Global War on Women: Japan finally issues official apology & awards compensation to the Sex Slaves of its WW2 military.

In World War Two, it is estimated that circa 200,000 women from Korea, China, Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere were kidnapped and forced to work in brothels as the sex slaves of the Japanese military. The term 'comfort women' that is used to describe them is an insult to the systematic brutality, torture and rape that they suffered over many years in captivity.
Now an agreement has been reached between the South Korean and Japanese government with the latter issuing an official apology for the enslavement of the women and granting one billion yen towards the surviving 46 elderly South Korean female victims. Credit for this long overdue action must be given to the decades long campaign by Korean female activists. 

In this war the Japanese Imperial soldiery felt it was their warrior right to rape the female members of the enemy population at will. The military brothels staffed by sex slaves were only one aspect of the abhorrent treatment meted out to the women of the countries they conquered. The 'Rape of Nanking' in China was aptly named. When the city fell to the Japanese army in December 1937, tens of thousands of females of all ages were gang raped with many horribly mutilated and then murdered.
In Europe during WW2, mass rape on a huge scale was carried out by Soviet armies in Germany during 1945, as a form of 'revenge' for the barbarity of the Nazi occupation in Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia. 



Women: The First Victims of Men's Wars
Throughout history women are always the primary victims of the wars perpetuated by men. Their bodies are treated as trophies to be used and abused by the male victors. Most of the main ancient religious texts justify or accept this fact.

Sex Slaves in 21st Century
Sadly kidnapping and sexual enslavement of women is back with a vengence and openly being perpetuated by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria on the Yazidi and Christian populations as part of a policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide against religious minorities, by Boko Haram in Nigeria and by Christian militias in the Central African Republic. There are countless reports issued by Amnesty and other human rights organisations about large scale sexual violence against women by Libyan people-trafficking gangs in an anarchic state ruled by crazed religious warlords.

ISIS - An Ideology of Hate, Death & Destruction

Followers of the Islamic Caliphate (ISIS) were responsible for the massacre of at least 128 men and women enjoying a night socialising with friends and family in Paris. In the same week these religious Nazis massacred people on a popular shopping street in Beirut, at a funeral in Baghdad and at a mosque in Yemen.
In Syria-Iraq, they are attempting to obliterate millennia-old cultures by brutally exterminating ancient peoples such as the Yazidis and  by blowing up Palmyra and Nineveh.
Their ideology is based on a belief that there is no place on Earth or in heaven for atheists, agnostics, secularists, gays, feminists, democrats, socialists, Christians, Yazidis, Druze, Bahais, Hindus, Buddists, pagans, Jews, Alawites, Shiites and other Muslims that don't follow their warped version of Islam.

ISIS is funded and spiritually inspired by a misogynist religious fundamentalist elite in the Arabian peninsula whose wealth is based on oil. From the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, governments in USA, Britain, France, Israel, Pakistan and Turkey have armed jihadis to overthrow secular or secular tolerant regimes in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonial Israel and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia were supported no matter what their crimes. The illegal Iraq war led by Bush and Blair triggered the rise of jihadism in the Levant and Iraq.
If the people of the Middle East of all faiths and no faiths are to live in peace and with justice, the duplicity towards ISIS and other jihadis as well as the Israeli occupation/colonisation of the West Bank has to end.
But what must not happen is a loss of civil liberties in Europe nor an intolerance towards others. ISIS and other jihadis are trying to fan the flames of a religious war and are using terms such as crusades and infidels as part of this campaign of hate. We must not fall into this trap. Tolerance and respect must be the key words and deeds.

Middle East becoming a Human Slaughterhouse.

Assyrian Christians demonstrating in Beirut

 The persecution of Christians and other religious and ethnic minorities in Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Israel and Lebanon is wiping out indigenous cultures that have existed for thousands of years. 
Followers of Islamic Caliphate (aka ISIS) are endeavouring to make the Middle East, once the cosmopolitan heart of the world, a mono-religious and monocultural region. They see no reason for the existence of secularism, atheism, socialism, feminism, Alawites, Yazidis, Christians, Jews, Druzes and Shi'ites. Their message is one of misogyny, hate and a glorification of death to the 'unbeliever'. They have introduced stoning to death, beheadings, crucifixion, female slavery and the covering of women in public as normal societal traits.
 

Iraqi Christians in Mosul before the arrival of ISIS

Credit must go to the Kurds for holding back this tsunami of evil. Sadly ISIS is growing in influence and power by the refusal of Turkey over and above pure tokenism to aid the Syrian Kurds in their life or death struggle against the Islamist; by Saudi Arabia's promotion of the puritanical strain of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism; by the United States destruction of Iraq and support for expansionist Israel; by Europe and the West's decade-long adherence to support the enemies of the Assad regime at any price.
But today it is not only in the Middle East that Christians are being attacked. They are now the most persecuted and discriminated against worldwide.
Check out Irish Times article from December 2014
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/christians-most-persecuted-and-discriminated-against-worldwide-1.2046934

Islamic Caliphate must not be allowed to destroy the multi-cultural & religious diversity of the Middle East

Islamic Caliphate: A Cancer that is destroying every religious, ethnic and cultural group and people that do not conform to their hate-filled ideology.
In the last few days 120,000 Syrians have fled to Turkey as Isis go on the offensive in Kurdish Syria.
In the modern world each society has to embrace diversity and promote laws that protect human rights and ban practices/traditions that deny equality to others based on sex, race or creed.

Rolling Back the Cancer that is ISIS.
May we see at last the return of Yazidis, Alawites, Druze, Sunni Kurds, Turkoman, Christians & Shiites to their ancestral homelands in Iraq and Syria.
The Middle East belongs to all faiths & those of no faiths. The attempt by ISIS to destroy thousands of years of culture must not be stopped.

The United States and their allies Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have over the decades destroyed much of the Middle East. 
But nobody else today is defending the ethnic minorities in Syria and Iraq. Sadly, if it was not for the US airstrikes of a few weeks ago, the Yazidis, Christians and other ancient communities millennia would have ceased to exist in northern Iraq. Likewise the same could happen in northern Syria. As I said many times over many years, the US destroyed Iraq, Palestine, Libya and Afghanistan. I have good friends that suffered death and exile over these actions. But these crimes against humanity must not mean that the world can allow itself to sit idly by and watch genocide at an enormous scale occur at the hands of ISIS. I also have good friends amongst these communities now under threat from ISIS in Syria because they are independent minded women, because of their secularism. because of their religion, because of their ethnicity.