back, or dial down, to "normal" lifestyle where they have to work hard in their jobs or build a career. Either, they will leave that job & go into escort business or try to get to the top of the corporate ladder through "other" means, which in turn, brings the scorn of other women & men who are indeed working hard to build their careers.
 
3. In their personal lives, these women will again suffer in building & maintaining a relationship, because they've gotten a taste of the luxurious life & getting what they need just by using their bodies. A marriageable guy of their own age, who most likely, will not be able to provide them those luxuries they got used to, will be flatly rejected by these women & they will keep waiting for that "knight in the shining armour" who can provide them with those luxuries. Or they may again turn to escort business to fund that lifestyle for themselves (point 2 above).
 
It further creates one more problem in the society. It creates a beauty competition. Girls who are beautiful or look like models will, of course, get to the top of the pile, on both professional & personal levels. Girls, who are not considered beautiful (due to factors like weight, skin colour, perhaps, a disability) will be left behind in the race. Intelligence won't be a factor at all in this race. Winner will be determined solely on her physical appearance.
 
And that's what Islam protected women, men, & the whole society from. Be it political leaders, like Mr. Harper of Canada, or simpletons, like Mr. Joe & Jane Sixpacks on main street, they are all anti-hijab, or at least highly skeptical of it, but they don't understand how hijabs & niqabs protect women, & essentially, the whole society, into awarding & rating women on merely their physical attributes & forgetting that these women also have intellectual abilities. As I blogged previously, hijabs & niqabs force men to interact with women with their minds, instead of their bodies. As far as rights are concerned, Islam gives women full rights to voting, education, property & business ownership, & yeah, driving a car, too.
 
So, isn't that what Western feminists wanted all along that society interacting with women's minds & not their bodies? Perhaps, that's why, women in the West are also converting to Islam after conducting their own research & taking up hijabs & niqabs (if you don't believe me, do a Youtube search of your own).

http://rt.com/uk/229559-students-dating-university-uk/

South African cops raping women

Although, rapes anywhere in any shape or form is horrible; in South Africa, cops apparently are far more actively involved in perpetrating these crimes themselves. This didn't make the worldwide media, unlike the India ones.
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The 'Broken Blue Line' conducted by the Johannesburg-based Institute of Race Relations, investigated the extent in which police officers in the country plan & execute serious & violent crimes such as murder, rape, & armed robbery.

And it drew a disturbing conclusion: that police involvement in serious & violent crimes, including rape & murder, were a 'pattern of behaviour' & not isolated incidents.

The report, funded by Afriforum, analysed 100 randomly chosen media reports from April 2011 to January 2015 on alleged police involvement in serious crimes.

Of those, 32 were murders & attempted murders, 22 were armed robberies, & 26 were rapes, as well as other serious offences.

In one incident, a woman was raped several times while in custody & in another, a woman was raped in court.

A 2011 version of the report had similar results, including a serious problem with sexual violence by police officers in a country which has one of the highest recorded rates of rape in the world.

It warned that 'violent crime levels in South Africa won’t turn around while the "wolf guards the sheep".' 

A report in Pretoria News in July 2013 said that almost 1,500 serving police officers had criminal records - which is more than one in every 100 officers in the country.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2932717/Shocking-report-reveals-large-numbers-South-Africas-policemen-arresting-young-women-just-rape-them.html

2014: A degrading year for women

A good column from Dec 2014. This column is great for me to blog on the popular topic of "equal pay", as Patricia Arquette has again put the spotlight on it in her Oscars' award acceptance speech, but that one saved for another time (actually, this one also mentions this hot topic).
Very hard to choose excerpts from this column to put it here:
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Has there ever been a more depressing year for feminism than 2014?

... it seemed the world’s most famous women - whose every move is avidly followed by millions of impressionable girls on social media - were busy throwing buckets of ice over themselves or posting ‘brave’ pictures without any make-up on.
Ostensibly, this was for charity, but it was really to show off how much better they look in a wet T-shirt or without cosmetics than the rest of us.
 
It was also the year when every B-list celebrity, from Kelly Osbourne to Kelly Brook, started taking risqué pictures of their cleavage or bottoms & posting them on Instagram & Twitter, with legions of fans inevitably following suit.
Meanwhile, a cartload of over-paid, under-fed & perma-tanned supermodels rolled into town, courtesy of lingerie store Victoria’s Secret, & proceeded to prance around semi-naked... .
 
Not since the slave markets of Ancient Rome have women been judged so blatantly by their appearance, analysed so openly as little more than a collection of body parts. And the worst part is this: the sisters are doing it to themselves.
 
For women - & women alone - are responsible for this rampant self-objectification. This time, we really cannot blame the patriarchy.
 
No one is forcing young women to have their breasts enhanced (one of the most popular plastic surgery procedures of 2014) or to leave the house trussed up like living, breathing blow-up dolls.
 
From the preoccupation with ‘thigh gaps’ (that faintly obscene obsession of super-skinny models) to a seeming inability to pose for a photo without pouting like a demented trout, all too many women seemed to engage in ever more vacuous vanities. Eyelashes were so over-the-top that girls were straining to see past the end of their noses & cleavages had more suspension than the Severn Bridge.
 
So there you have it. Decades of feminism & it seems the best use we can find for equal pay is to spend it on buying ourselves a body like Barbie’s & a wardrobe like Katie Price’s. Was it really for this that Emily Davison fell under the King’s horse?
 
And if all of this is confusing for a woman like me, who thought the whole point of equality was that I could at last be judged on my ability to converse fluently on foreign policy, not how I look in a bikini, imagine how unfathomable it must be for the poor male of the species.
 
If I could wish for anything in 2015, it’s for this insanity to stop. For women to stop making such fools of themselves, to rediscover some dignity. Above all to stop frittering away the freedoms so hard won by our predecessors & that, let’s not forget, are still denied to many.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2891936/Oh-degrading-year-women-writes-SARAH-VINE.html

 

Sexual slave traders: both ISIS & UN Soldiers

You may have heard of these stories a lot in the past few months & it is still continuing on in war-torn regions of Iraq & Syria by that certain group. Although, obviously, I don't condone it at all, I do want to bring a bit of balance to the Western media's coverage of this situation where young Yazidi girls & women are being captured & then sold for sexual slavery or forced marriage.

Western media keep harping about this incessantly but they never reported human trafficking & especially young girls, some as young as 8, & women being trafficked for sexual servitude by ... the armed forces of Western countries, with full blessing of UN, under the false pretenses of bringing peace to war-afflicted regions in the world.

Let's take an example from the 2010 movie, "The Whistleblower," starring Rachel Weisz, Monica Bellucci, & Vanessa Redgrave, to name a few. This movie is based on the true events of UN's whistleblower, Kathryn Bolkovac, who was an American cop, recruited as a UN peacekeeper by DynCorp International in post-war Bosnia & Herzegovina, in 1999.

While in Bosnia & Herzegovina, she came across the fact that several young Eastern European (Ukrainian & Russian) girls were being trafficked in Bosnia to serve as sexual slaves for UN peacekeepers. Of course, long story short, she tried to blow the whistle on this but ultimately, not only she was fired, the soldiers (American, Canadian, European etc) were let go & also escaped prosecution for essentially raping these under-age girls. 

To top it all off, the defense contractor responsible for all of this, DynCorp International, won further million-$$$ contracts from US Pentagon, for Iraq & Afghanistan.

You can read all about this, with footnotes & links to more news stories & analysis, in the movie's Wikipedia page. Here's a little excerpt from that page in its "Aftermath" section.
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Consistent with Bolkovac's account, The Whistleblower portrays DynCorp International employees as participants in the postwar Bosnian sex trade with the UN turning a blind eye. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hosted a screening of the film & promised action would be taken to prevent further instances of human trafficking. Bolkovac responded, "Unfortunately, the widespread horror is already there. This is not going to be simple or a quick fix." She said that in addition to Bosnia, peacekeepers had violated human rights in Nigeria, Kosovo, Burundi, Sierra Leone, the Congo, Liberia, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Colombia, Guinea & Sudan. ... Following the theatrical release of The Whistleblower, The Guardian reported that other UN officials attempted to downplay the events depicted & that initiatives against trafficking in Bosnia were aborted.
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Now, let's look at this from a "numbers" perspective (of course, this would be a little difficult, since no hard numbers are available anywhere on this human trafficking business & the numbers are all estimate):

Per the Wikipedia page on Yazidis, & news stories on abduction & selling of Yazidi females in British newspapers, Daily Mail & Telegraph (from October 2014), about 5000 - 7000 girls have been sold into sexual slavery. Let's round that up to 10,000.

However, per the Equalitynow.org, "at least 20.9 million adults & children are bought & sold worldwide into commercial sexual servitude, forced labor & bonded labor." Of that 60% are sold for sexual servitude, & 98% of that 60% are made up of women & girls. So that estimate becomes about 12.3 million women are sold & bought for sexual servitude in the world. Even if we assume that only 0.5% of these 12.3 million girls are handled / used by UN peacekeepers, that's still 61,500 girls & women.

Now, let's summarize all this data:

Yazidi girls & women sold into slavery: about 10,000
Countries: Iraq & Syria (2 countries)

UN peacekeepers & defense contractors involved in sexual servitude of girls & women: about 61,500
Countries: Nigeria, Kosovo, Burundi, Sierra Leone, the Congo, Liberia, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Colombia, Guinea & Sudan. (11 countries)

The scale of young girls & women being used as sexual slaves by UN peacekeepers is far larger than what a certain group is doing in Iraq & Syria with Yazidi girls, but the Western media never showed this in the West.

If you are thinking why UN won't do anything to stop it.
Simple answer: it's a huge profitable business.

As we all may know that sex is the best way to release tension & stress (scientifically proven several times over). UN has 1000s of its peacekeepers in war-torn regions around the world. These peacekeepers are far from their families in highly stressful situations everyday. With this sexual slavery business, UN not only shows around the world that it is doing great work in war-torn regions by keeping peace there, but also helps its soldiers relieve their stress & tension with the help of these sexual slaves. Of course, the brothels & human trafficking rings get a huge customer in UN for their despicable business.

It's a win-win for both UN (& the nations who are sending their soldiers) & the human trafficking mafia groups. Loser, obviously, is the silent group of girls & women who are used as nothing more than a piece of meat by these soldiers.

(Disclaimer ... once again ... I am in no way condoning this widespread & increasing practice of selling girls & women for sexual servitude, by any group, by any religion, in any country. I am only trying to bring some perspective to the stories).

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2883607/ISIS-forced-thousands-kidnapped-girls-sexual-slavery-five-months-traded-openly-markets.html

Class is something you are born with ...

Crappy movie, but loved this quote ...
 
Funny how people think that a brand name dress or shoes or living in a mansion or have powerful people in their network or driving expensive cars elevate them to a higher class in society. That class is like that chocolate egg, which is hollow from inside but covered in delicious chocolate ... but devoid of any nutrition.
 
Our world has become topsy-turvy now with low class people at the top, with the help of brand names in everything they own, & high class people at the bottom of the society.

 
On top of that, public itself has changed its perspective to hold these low-class people in high regard. General public doesn't hesitate from struggling in this world, to doing anything it can do, to emulate those low-class people (e.g. Kim Kardashian is the idol to several young girls or young women in universities, in Western & Eastern countries alike, pimping themselves out to "sugar daddies" to earn enough to buy brand name accessories).
 
People are ready & willing to do anything that will make them easy money, even selling oneself is not out of bounds, just so they can buy their way into the "high-class society".

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