quote:

Originally posted by asj:

quote:

Originally posted by baseman:

quote:

Originally posted by asj:

quote:

Opposition legislators did not vote on the proposal because of an unrelated boycott.

Having to live with Aids......

I did not realized you live with aids, es tut mir sehr leid. I realize these drug coctail have lots of emotional side effects, but try to keep a positive attitude. It does help.

The dregs of Society which fits you perfectly well will always be a dweller of the gutter.

When an ineffable dunce like you has nothing to say and says it with a liberal embellishment of bad delivery, embroidering it with reasonless vulgarities of attitude, gesture and attire. Then there can no other way of describing you as blockhead so stupid, a crank so variously and offensively daft. Just seems like one to ignore.
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Hey Johnny, you need to lighten up on the anti-US jihad you on. It does not help your condition. You can end up like this bro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHHvnLzhjh4

quote:

Hey Johnny, you need to lighten up on the anti-US jihad you on. It does not help your condition. You can end up like this bro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHHvnLzhjh4

The dregs of Society which fits you perfectly well will always be a dweller of the gutter.

When an ineffable dunce like you has nothing to say and says it with a liberal embellishment of bad delivery, embroidering it with reasonless vulgarities of attitude, gesture and attire. Then there can no other way of describing you as blockhead so stupid, a crank so variously and offensively daft. Just seems like one to ignore.

.

quote:

Originally posted by asj:

quote:

Hey Johnny, you need to lighten up on the anti-US jihad you on. It does not help your condition. You can end up like this bro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHHvnLzhjh4

The dregs of Society which fits you perfectly well will always be a dweller of the gutter.

When an ineffable dunce like you has nothing to say and says it with a liberal embellishment of bad delivery, embroidering it with reasonless vulgarities of attitude, gesture and attire. Then there can no other way of describing you as blockhead so stupid, a crank so variously and offensively daft. Just seems like one to ignore.

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Try a new Google hit nah. You lost the punch, if you ever had it.

quote:

Originally posted by baseman:

quote:

Originally posted by asj:

quote:

Hey Johnny, you need to lighten up on the anti-US jihad you on. It does not help your condition. You can end up like this bro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHHvnLzhjh4

The dregs of Society which fits you perfectly well will always be a dweller of the gutter.

When an ineffable dunce like you has nothing to say and says it with a liberal embellishment of bad delivery, embroidering it with reasonless vulgarities of attitude, gesture and attire. Then there can no other way of describing you as blockhead so stupid, a crank so variously and offensively daft. Just seems like one to ignore.

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Try a new Google hit nah. You lost the punch, if you ever had it.

Bai the same punch whithout any vulgarities is good enough for you.

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quote:

Originally posted by asj:

Bai the same punch whithout any vulgarities is good enough for you.

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You and some of your threads are vulgar. You starting another thread and making at an AFC issue is Vulgar. I never made your anti-US vulgar threads a PPP issue as I don't think many PPPites share your views. I know many, and are friends with, PPP guys in GT, NY, Ca who do not share your and the PPP anti-US/Western sentiments. At least, those who live here are not hypocrites.

quote:

Originally posted by baseman:

quote:

Originally posted by asj:

Bai the same punch whithout any vulgarities is good enough for you.

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You and some of your threads are vulgar. You starting another thread and making at an AFC issue is Vulgar. I never made your anti-US vulgar threads a PPP issue as I don't think many PPPites share your views. I know many, and are friends with, PPP guys in GT, NY, Ca who do not share your and the PPP anti-US/Western sentiments. At least, those who live here are not hypocrites.

I pay my taxes in the USA, I live by the rules of the land, my posts which might be controversial, is simply my opinion which I think that I am free to voice under the freedom of speech and information act. Many Americans lambasted their leaders, but it is just an opinion...not to be taken seriously, I am sorry if you take my post to be personal, I may not share many views on this forum, but people are curtailed from voicing their opinion, in as much as distasteful as it might be.

Take is easy bro, got to take GF for breakfast, if you were around you would have been welcome for a cuppa.

Peace.

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quote:

Originally posted by asj:

quote:

Originally posted by baseman:

quote:

Originally posted by asj:

Bai the same punch whithout any vulgarities is good enough for you.

.

You and some of your threads are vulgar. You starting another thread and making at an AFC issue is Vulgar. I never made your anti-US vulgar threads a PPP issue as I don't think many PPPites share your views. I know many, and are friends with, PPP guys in GT, NY, Ca who do not share your and the PPP anti-US/Western sentiments. At least, those who live here are not hypocrites.

I pay my taxes in the USA, I live by the rules of the land, my posts which might be controversial, is simply my opinion which I think that I am free to voice under the freedom of speech and information act. Many Americans lambasted their leaders, but it is just an opinion...not to be taken seriously, I am sorry if you take my post to be personal, I may not share many views on this forum, but people are curtailed from voicing their opinion, in as much as distasteful as it might be.

Take is easy bro, got to take GF for breakfast, if you were around you would have been welcome for a cuppa.

Peace.

.

Yea, well don't take snippets of it and make it an AFC defamation thread.

They guy who tried to blow up an SUV in NY made the same claims. When the judge challenged him on the morality of his claims and actions, he simply replied "I lied, I hate you anyway". King is correct.

USA PROSTITUTION COUNTRY

Quick Facts: Sexual assault in US military
Wed Feb 16, 2011

http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/165544.html

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld have been named as defendants in a military rape and sexual assault lawsuit.

More than a dozen women and two men are seeking compensation after claiming they were raped, assaulted and harassed while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.

The service member's lawsuit was filed in Federal District Court in Virginia and seeks monetary damages.

Many say the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have raised the demand for additional military personnel, and that is why people with criminal backgrounds, who were turned away ten years ago, are now among the ranks of the U.S. military.

The "entire US military" dealing with rape

"The problem of rape in the military is not only service members getting raped, but it's the entire way that the military as a whole is dealing with it," said Panayiota Bertzikis, a claimant in the lawsuit who claims she was raped in 2006. Sky News

Ms. Bertzikis, who is now the executive director of the Military Rape Crisis Center, said authorities did not take substantial steps to investigate her claim.Sky News

The now 29-year-old said she was forced to live on the same floor as her alleged attacker, where she endured name-calling from colleagues.Sky News

Only a fifth of rapists in US military see 'inside of a courtroom'

At a news conference in Washington, a group of attorneys, activists and woman military veterans who say they have been sexually assaulted by comrades said individual unit commanders had too much discretion about the investigation of specific accusations. BBC

Anuradha Bhagwati, executive director of the Service Women's Action Network, said that official figures showed fewer than one in five service members accused of sexual assault "sees the inside of a courtroom." BBC

"Unlike in the civilian world, a military rape survivor cannot quit his or her job," she told reporters on Tuesday. Too often, she said, victims were forced to live and work alongside the perpetrator, because they were not free to move.BBC

"The military is broken when it comes to these cases," said Ms. Bhagwati, a former captain in the U.S. Marine Corps. BBC

Money does not solve the problem

Congress mandated in 2005 that the Department of Defense form a task force on military sexual assault. The program was charged with developing prevention strategies and tracking data, but in 2008 the Government Accountability Office determined that the task force had spent $15 million, but hadn’t accomplished anything of substance. Daily Beast

However, there were 2,947 reports of sexual assaults in the military in 2006, an increase in reports of 24% over 2005. LA Times

Pentagon lenient on perpetrators

A Pentagon report in March 2007 found that more than half of the investigations dating back to 2004 resulted in no action. When action was taken, only one third of the cases resulted in courts-martial. LA Times

In 2008, 62% of those that were convicted of sexual assault or rape received very lenient punishments such as demotion, suspension, or a written reprimand. Newsjunkiepost

US military more intent on intimidating the victims than prosecuting the charges

In 2004, after Lt. Jennifer Dyer reported being raped by a fellow officer at Camp Shelby, Miss., she said she was held in seclusion for three days, and threatened with criminal prosecution for filing a false report. LA Times

After finally being given two weeks leave, she was threatened with prosecution for being AWOL (absent without leave) when she would not report for duty to the same location where the man she had accused — who was later acquitted on assault charges — was still posted.LA Times

After Army Spc. Suzanne Swift went AWOL instead of staying in the same unit as the soldiers who she accused of sexually harassing her, the Army court-martialed her when she refused a deal that would have forced her to remain in the military and sign a statement saying she had not been raped. LA Times

Lance Cpl. Sally Griffiths was also accused of lying after she reported being raped by a fellow Marine while stationed in Okinawa, Japan. The Marine she accused was never prosecuted. He continued to serve in the military and was promoted several times. LA Times

Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, was murdered after accusing another Marine of rape. Jamie Leigh Jones says she was gang-raped while working for Halliburton/KBR in Iraq. Jones claims that after she reported her rape, the company put her in a shipping container and warned her that she would lose her job if she left Iraq for medical treatment. The rape kit collected by military medical personnel was lost after it was turned over to Halliburton/KBR. The Pentagon has refused to investigate or to testify before Congress. LA Times

Pentagon sued over rampant rape in US military

On December 13, 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other groups filed a federal lawsuit seeking Pentagon records in order to get the real facts about the incidence of sexual assault in the ranks.Common Dreams

The Pentagon has consistently refused to release records that fully document the problem and how it is handled. Sexual assaults on women in the U.S. military have claimed some degree of visibility, but about male victims there is absolute silence. Common Dreams

Sexual assault rampant in US military with one in three women raped

In 2009, reported sexual assaults went up 11 percent, according to Department of Defense statistics, with one in three women reporting having been sexually violated while serving in the military. Daily Beast

The Pentagon itself admits that reported incidents probably represent just 20 percent of those that actually occur. Daily Beast

But women are not the only victims; statistics from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs indicate that more than half of those who screen positive for Military Sexual Trauma are men. Daily Beast

The sexual assaults occurring in combat areas, principally Iraq and Afghanistan also saw a 16 percent increase in 2009. NYT

From 2007 to 2008, there was an 8 percent increase in reported assaults, with an 11 percent increase in combat areas. NYT

According to doctors at West Los Angeles VA Healthcare Center, 41% of female veterans seen at the clinic in 2008 said they were victims of sexual assault while in the military, and 29% reported being raped during their military service. LA Times.

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USA PROSTITUTION COUNTRY

USA Military Prostitution



Military Prostitution and the U.S. Military in Asia
Katharine H.S. Moon

Where there are soldiers, there are women who exist for them. This is practically a cliché. History is filled with examples of women as war booty and “camp followers,” their bodies being used for service labor of various kinds, including sex. Contrary to common assumptions in the West, prostitution is not “part of Asian culture.” Just about every culture under the sun has some version of it during times of war and times of peace.

In some ways, military prostitution (prostitution catering to, and sometimes organized by, the military) has been so commonplace that people rarely stop to think about how and why it is created, sustained, and incorporated into military life and warfare. Academic interest and analysis of this issue gained momentum only in the last twenty years and still remains scant and sporadic. Even as interest in women and gender as categories of analysis has increased in many academic disciplines, there is still a question of intellectual “legitimacy,” that is, whether prostitutes, prostitution, and sex work warrant “serious” scholarly attention and resources, especially for students of international politics. After all, it is a highly “personal” and therefore “subjective” matter and prone toward the proverbial “he said/she said” contestation. To boot, many have turned the feminist emphasis on women and agency on its head by glibly claiming that most military prostitutes sought out the work and life of their own free will and therefore are exercising their agency. In this view, it is primarily about women’s personal decisions and responsibility to face the consequences; governments and other institutions of society need not be held accountable.

For decades, key leaders of Asian women’s movements such as Takazato Suzuyo of Okinawa and Matsui Yayori, the well-known Japanese journalist and feminist activist, Aida Santos and women’s organizations like GABRIELA of the Philippines have argued to the contrary. They documented and insisted that U.S. military prostitution in Okinawa/Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines involve a complex “system” of central and local government policies, political repression, economic inequalities and oppression of the underclass, police corruption, debt bondage of women by bar owners, in addition to pervasive sexist norms and attitudes in both the U.S. military and the respective Asian society. In the 1970s and 1980s, when Asian feminists raised these connections, they tended to fault patriarchal and sexist values together with power inequalities emanating from them and the economic and political disparities among nations.

Such individuals and organizations also emphasized the compromised sovereignty of their own governments in relationship with the more powerful U.S. government and military, resulting in the compromised rights and dignity of the Korean, Okinawan, Filipina and other women who “serviced” American military (male) personnel. Aida Santos, a long-time activist opposing U.S. military bases in the Philippines (and later the Visiting Forces Agreement) wrote in the early 1990s that in the Philippines, “[r]acism and sexism are now seen as a fulcrum in the issue of national sovereignty.”1 Such activists made the case that the personal is indeed political and international.2 “Olongapo Rose,” a 1988 documentary film by the British Broadcasting Corporation about U.S. military prostitution in the Philippines graphically depicts the various political, economic, cultural, and racial “systems” at work.

Even under authoritarian rule in the 1970s, Filipinas did not hesitate to speak up and campaign nationally and internationally against the Philippines authorities and the U.S. military for abetting and condoning the physical, sexual, and economic exploitation and violence against women who worked in the R&R industry along Olongapo and Subic Bay, where U.S. forces had been stationed until the early 1990s. But in Korea, even progressive activists of the 1970s and 1980s, who fought against military dictatorship, labor repression, and the violation of human rights overlooked military prostitution as a political issue. For one, they had their plates full, challenging the Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan regimes. Second, as much as some activists criticized the dominant role of the United States in the alliance relationship, others were loath to attack a fundamental institution that safeguarded Korean security. Of course, the legal system was stacked against them. With the National Security Law squarely in place, critics of the U.S. military or the alliance could be thrown into prison, tortured, or killed. Third, military prostitutes were so beneath the political radar screen of most progressives because the women themselves were viewed as “dirty,” lowest of the low, and “tainted” because they slept with foreign soldiers. A highly puritanical and moralistic sense of ethnonationalism among most Koreans had exiled Korean military prostitutes from the larger Korean society and political arena. It is common knowledge among military prostitutes and their advocates that the formers’ family often disowned them upon learning of their “shameful” lives.

But in 1988, Yu Boknim, a Korean democracy activist, and Faye Moon, an American missionary and social activist became mavericks even among progressive dissidents by paying attention to the plight of the Korean gijichon (camptown) women. Together with the assistance of a handful of student activists and the financial support of some Protestant churches, they established Durebang (My Sister’s Place) in 1988 as a counseling center, shelter, and later bakery (to generate income for older women who had left the sex business and younger women who wanted to get out). But despite their efforts to raise awareness of the relationship between the presence of U.S. bases and the growth of this underclass of women and their Amerasian children, most of Korean society continued to ignore the women and their needs. Rather, Yu and Moon found increasing solidarity with their activist counterparts from the Philippines, Okinawa/Japan, and the United States as women began to organize around issues of sexual violence and slavery, militarism, and human rights in the Asia-Pacific.

Currently, military prostitution in Korea has been transformed in line with global economic and migration trends. Foreign nationals, primarily from the Philippines and the former Soviet Union, have become the majority of sex-providers and “entertainers” for the U.S. troops. Young Korean women, with better education and economic and social opportunities than their mothers or grandmothers, are not available for such work. And they are not as easily duped by traffickers. In a more complex, globalized and multicultural sex industry environment, however, political and legal accountability for various problems and conflicts that both the prostitutes and the servicemen encounter become even more difficult to understand and more difficult for activists to target effectively. Nevertheless, on a day-to-day basis, hardworking advocacy organizations on behalf of the women, such as Saewoomtuh, continue to offer shelter, counseling, and health and legal assistance to the best of their ability.

So, if military prostitution around U.S. bases in Asia has been an institution found wherever US forces are stationed since the mid-20th century—including, in addition to Japan, Okinawa, South Korea and the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, the Pacific Islands and many others—and individual activists and concerned organizations have labored to raise political and societal awareness of this issue, why has it reached the pages of the New York Times—through the Korean case—only in 2009? The answer lies in a gradual evolution of international and domestic developments that has created some opening for the issue of military prostitution in Korea to become more public.

For starters, the concept of “women’s human rights” and the practice of generating norms and codifying laws have become popularized and prioritized only since the 1990s. Feminist activism on such matters has been around longer, but the “mainstreaming” of women’s human rights is relatively new, with emphasis on the urgency of addressing violence against women, human trafficking, and gender-based economic inequalities.

In East Asia, various regional networks and cooperation among women’s organizations have facilitated the exchange of information about military and civilian forms of prostitution and a wider audience than was available in each national community. The “comfort women” movement, which demanded official apologies, historical accountability, and compensation from the Japanese government for the sexual violence committed against Korean and other women by Japanese troops during the Pacific War, helped shed light on political abuses long regarded as “private” mishaps. Moreover, the social movement around former Japanese “comfort women” had overshadowed advocacy efforts on behalf of the U.S. military prostitutes. The survivors of Japanese sex slavery were older than the survivors of military prostitution, making the claims of the former more urgent. But more than that, activists in the Korean comfort women movement and many of the survivors themselves generally shunned even a remote association with U.S. military prostitutes because the latter were deemed to have freely and willingly sold their bodies.3 The comfort women movement gained international legitimacy and stature partly because the former victims were viewed as innocents who had been forcibly violated. Nevertheless, the surviving comfort women have faced continuing skepticism about their innocence and purity from the Japanese right.

But with the comfort women issue having achieved some gains since the Korean movement for redress took off in the early 1990s—Japanese apology, albeit wishy-washy under former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo,4 private compensation from Japan, support by the United Nations apparatus and numerous NGOs, and most recently, the passage of the nonbinding U.S. House Resolution 121 that called upon the Japanese government to apologize for its sexual enslavement of women during World War II—there is a bit more political space that former military prostitutes might share. It should be noted that the women who desire to seek apology and compensation from the Korean government and the U.S. military are themselves elderly, ill, frail, and without much time left to their lives. They now feel their own urgency to get their life stories out and to claim recognition and redress for their sacrifices.

Additionally, individual incidents of violence against women in U.S. military camptowns, which have been common through the decades of the U.S. presence in Asia, have gained broader attention in these societies since the 1990s. In Korea, the egregious murder of Yun Geumi by a U.S. serviceman in October, 19925 was not unique in terms of the degree of abuse and brutality. But it catalyzed local camptown consciousness about the disproportionate burdens that the villages and towns housing U.S. bases in Korea have borne for decades. And it became a call to action for a small group of Korean progressives to organize on behalf of Korean civilians living and working near the bases. The National Campaign for Eradication of Crimes by U.S. Troops in Korea, which eventually became the leading organization that scrutinizes and documents—and when necessary, mobilizes around—the actions of U.S. commands and the conduct of U.S. troops as they affect Korean civilians, was born in the aftermath of Yun’s murder.6 But for the most part, Yun’s death remained a localized and politically contained issue in the early-mid-1990s.

In Japan, the highly publicized gang rape of a twelve-year-old Okinawan girl in 1995 by three U.S. Marines galvanized political activism and brought wider attention to military-related violence against women. Unlike the rape of the girl, Yun’s murder did not itself spark a national debate about the presence and prerogatives of the U.S. forces or a crisis in the alliance relationship. On one level, the murder of a prostitute did not elicit as much public sympathy and ire as the rape of a school girl, which triggered action toward an Okinawan referendum on the bases and the establishment of the joint Japan-U.S. Special Action Committee on Okinawa “to reduce the burden on the people of Okinawa and thereby strengthen the Japan-US alliance.”7 For Koreans, the timing was not conducive to focusing on violence against camptown women because both Seoul and Washington were hip-deep in the first nuclear crisis concerning North Korea. Hammering out the Agreed Framework of 1994 was the major preoccupation of the United States regarding the Korean peninsula. In 1993-94, the Korean government itself had little interest and leverage to seek justice for a dead prostitute; it was fixated on not being left out of the negotiation process between Pyongyang and Washington. On another level, Korean civil society organizations were still in the process of forming and learning how to shape and adapt to the new political parameters that were being created in the aftermath of formal democratization in 1988. Making local politics and violence against women matter to the larger public and government after four decades to the contrary was new and challenging.

Okinawans, on the other hand, benefited from opportune timing. For one, a delegation of women representing peace and women’s human rights groups had just returned from the 1995 UN Conference on Women in Beijing. They responded immediately upon learning of the rape by establishing organizations and mobilizing existing networks that were to become key players in regional and international activism addressing U.S. bases, violence against women, anti-militarism, and human rights for the next decade. The fact that Okinawa enjoyed a governor, Ota Masahide, who was bent on asserting new powers of local autonomy and challenging the central government’s hegemony over Okinawa’s land usage, economic and security arrangements was also instrumental. By contrast, Korea in 1992-93 had just begun to explore the process of decentralizing government, and at the time of the murder of Yun, autonomous local governments did not exist, and local residents’ identity as a legitimate and effective political community was inchoate. Today, however, local administrative autonomy and residents’ sense of empowerment and entitlement are quite robust. Social movements and opposition parties can and do make claims on the central government and criticize U.S. bases and U.S.-South Korean relations without fearing the repression that had prevailed for most of the history of the Korean republic.8

Internal factors within the United States also provide a context in which the older generation of Korean women who worked and lived as sex providers to the U.S. forces can claim official apology and compensation. Since the early-mid 1990s, international trafficking of human beings for sexual labor and other forms of abuse has been an official part of the U.S. policy agenda. The Clinton administration was particularly active in this regard, with the Department of State under Madeleine Albright playing a leading role. Furthermore, in 2000, the U.S. Congress passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act, which established new protections for women in the domestic sex industry who were willing to cooperate with law enforcement authorities to convict traffickers. The law also put the world on notice that the U.S. seeks to be a leader in preventing and combating human trafficking and mandated the State Department to issue annual status reports of various countries’ efforts to fight trafficking.

Moreover, some members of the U.S. media have focused attention on the issue, Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times being the most prominent in recent years. But earlier in 2002, a FOX TV team had travelled to Korea to document the U.S. military’s involvement in the Korean sex industry and in international trafficking of women. This created a big stir in Washington, prompting members of Congress to write to the then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to investigate the situation in Korea and other overseas bases. The R&R/sex industry that long had been an integral part of the landscape and the person-to-person interactions between Americans and Koreans became exposed to the larger world and highly newsworthy.

The Pentagon indeed took congressional and media scrutiny seriously and mandated inspector generals to investigate and report on any connection between trafficking and the U.S. military. And in response, commands in Korea cracked down on servicemen and bars suspected of using trafficked women as “hostesses” and entertainers by putting them off limits for periods of time. The U.S. commands also waged public awareness campaigns through radio and periodic education sessions to warn its troops that it does not condone soldiers’ association with prostitution and trafficking. The newspaper for the 2nd Infantry Division, Indianhead, quoted Capt. Kent Bennett, 2nd Inf. Div. Preventive Medicine Officer that “‘[p]rostitution and trafficking are demeaning acts toward women,’” and that by participating, “a Soldier is contributing to the enslavement of women and girls from all over the world.”9 The article also stated that the U.S. Department of Defense is pushing to change the Uniform Code of Military Justice so that “Soldiers who are found convicted of soliciting prostitution may be dishonorably discharged.” These developments in the U.S. government and military reflect a new sensitivity and responsiveness to public scrutiny and pressures around military prostitution, but it is unclear to what extent institutional changes are systematically planned and enforced and whether the individual conduct of servicemen changes in the long run. These developments also point to a new vulnerability on the part of the U.S. military establishment. They can no longer avoid public oversight over a practice that soldiers and sailors took for granted as part of their “R&R” entitlement for a very long time. But U.S. military policy and behavioral changes that take place now and in the future would come too late for the women who had “serviced” American men in the past.

The domestic and international developments I describe above do matter in terms of whether issues like prostitution, trafficking, violence against women can find a political venue and audience. However, only the individuals who have experienced trafficking, prostitution, and violence can educate us about these conditions as lived realities. And it takes courage to come forward. The elderly women featured in the New York Times have decided that their time has come.

Katharine H.S. Moon is Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and the author of Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution inU.S.-Korea Relations, Columbia University Press, 1997.

She wrote this article for The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. Posted on January 17, 2009. The Asia-Pacific Journal seeks to provide cutting-edge in depth critical analysis by researchers and journalists worldwide to illuminate the Asia-Pacific and its key position globally.

Recommended Citation: Katharine H.S. Moon, “Military Prostitution and the U.S. Military in Asia,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 3-6-09, January 17, 2009.

Notes:
fn1. Aida Santos, “Gathering the Dust: The Bases Issue in the Philippines,” in Let the Good Times Roll, eds. Saundra Sturdevant and Brenda Stolzfus (New York: New Press, 1992) p. 40.

2 Cynthia Enloe, Bananas, Beaches, and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001).

3 See Katharine H.S. Moon, “South Korean Movements against Militarized Sexual Labor,” in Asian Survey (34:2), 1999.

4 Norimitsu Onishi, “Abe only partly successful in defusing ‘comfort women’ issue,” International Herald Tribune, April 29, 2007. Access date: May 2, 2007.

5 Yun Geumi’s body was found “naked, bloody, and covered with bruises and contusions—with laundry detergent sprinkled over the crime site. In addition, a coke bottle was embedded in Yun’s uterus and the trunk of an umbrella driven 27cm into her rectum.” From Rainbow Center, Flushing, NY, News Letter # 3, January, 1994, p. 8.

6 For more detailed discussion, see Katharine H.S. Moon, “Resurrecting Prostitutes and Overturning Treaties: Gender Politics in the South Korean ‘Anti-American’ Movement,” Journal of Asian Studies 66:1 (2007).

7 Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “SACO Final Report,” December 2, 1996.

8 For a comparative analysis of decentralization and its relationship to the U.S. military in Japan, Korea, and the Philippines, Katharine H.S. Moon, “Challenging U.S. Hegemony: Asian Nationalism and Anti-Americanism in East Asia,” in The United States and East Asia: Old Issues and New Thinking, G. John Ikenberry and Chung-in Moon, eds., (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).

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so why not pack up and come back to guyana right now?

USA PROSTITUTION COUNTRY

U.S. Military Contractor 'Used Armored Cars To Transport Prostitutes'

First Posted: 04-29-08

Over at Muckraked, we get news that "a panel of whistleblowers" testifying before a Senate committee yesterday dropped a dime on their employer, military contractor DynCorp (among others). The most explosive part of the testimony involved a contract manager, a misappropriated armored car, and prostitutes:

A contractor died when a DynCorp manager used an employee's armored car to transport prostitutes, according to Barry Halley, a Worldwide Network Services employee working under a DynCorp subcontract.

"DynCorp's site manager was involved in bringing prostitutes into hotels operated by DynCorp. A co-worker unrelated to the ring was killed when he was traveling in an unsecure car and shot performing a high-risk mission. I believe that my co-worker could have survived if he had been riding in an armored car. At the time, the armored car that he would otherwise have been riding in was being used by the contractor's manager to transport prostitutes from Kuwait to Baghdad."

Naturally, this will lead many to question whether its appropriate for DynCorp to be awarded with future military contracts, but the more fitting question is whether or not DynCorp should have been awarded a contract in Iraq in the first place. Because, you see, this is not the first time DynCorp employees have been implicated in running prostitution rings abroad. Let's flash back to August of 2002, and meet the DynCorp whistleblowers of yesteryear:

Two former employees of DynCorp, the government contracting powerhouse, have won legal victories after charging that the $2 billion-a-year firm fired them when they complained that co-workers were involved in a Bosnia sex-slave trade...

Because of a combination of international treaties, jurisdictional loopholes and bureaucratic confusion, employees of private military companies such as DynCorp can escape prosecution for crimes they commit overseas. Most common crimes committed outside the United States are beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, and the burgeoning local law enforcement systems in war-torn regions such as Bosnia are often insufficient or unwilling to police U.S. contractors.

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Prostitution Thrives with U.S. Military Presence
By Zoltán Dujisin

SEOUL, Jul 7, 2009 (IPS) - With the presence of U.S. soldiers, flesh trade is flourishing near the Camp Stanley Camptown close to Seoul.

SEOUL, Jul 7, 2009 (IPS) - With the presence of U.S. soldiers, flesh trade is flourishing near the Camp Stanley Camptown close to Seoul.

Since 1945, U.S. troops have been stationed in the Korean peninsula, with their current strength estimated to be 28,500. The country plunged into civil war between 1950 and 1953 and since then, U.S. troops have remained there, claiming to act as a deterrent against North Korea, the country’s communist neighbour. Prostitution in the region is a direct result of their presence, local observers say.

Russian and Chinese troops also had troops stationed on the Korean peninsula in the aftermath of the civil conflict, but "have since left the area while U.S. troops are still here, in almost 100 military bases," Yu Young Nim, the head of a local non-governmental organisation which provides counseling, medical and legal care for sex workers, told IPS.

Yu Young Nim’s office is located at the Camp Stanley Camptown, a few metres away from local Korean restaurants, home in the 1980s to U.S.-imported Kentucky Fried Chicken and Subway logos. Locals attest to the slow decay of a town.

In front of one of these restaurants, sits a 36-year old former "mama-san", which in Korea denotes women supervising sex-work establishments. Like many other retired sex-workers, she looks older than her age, and has decided to open a restaurant.

The "mama-san" prefers catering to U.S. soldiers instead of the more demanding Korean clientele.

"G.I.s eat their food without complaints," she told IPS. "Koreans always expect to be served like kings."

It was in camps such as these that a new dish called Pudaettsigae entered the Korean diet: Poor Koreans took ingredients such as sausage, beans, processed cheese from leftovers at the U.S. camp and mixed them with home-grown ingredients.

After being a sex worker for much of her youth, during which she had a son with a U.S. soldier, like other "mama-sans" she opened her own club, where she employed other girls. She had to shut shop three years ago due to declining incomes.

"If the base closes, I’ll try moving to the [United] States; it would be good for my son," she says. Her son lives in Korea and speaks the language well enough, but got his primary education in English. "I don’t think he could attend a Korean university, but the U.S. universities are too expensive for us."

She could only wish his father was there to help.

"I have some contact with the grandfather, but barely with the father. He doesn’t send my son gifts, not even a Christmas card. He has so much more money than me and doesn’t do anything for his son," she says. "My son [believes] he has no father."

Several U.S. soldiers have married local prostitutes, in many cases impregnating them, only to later abandon them.

"Even in those cases of couples living together, these women can be easily abandoned by their husbands or boyfriends, and are victims of physical, mental and financial abuse," says Young Nim.

"The women mostly come from broken families, backgrounds of sexual abuse or domestic violence, and there is no protection from victims of these crimes," he says. "After entering the prostitution business they can’t get out."

U.S. officials have made statements condemning prostitution but have done little to stop it.

"They think this system should exist for the U.S. soldiers. Superficially they stand for a zero tolerance policy but practically they know what is going on and use this system," Young Nim told IPS.

There has been a reduction in prostitution of Korean women, which "has more to do with the work of non-governmental organisations and the fact that Korea has developed economically," while "there is no contact with the U.S. authorities. They have a legal office and counseling centre but only for their own soldiers and relatives."

After the negative publicity, the top military officials of the U.S. army have slowly became more outspoken in their condemnation of prostitution. U.S. soldiers were discouraged from frequenting traditional entertainment districts in central Seoul, although locals say that did little to stop them.

A turning point was the violent murder of a prostitute in Dongducheon in 1992. The finger of suspicion pointed at U.S. troops, though action against them is difficult given they enjoy a special legal status since 1945.

While prostitution is illegal in South Korea, camp towns are practically exempted from crackdowns, and US military anti-prostitution policies have forced these places to minimize their visibility.

Recent anti-prostitution laws are addressing the problems of Korean women, although there is disagreement among local activists regarding their effectiveness. However, they are effective in keeping out foreign sex workers; if arrested by the police they face deportation.

Some 3,000 to 4,000 come annually from countries like Philippines. While Russian, Uzbek and Kazakh women were also known for being trafficked into Korea in the past, now 90 percent of the women working as prostitutes hail from Southeast Asian countries.

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pack up and come back we cannot wait to have you join us here.

USA PROSTITUTION COUNTRY

U.S. military anti-prostitution/sex trafficking policy appears to be ineffective

Discipline, honor, and patriotism. These are the reasons, for some people to join U.S. military services. However, for most people, when they think of the U.S. service members abroad, these are not the words that they associate the service members with. Rather, the U.S. service members are notorious for violence, alcoholism, low education, and prostitution in places where they are stationed. And, such notoriety of U.S. soldiers are well evidenced by the prostitution and sex trafficking place around the U.S. military base abroad.

Sex trafficking around U.S. military bases in South Korea

Recently, the Philippines government banned work permits for women seeking to work for bars in South Korea. Aggravated by the nonstop sex trafficking incidents involving Filipino women around the U.S. Military base in South Korea, the Philippine government decided to stop sending their women to the sex industry abroad. For the past decade or so, Filipino women are hired to serve U.S. military service members and flirt with them to lure them into buying expensive drinks to meet the daily quota required by their employers. When the women fail to meet the daily quota, they are required to sell their bodies to the U.S soldiers to make up the difference. The element of sex trafficking enters when these women are lured into coming to South Korea with the belief that they will be singing and dancing at the clubs and bars as entertainers. However, it is only after their arrival to the clubs and bars that they realize that their works involve prostitution in times.

U.S. Military policy on prostitution and sex trafficking

in 2004, Pentagon drafted anti-prostitution policy specifically aiming at reducing sex trafficking around the U.S military base stationed abroad. Under the policy, the U.S. service members could face court martial for patronizing prostitutes. However, sex trafficking and prostitution in South Korea have been rampant even after the draft of anti-prostitution policy. Though the U.S. military just began to put off-limits on clubs and bars which are involved in prostitution or human trafficking in South Korea, only four out of 25 clubs and bars retain off-limits status by the U.S. military base. One report on prostitution and sex trafficking around U.S. military base in Korea reveals more disappointing result. While South Korea vigorously cracks down on prostitution, the areas surrounding the U.S. military base are exempted from the crackdown by the Korean government. Therefore, prostitution and sex trafficking thrives because of the U.S. military service members in South Korea, according to the report

Awareness raising along with harsh penalty are the keys

Doing a massagy is almost a rite of passage for male sailors… sex trade is more permissible here [Japan] than at home and easily available… It’s not like the U.S.

A U.S. service member stationed in Japan in 2006.

Thriving demand for prostitution and sex trafficking by the U.S. military service members questions the enforceability of the U.S. military anti-prostitution/sex trafficking policy. Though the policy has been implemented to deter sex trafficking and prostitution around the military base abroad, the news reports consistently say that they are still very much in existence. Though the policy caused many service members from revealing their identities when interviewed about their visits to prostitutes, it did not stop them from going back to prostitutes again for sex. The problem then lies on lack of awareness among the U.S. soldiers. Visit to brothels or prostitutes have been so widely accepted that the service members consider it almost as a rite. Further that the U.S. military, in fact, encouraged prostitution business around the military bases also contribute to their desensitization to prostitution. While the penalty against human trafficking and prostitution must be doubled, the military should ensure to educate the service members on such misconducts as serious crimes.

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USA PROSTITUTION COUNTRY

Middle School Student Arrested For Running Prostitution Ring

Dallas police arrested a 13-year-old middle school student Saturday and charged her with luring young girls into prostitution.

Posted: 1:50 PM Mar 27, 2008
Reporter: Courtesy WBKO.Com - Rebecca Lopez

Font Size: Dallas police arrested a 13-year-old middle school student Saturday and charged her with luring young girls into prostitution.

It was in Club Metropolis that police say the 13-year-old girl lured other girls, enticing the teens with the promise of money, and even forcing some of them to dance and sell their bodies for sex.

Teen prostitution is a big problem.

"It's a really horrendous affair," explained Lt. Chess Williams, with the Dallas Police Dept.

Dallas police say there are hundreds of teenage prostitutes on the streets because there is a big demand.

Recently, they found a 12-year-old girl dancing naked at a nightclub.

"I can't believe that a 13, 14, 15-year-old child knowingly injects herself into a world of prostitution," said Lt. Williams.

But it happened, and the 13-year-old in this case may have talked another school friend into prostitution.

Police won't say what school, but they're not surprised.

"One of the remarkable things we learned through all of this is there is a tremendous amount of money in all this, so a huge demand for young girls in prostitution world," stated Lt. Williams.

Police say the young girls aren't acting alone.

They say some of the same people who are pimping out the adult prostitutes are the ones exploiting young girls.

This 13-year-old and others like her may be runaways, whose childhoods were stolen for profit.

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USA PROSTITUTION COUNTRY

A Bronx Elementary School, Surrounded by Prostitutes

By YARDENA SCHWARTZ
Published: January 2, 2011

When Nicole Murray’s 10-year-old daughter, Diamond, first started going to West Farms elementary school three years ago, she asked her mother why one woman they passed was barely dressed.

At all hours of the day, prostitutes roam the streets around the school, waiting for cars entering and leaving the Cross Bronx Expressway. They bend over car windows and climb inside, in plain view of students walking to and from the school.

Listening to her daughter, who is now in the fourth grade, ask about prostitutes was hard, Ms. Murray, 37, said. “I felt a big weight in my chest,” she said.

The prostitutes also have sex inside a tent on top of a boulder directly below the school’s playground. Students, from prekindergartners to fifth graders, can see mattresses, cushions and sheets strewn about the rock. Custodians often have to sweep condoms and hypodermic needles from the school grounds before students arrive in the morning.

The illicit sex trade surrounding the school, at the corner of East Tremont and Bryant Avenues, has been a distasteful reality for years, according to teachers and parents who express both frustration and resignation at a problem that the police say they cannot fully stamp out.

“It hurts that we have to be going through this right in front of the school,” said Tamika Salichs, 28, whose 9-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter are students at West Farms.

The principal of West Farms, Darlene McWhales, refused several requests to talk about the issue, referring questions to the superintendent of the local community school district.

The superintendent, Myrna Rodriguez, said, “We schools are powerful in doing a lot of things, but there are some things in which we have no power.” She added, “The best thing we can do is make sure our kids learn well.”

The police say that they have put a dent in the number of prostitutes working near the school, but that eradicating the problem is no easy task.

“We can’t pick them up for just standing on the street,” said Officer Tony DiGiovanna, who has worked on prostitution cases in the 48th Precinct in the South Bronx, which patrols the neighborhood around West Farms. “A lot of times we bring them in, they get a slap on the wrist, and they’re back on the street the next day.”

Some efforts to combat prostitution have actually pushed more prostitutes close to the school.

Eight years ago, the nearby Alps Hotel on Boston Road, a favorite haunt of sex workers, shut its doors after a concerted campaign by local elected leaders and neighborhood groups. It was replaced by a Howard Johnson’s, which has been more vigilant in keeping prostitutes out. Four years ago, in an empty lot around the corner from the school where prostitutes once congregated, an apartment building went up. Another popular spot was a grassy stretch along the Bronx River that is now being refurbished into a greenway.

With fewer places to take their customers, prostitutes started using the rock next to the West Farms playground to have sex for as little as $25.

Not surprisingly, some of the prostitutes said in interviews that they were selling their bodies to pay for drugs.

One petite blonde who is often spotted walking around the school, and who identified herself as Linda, said she was addicted to heroin. “It’s a vicious cycle,” she said. “Every two hours I need another fix, so it’s another trick.”

Some of the prostitutes are mothers with children in the same age group as the youngsters who attend West Farms. One woman, who gave her name as Virgin Sanabria, has a 10-year-old son who lives with his grandmother. As for doing what she does near children who are studying and playing, Ms. Sanabria, who said she was 29, said, “I feel ashamed, but a lot of times once we get high, it numbs our memory, so we don’t really think about it.”

Some teachers have come to accept the blatant prostitution with a dose of resignation. “After a while, you get accustomed to certain things,” said Yvette Gascot, 41, an assistant teacher. “You kind of become immune to it.”

But teachers do worry about their students and what kind of message they may be absorbing from what is happening outside their classrooms. “If they see that happening right in front of school, they could see that as a possible career,” said Maria Lugo, 46, a teacher at West Farms. “They might think it’s an easy way out.”

Some parents said they had no choice but to send their children to West Farms. “This is the kind of school you send your kids to when you can’t get them into a better school,” said Bonnie Alexander, 30, the mother of two children at West Farms.

As another parent, Mario Pagan, the father of Diamond, the fourth grader, put it: “These kids are being exposed to things they shouldn’t be exposed to. She’s growing up too fast because of it.”

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come on back come on back we are waiting for you to put a mala on you, come on back......to beautiful Guyana aSJ.....

USA PROSTITUTION COUNTRY

Sex slaves, human trafficking ... in America?

One young woman shares the story of how she escaped from forced labor

By Grace Kahng
TODAY.com contributor

In spring of 2004, Katya (not her real name), like thousands of other foreign exchange university students, was looking forward to the summer job placement that she and a friend had received in Virginia Beach, Va. When she and her friend Lena arrived at Dulles Airport after a long flight from Ukraine, they were relieved to be met by fellow countrymen who spoke Russian.

The two men, Alex Maksimenko and Michael Aronov, were holding signs with the girls’ names and greeted them by taking their bags and luggage. Charming and reassuring, Aronov informed the girls that they had been reassigned to a job in Detroit where they would waitress and perfect their English language skills.

The men drove Katya and Lena to the Greyhound bus station and gave them tickets to Detroit. Confused and exhausted, the girls had no reason to question the change of plans.

“When we got to the hotel in Detroit, everything changed,” says Katya. “They closed the door and sat us down on the couch, took our passports and papers and said, ‘You owe us big money for bringing you here.’ They gave us strip clothes and told us that we were going to be working at a strip club called Cheetahs.”

Shocked and scared, the two women were subjected to physical, mental and sexual abuse over the next year as they were forced to work 12-hour shifts stripping for local Detroit men’s clubs. According to immigration customs agent Angus Lowe, the men controlled the women through intimidation with guns and threats to hurt family members back home.

Katya and her friend are two of the estimated 17,000 young women and girls annually who are forced to work in the sex industry in the U.S. by organized criminals. “Chicago, Houston, St. Paul, Minnesota, these crimes are happening in every community in America big and small,” says Marcie Forman, director of investigations for ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement). “We’re talking about money here. Millions of dollars, and these people don’t think about these women as human beings. They think of them as dollars and cents,” Forman says.

In February 2005, after months of planning and finally confiding in a customer from the strip club, the two girls escaped and were brought to the FBI and ICE. Their escape resulted in the arrest of Alex Maksimenko and Michael Aronov, both of whom pleaded guilty and are serving time in federal prison for their crimes.

Even though her captors are in prison, Katya says she will never live without fear. Maksimenko’s father — who was also convicted of forced labor and illegal trafficking — continues to live openly in Ukraine as a fugitive from authorities.

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I see you all still horing around on this thred.
Wid all the whoring this will be an 8 pager.

USA PROSTITUTION COUNTRY

Tackling America's Child Prostitution Secret
By Jennifer York
CBN News Saturday, October 11, 2008

It's known as "America's dirty little secret" --children forced into prostitution.

Just recently, an FBI sting dubbed "Operation Cross Country" rounded up more than 350 suspected customers, pimps and children in 16 cities. Now a woman who was forced to walk the streets some 20 years ago, has returned to help.

Carissa Phelps uccessful is now a UCLA grad with a great future, but it's her past that is making a big difference in the lives of young victims.

At age 12, her mother dropped her off at Fresno Juvenile Hall because she was tired of raising her. Since Phelps hadn't committed a crime, she wasn't admitted. Instead, she was sent to a group home where she ran away soon after arriving.

While living on the streets, she met a group that promised to take care of her as long as she would "go out and make money." Eventually, she was raped by her own pimp. The documentary that bears her name goes into great detail about her life.

"You don't even realize the amount of abuse that's been done because you're in survival mode. You're angry at everyone. You're acting out," Phelps explained. "But you really are so damaged emotionally, spiritually."

Fortunately, someone was able to break through to Phelps-- a counselor in juvenile hall named Ron Jenkins.

"She knew that somebody cared about her. Someone cares enough about what happens to her," he said. "(It) gave her a feeling of 'I am somebody.'"

The US. Department of Justice estimates more than 300,000 American children under the age of 18 are involved in prostitution. Phelps is now determined to diminish that number. And President and CEO of Children of the Night Dr. Lois Lee has seen first hand the impact of Phelps' work.

"I'm trying to rescue as many American children from the ravages of prostitution that I can during my lifetime," Lee began. "Carissa's trying ot change a community that physically catered to the torture and abandonment of children who were victimized by prostitution. They're two different approaches, both require lifelong commitment and we're both strong and gutsy and we'll be able to do it."

And Phelps is doing it her own way. She's speaking at universities, lobbying Congress and working on a book set to release next year.

"I'm here tonight on a mission and that mission is to give a voice to children that are on the streets," she said.


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out of 140 posts 77 belongs to asj alone. no wonder he always has the top threads.

out of the 77 posts, 46 are regurgitated articles with no comments by the author.

IS sheer shit goin on here.
I live in Canada and if I hated this place as much as asj has shown he hates the USA, I would move. He certainly knows where his bread an butter is coming from.

Leave the Jihadist alone. How did you think they found the other creep that think he can cripple the nation with two tiny drones? He was posting anti American crap like this on an online forum! One of this threads was exactly as this creep posted about his belief that American soldiers are murdering Muslim women and children. Let this stupid **** dig his own grave.

quote:

Originally posted by cain:
IS sheer shit goin on here.
I live in Canada and if I hated this place as much as asj has shown he hates the USA, I would move. He certainly knows where his bread an butter is coming from.

Plus guys like Nehru, SuperMIke and ASJ say how much they dislike the US and Guyana being a land of roses, yet they continue to live in the sh!t hole they call USA.