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.

Tony Blair - Warmonger & War Criminal.

The arrogance of Tony Blair in denying today that the 2003 US-led invasion is responsible for the Mad Max nightmare world of today's Iraq is pathetic.
No humiliation or apology for co-leading a war that has led to millions of ordinary people being killed, maimed, forced from their homes, regions and countries. His war has fragmented countries, turned neighbour against neighbour and led to a rise of an insane, anti-female, sectarian, intolerant, brutal Islamist fundamentalism that has no respect for sanctity of human life. 
Saddam was a vicious bloody tyrant. But in Iraq just before the US invasion, it is estimated that 25% of marriages were mixed, between Sunni and Shia, Kurd and Arab. People were encouraged to attend each other's places of worship. In Baghdad up until 2003, Christians, Sunnis and Shiites mixed socially. 
Now that has changed beyond recognition.The 2,000 year old Christian communities of Syria & Iraq are close to extinction due to the actions of western neo-cons, American right-wing Christians and Sunni extremists. The map of the Middle East is being redrawn in the blood of the innocents by jihadists.

Whilst the Middle East has been ignited since the Iraqi invasion, Blair of course has done well financially, making millions on the international lecture trail. But It is unacceptable and immoral that Blair acts as an international 'peace envoy' in the Middle East for the EU, the UN and others, paid of course by our taxes. Sack him from this position, let the British Labour Party disown him and put him and Bush on trial in the Hague for war crimes.

Mad Max nightmare -Solution to Syria is not more Weapons & Bombings

We are watching a country disintegrating before our eyes. We are witnessing the redrawing of the boundaries of the Middle East along religious lines that has no place for minorities or for justice and tolerance.
The Arab Spring is transforming into an Arab Winter as the dreams of the original female and male protestors of Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya are being lost in a tsunami of violence.

A massive population exodus, fanatical religious fundamentalism, ethnic cleansing and genocide are happening due to the actions of countries that talk loudly of peace and democracy but are in fact the warmongers, and arms merchants/manufacturers that are making huge fortunes from this war. 

An Islamist Saudi Arabia, a monarchical Qatar, a theocratic Iran, a resurgent nationalist Russia, a repressive Turkey, a profit hungry EU and a corporate-controlled US are arming the advocates of hate, torture and mass killing. They are creating a nightmare world of Mad Max that is leading to the formation of repressive warlord fiefdoms guarded by private sectarian armies. A relatively modern intact country is been bombed back to the Stone Age. This is what happened across large parts of Iraq after the US invasion. 

The only solution is a total arms embargo on all participants in the conflict and an all party peace conference involving all sides including Iran.

Click here to read my article of three years ago on the Disappearance of the Christians from the Middle East, a community that represented 25% of the region's population less than one hundred uears ago.

A Jesus in Today's Palestine

Could the story of the Nativity happen today in Palestine? 
Unlikely.
For would a poor young unmarried teenage girl in the West Bank, who had just announced that she was pregnant, not become a victim of male ‘honour’?
Even if she did survive, she and her new husband would have found it extremely difficult to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem due to road-blocks and travel restrictions placed on local inhabitants by the occupying Israeli military; the shepherds would have probably lost their grazing lands to compulsory acquisition for the erection of the ‘Security Wall’ and Jewish colonial settlements; and the three wise men from Iraq (Mesopotamia) would have being denied entry visas.

But even if the birth did manage to occur in Bethlehem, Israeli military border controls would have probably barred Mary’s family from crossing into Egypt to escape religious persecution thus sealing their faith.

Yet there is no doubt that an adult Jesus of the New Testament and of a modern Middle East would have ended their lives in a similar terrible fashion. For anyone preaching a message of peace and love, a call for people’s liberation from poverty and oppression, of respect for all races and creeds, of freedom for prisoners, and an end to the oppression of women would have made himself both an enemy of the state and of a religious fundamentalism that preaches intolerance towards non-believers and death to all apostates and blasphemers.

Yes, death would have come either from an American-made laser guided missile or from execution by a Islamic death squad.

Dying Embers of Middle Eastern Christianity

At a time when Christians across the world celebrate the birth of their founder, a dangerous cocktail mix of Christian, Islamic and Jewish fundamentalism is leading to the near extinction of native Christianity in its birthplace with a mass exodus of frightened Arab and other indigenous Christians fleeing rabid persecution.

At the beginning of the last century, Christians represented a quarter of the population of the Middle East. Their churches dotted the landscapes of what is now Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. When Islam appeared in the region in the seventh century, Arab Christianity was already six hundred years old. Its worldwide influence was profound. They practised the custom of ‘prostration’ now almost exclusively associated with Muslims, and had always used (and still does) the term ‘Allah’ to refer to ‘God’. Egypt's Coptic Christians gave to the early Irish Celtic church its tradition of monasticism. Assyrian Christian scholars translated many of the Greco-Roman and Persian scientific texts into Arabic, thereby helping in the flowering of Islamic civilisation under the Abbasid Caliphate. From the eight until the eleventh century the Nestorians, with their heartland in modern Iraq and Iran were the most influential of all Christian churches with bishoprics stretching as car as southern Arabia and eastern China.

A religious tolerance more or less held in the Middle East for centuries until it began to be replaced about one hundred years ago by hatred and even genocide. This began in World War One when, according to many leading historians, the Ottoman Turks massacred three million Armenians, Assyrian and Pontiac Greeks in World War One because of their faith and ethnicity.

From 2001, the ‘Born-Again Christian’ George Bush unleashed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that he termed a ‘crusade’ which has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Combined with the pro-Zionist views of influential right-wing American Christians, who believe that all of Palestine must become Jewish in preparation for Christ’s return to Earth for the great final battle of ‘Armageddon’ (aka the ‘Rapture’), the response across the Middle East and environs has been the unleashing of a wave of murderous religious extremism. Too often local Christian communitities became an easy and accessible target. Christians now make up less than 6% of the region's population.

Yet as with Russia and China, US foreign policy is driven by an imperial greed that has nothing to do with freedom, democracy, liberty and justice. Its key global allies are bigoted religious authoritarian regimes such as Israel with its campaign of colonisation of Arab lands by foreign Jewish settlers; Saudi Arabia where Christian worship and that of other religions is banned, where school children are taught to hate ‘infidels’ or non-believers, and where conversion from Islam to any other religion (apostasy) is punishable by death; Iraq where a campaign of ethnic cleansing has led to possibly 500,000 Christians fleeing the country since 2004; and an Egypt where religious discrimination is practiced, where churches are bombed; where reports of the kidnapping, rape and forced marriages of young Christian Coptic women to Muslim men are increasing.

The great Irish writer and Protestant cleric Jonathan Swift was correct in his analysis that “We have enough religion to make us hate each other but not enough to make us love one another”.

So surely there is an obvious case for the expulsion of these and other countries from a United Nations with its ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ that includes Article 18 which states “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance”?

Sadly the EU and the Irish government will do little of substance to end religious and other types of persecution in countries where they have vested economic interests.