Germany faces up to shame of sex slavery in concentration camps

Sydney Morning Herald | Jan 16, 2007 

Breaking a long-time taboo in the world of Nazi horrors, Germany has unveiled an exhibition on the “comfort women” exploited by male concentration-camp inmates.

Between 300 and 400 women were forced to provide sexual services to queues of slave labourers from the Nazi armaments factories.

“These brothels were provided as a ‘performance incentive’ so that the male prisoners would increase their output,” said Horst Seferens of the Brandenburg Monuments Foundation, which funded the exhibition at the Ravensbrueck Concentration Camp Memorial.

Most male prisoners never admitted after their release that they had exploited the women, who also kept their shame secret.

The Nazis used hundreds of thousands of Jews and political prisoners to keep their weapons factories running.

The women were selected from Ravensbrueck camp, the main Nazi site for detaining women, and sent to 10 other concentration camps.

“In the story of the concentration camps, the SS’s exploitation of women inmates for men inmates has been just so covered up and avoided by everyone,” said Insa Eschebach, the head of the memorial. “And what did come out was just so distorted and prejudiced against the women.”

Items in the show include eyewitness interviews, some of the Nazis’ index cards on the victims describing them as “brothel women”, and the vouchers that were given to male inmates to be redeemed in sexual services.

Historians said the story had so embarrassed the women that the Nazis responsible were never prosecuted after the war.

US govt admits military spying role inside own country

Radio NZ | Jan 15, 2007 

The United States government has admitted the Department of Defence and the CIA have been spying on the financial dealings of Americans.

The New York Times reports they have been using national security legislation to obtain the banking and credit records of Americans and foreigners suspected of terrorist activities in the US.

The military and the CIA are restricted in their spying activities inside the United States and are barred from conducting traditional domestic law enforcement work in the country.

Vice-President Dick Cheney has confirmed the main outline of the report, and defended the activities as legal. He told Fox News on Sunday the spying is necessary to protect military installations inside the United States.

He called the spying “a perfectly legitimate activity” that the military and CIA had authority to carry out going back “three or four decades” and more recently confirmed in the Patriot Act adopted following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Nothing sinister about fingerprinting, say schools

York Press | Jan 14, 2007 

 

The new fingerprint equipment in the learning and resource centre at Manor School, York

Nothing sinister about fingerprinting, say schools

Is using thumbprint recognition in school libraries really sinister – or simply quicker and easier?

IT is break time at Manor CE Secondary School. The learning and resource centre (what would once have been called the school library) is thronged with cheerful, noisy students.

Every seat at the bank of personal computers lining one wall is taken, and the teenage girl on duty at the library checkout desk – one of several pupils who act as assistant librarians – is doing a brisk trade in books.

“This is our KGB operative,” jokes the school’s head teacher Brian Crosby, indicating the girl. He is referring to the furore that has broken out since The Press revealed that 11 schools in the city are using thumbprint recognition technology to operate their library systems.

Mr Crosby invited the newspaper to visit his school so we could see for ourselves that the system is nothing like as sinister as some seem to claim.

None of the pupils taking out books seem to have any qualms about pressing the thumbprint keypad used to identify them.

Report: U.S. GIs Fighting in Philippines

Fox News | Jan 15, 2007 

U.S. troops, in possible violation of the Philippines’ constitution, have taken part in combat operations against guerrillas linked to Al Qaeda, an activist group said in a report Monday.

U.S. Embassy spokesman Matthew Lussenhop disputed the allegation.

“Visiting U.S. troops in the Philippines advise, assist, share information with their Philippine counterparts, but they do not engage in combat and they have no direct role in combat operations. Any combat operations are 100 percent Filipino,” he told The Associated Press.

The group Focus on the Global South, citing a number of U.S. military writings, doctrines and eyewitness accounts to back its claim, said an independent investigation should be conducted to determine whether the alleged combat operations violated the Philippine constitution.

The U.S. Special Forces contingent has been deployed in the south since 2002, nearly a year after the Muslim extremist group Abu Sayyaf kidnapped three Americans and 17 Filipinos from a resort. One of the Americans was beheaded soon after the kidnapping and another was killed during a military rescue operation the following year.

Presidential Candidate Fears “Gulf Of Tonkin” To Provoke Iran War

Prison Planet | Jan 15, 2007  

Developments converge to signify inevitable conflict despite ongoing chaos in Iraq

Republican Congressman and 2008 Presidential candidate Ron Paul fears a staged Gulf of Tonkin style incident may be used to provoke air strikes on Iran as numerous factors collide to heighten expectations that America may soon be embroiled in its third war in six years.

Writing in his syndicated weekly column, the representative of Texas’ 14th district warns of “a contrived Gulf of Tonkin-type incident (that) may occur to gain popular support for an attack on Iran.”

The August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, where US warships were apparently attacked by North Vietnamese PT Boats, was cited by President Johnson as a legitimate provocation mandating U.S. escalation in Vietnam, yet Tonkin was a staged charade that never took place. Declassified LBJ presidential tapes discuss how to spin the non-event to escalate it as justification for air strikes and the NSA faked intelligence data to make it appear as if two US ships had been lost.

Should a staged provocation take place in an attempt to justify striking Iran it would not be the first time the current administration has considered such a ploy.

In February 2006, documents were leaked of a conversation between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush in which different scenarios to try to provoke Saddam into making a rod for his own back were discussed. One included painting a U.S. spy plane in UN colors and flying it low over Iraq in the hope it would be shot down and the incident exploited as a means of enlisting international support for the 2003 invasion.