Accusations that UN personnel in Southern Sudan have been involved in the raping and abusing of young children have been published this week in the Daily Telegraph.

The paper has gathered 20 accounts from victims claiming that children displaced by the civil war and sleeping rough on the streets of the capital, have been targeted by UN peacekeeping and civilian staff who pick them up in UN vehicles and force them to have sex.

Despite verbal testimony given by children, the British regional coordinator James Ellery has refuted all allegations, citing a lack of evidence and blaming the accusations on 'misunderstandings' and the local peoples illiteracy. He referred to the allegations as 'rumors'.  An internal UNICEF report for the Sudanese government and a report from an unnamed NGO both appeared to substantiate the claims, but as yet, no cases have come to court.

The story follows a spate of similar allegations that have emerged in recent years. A BBC investigation in November 2006 detailed numerous allegations of rape and prostitution connected to UN forces in Haiti and Liberia. The report highlighted the fact the UN appeared both disinterested and ineffective in responding to allegations of the rape and sexual abuse of young women and children and was unable or unwilling to police the widespread use of prostitutes by it's personnel in the region.

A spate of stories emerged from the UN presence in Congo when in October 2005, both ABC and Fox news reported the story of Didier Bourget, a senior UN official from France, who videotaped himself having sex with young Congolese girls and was said to be running an internet pedophile ring in the region. Police investigating Bourget stated that his bedroom was covered with mirrors and he had set up a a series of remote controlled cameras around the room. The sting operation that captured him, allegedly found him preparing to rape a 12-year-old girl.

Following this, a further ABC News investigation published details of Aimme Tsesi, a 15 year old deaf-mute Congolese girl raped and impregnated by a Uruguayan UN solider, who was turned away from the gates of the UN camp when she went there for assistance. These cases were amongst an estimated 150 allegations of sexual exploitation and rape in the region that were highlighted in the ABC program "20/20" which aired in February 2005.

A Times investigation in December 2004, turned up allegations that two Russian pilots based in Mbandaka, paid young girls with jars of mayonnaise and jam to have sex with them. They filmed the sex acts and then apparently sent the tapes to Russia. The men were tipped off when the story was about to become public and left the area, escaping prosecution.

In 2001 former U.N. human rights investigator Kathryn Bolkovac sued the defense contractor DynCorp, (who administered the contract to provide police officers for the 2,100-member UN international police task force) on charges of wrongful dismissal, sexual discrimination and violation of Britain's whistle-blower laws. Bolkovac stated that the company dismissed her because she reported  in an email that Dyncorp police trainers officers were availing themselves of services offered by young women forced into prostitution and were complicit in sexual trafficking.

The email alleged that U.N. officers visited Bosnian sex clubs where girls as young as 15  were beaten, raped, refused food, and locked away for days or weeks if they refused to dance naked on tables and consort with paying customers. She stated that the women were told they would be arrested by the local police if they tried to contact them for help. She also said that officials were involved in helping local police to sell women into the sex-trade.

The British tribunal found unanimously in favor of Bolkovac and stated that Michael Stiers, the deputy commissioner of the mission in Bosnia who dismissed Bolkovac, for allegedly falsifying her time-sheet, "had his knife in her and was determined that she should be removed from her role as a gender monitor with IPTF."  Despite this decision and the fact the many Dyncorp official resigned under a cloud of suspicion, they enjoyed immunity from prosecution in Bosnia and were therefore never charged.

A similar lawsuit occurred earlier in 2001 when a former DynCorp aircraft mechanic Ben Johnston went public with allegations that during 1999 senior Dyncorp employees were "engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior." Amongst the many allegations were those of middle-aged men having sex with 12 year-olds, involvement with the Serbian Mafia, a DynCorp supervisor videotaping himself having sex with two females despite the fact that one of the women on the video was repeatedly heard saying "no" and the charge that many DynCorp employees bragged about purchasing women from Russia, Romania and other places for use as sex-slaves in Bosnia, and then sold them before returning home.

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Comment

There is a sense in which the United Nation's efforts to stem a tide of corrupt practice and moral degeneracy by it's troops and employees is at best negligent and at worst makes it appear criminally complicit in the actions it says it is trying to prevent.

Spokesmen for the UN continue to mouth a combination of platitudes and excuses, denying knowledge, citing insignificant evidence, or else attempting to shift the blame for actions committed by UN forces onto other groups and peoples.

Perhaps it is not surprising though, that an organization which spends such a great deal of time and energy telling other people how they ought to live and portraying itself as a beacon of light and freedom to poor and oppressed people everywhere, should be found at heart to be capable of both high level political corruption and a degree of moral bankruptcy that if maintained, will only lead to it losing further credibility. But then again, perhaps that's the whole point...

Original Post

The BBC has produced an undercover report highlighting the Chinese governments ongoing habit of executing prisoners and harvesting their organs, which are then offered for sale to rich customers in need of new body parts. One hospital told the BBC reporter that it could provide a liver for about $100,000.

The practice was first widely exposed back in in June 2001, when Chinese doctor Wang Guoqi testified before the U.S House of Representatives Subcommittee on Human Rights  that this was a commonplace occurrence. The Chinese Communist party promptly accused him of lying. Chinese Foreign Ministry officials labelled his testimony "a vicious slander against China" and "sensational lies".

A subsequent 2005 report in the Times quoted Huang Jiefu, China's Deputy Health Minister, who admitted that its useage was so widespread that it was in need of regulation;

"We want to push for regulations on organ transplants to standardise the management of the supply of organs from executed prisoners and tidy up the medical market".

The practice dates back to (at least) the 1980's and was not reported on in the western media until March 1993, when Amnesty International brought it to public attention. This was followed in 1994 by a Human Rights Watch report, entitled 'Organ Procurement and Judicial Execution in China' which stated;

China's extensive use of executed prisoners as a source of organs for medical transplantation purposes, a problem which so far has received somewhat less international attention, likewise creates serious cause for concern on a number of basic human rights grounds.

The consent of prisoners to use their organs after death, although required by law, appears rarely to be sought. In some cases, prisoners and their families are not even informed that the organs will be removed, although in others, the families are given cash payments. Since the prisoner's body is cremated immediately after execution and any last written will or statement can be censored by the authorities, moreover, family members have no way of ascertaining whether or not organs have been removed.

The execution procedure prescribed by Chinese law (shooting in the back of the head), is sometimes violated in order to expedite harvesting of prisoners' organs. According to Chinese legal authorities, some executions are even deliberately mishandled to ensure that the prisoners are not yet dead when their organs are removed.

The lack of adequate judicial safeguards in China, coupled with the existence of government directives allowing political offenders and other nonviolent criminals to be sentenced to death, virtually guarantee that a significant number of wrongful executions will take place. Some of those unfairly sentenced may be unwitting organ donors.

The use of condemned prisoners' organs involves members of the medical profession in the execution process in violation of international standards of medical ethics. Chinese doctors participate in pre-execution medical tests, matching of donors with recipients and scheduling of operations, often on a first-paid, first-served basis.

Full report here.

A Guardian newspaper report on 13 September 2005 contained claims that Chinese cosmetics companies were also profiting, by stripping the skin and tissue from both prisoners and aborted foetuses, and then using the harvested skin to develop collagen and wrinkle treatments for inclusion in beauty products for sale in Europe.

Comment

Perhaps we should not be surprised by the brutality of a regime that systematically suppresses dissent with a system of censorship, totalitarian enslavement, torture and murder. A state which forcibly controls the birth rate of its population and maintains the death penalty for minors, is hardly likely to consider that the rights of those it holds imprisoned, are of any greater consequence, than those of a herd of cattle.

China's hereditary oligarchy, continues to be one of the most disgusting and repugnant regimes currently oppressing a third of the people of planet earth. The fact that it is so routinely tolerated, and so rarely criticized, says a great deal about the current state of freedom in our increasingly inter-connected world.

For any thinking person, who believes in freedom, values liberty, reveres life, and upholds the proposition that all people should be free to make their own decisions, practice their religion of choice, and live peaceably in their own homes and communities, these are deeply troubling times. As our world continues to slide into ever more violent cycles of terror and war, and our civil liberties are seen to rapidly disintegrate by a process of progressive erosion, increasing suppression, and over-arching secrecy, the question needs to be asked;

"What is this 'war' for!?"

This modern crusade, that we now (after very careful programming) call the"war on terror" is meant to be in the furtherance of such great and lofty goals as "peace" "freedom" and "liberty" isn't it? Never mind the fact that it is founded almost entirely upon lies, built upon fear, and preserved and realized through terror. "The ends justify the means." Or so we are told..

The rhetoric emerging from the 'warspeak' machines of the mainstream media persists in its unceasing daily effort to program and force feed us into stunned and stupified submission, until we simply sit back and accept it all. Simultaneously numbing and bombarding our senses, as we switch between barbarous slices of reality one moment, and a multi-channel menu of carefully vetted digital distractions the next.

The Bush/Blair mantra continues to be, that we are in an ideological and physical struggle to the death, with the mortal enemy of radical Islamic terrorism, and that any and all actions are justified, in order that "freedom" and "democracy" might prevail. It is thus implied, that the terrorists alone are the ones who are responsible for our descent into a climate of barbarity and willful ignorance.

Thus it is that we live in a world, where our officials sanction secret arrest, torture, and detainment without charge OR trial, and where the blanket bombing of civilian targets joins economic sanctions, and military invasion, as simply a standard part of our collective foreign policy.

Surely anyone with the slightest interest in researching the facts about what has happened in the past and is happening now, can discern that those who preach the message that we must surrender our freedoms, (and it seems our consciences), are always the very same people profiting from the continuance and expansion of the 'war' and its wider agenda.

Yet it seems that the complexities, divisions, psyop's, and ruses, nurtured and crafted in the hidden councils and chambers of the ruling elite's, have succeeded again, in confusing the mass of people into accepting as truth what is in reality a gigantic global lie. Because the fact is, that in this particular grand global chess game, the 'terrorists' are merely useful pawns, to be manipulated for careful and strategic advantage, in the hands of those more who create, train, fund, and protect them.

The truth is, that (despite early appearances to the contrary), this 'war' is not against global terrorism, it is against each and every one of us. It is a war against the people themselves. It is not a war FOR freedom. It is a war AGAINST it, and ultimately, against anyone who stands in the way, of the collectivized project, long nurtured by the elite's, to remake the world in the image that they have chosen for it.

In the last few months I've noticed that the debates surrounding the current and future directions that UK podcasting is taking have intensified. The whole space seems to me to have had a new emphasis and urgency injected into it. Activity in some quarters of the web has proceeded at a breakneck pace, with posts flying backwards and forwards on various forums on a daily basis, as those who sense the commercial and social possibilities of this technology, get busy with the hard work of constructing their glistening podcast empires.

Much of this activity has been driven by the explosion of interest in podcasting from a host of individuals, companies, and organisations, and the resulting early overtures of the marketplace. No-one perhaps anticipated quite such a rapid acceleration, but it has happened nonetheless, and the implications for those of us interested in the future of the podcasting space are fascinating.

The current vogue, perhaps inspired by a desire not to be left-behind, means forming a podcast network, an agency, a consultancy, a  company, or even an association. The main purpose it seems, is to establish your interest and your group, as a "legitimate" authority on your particular podcasting patch. I'm not sure how much of this is down to the social dynamics of the podcasting "community" and the web, or how much of it has evolved organically.

An early casualty of this explosion of interest has been that some of the initial openness has vanished ever so slightly. The community, whilst still a fairly warm and inviting place, has become a little less accessible to newcomers. As the numbers rise, (of both listeners and creators), the virtual territory of the "Podosphere" is beginning to be carved up by those ambitious enough to stake their claims in the new media landscape.

Podcasting is relevant because it's the right technology at the right time. Five years ago, and almost nobody would have seen its relevance. In five years time, it'll be part of the digital furniture. Like blogs and e-bay, and buying goods on Amazon, it will become just another thing that can be accessed on the 'interweb'.

Right now however, "Podcasting" alongside such terms as "convergence", "citizen media", and  "social networks", is one of THE business and creative buzz words. This is all very different to the way the space looked here in the UK little less than a year ago, and in itself represents significant progress. Podcasting is out of nappies and into shorts now, and where there are crowds of podcasting toddlers there are bound to be a few messy accidents!

image from ipopmybaby

In little over a year and a half podcasting has gone from being a phrase that returned the line "did you mean broadcasting?" when typed into Google, to a term that returns a staggering 98,400,000 hits today. Not bad for a medium that was almost unheard of before January 11th, 2001, when blogger and programmer Dave Winer used RSS to embed a new element called an "enclosure" into his Scripting News weblog.

A short time later and we can see this simple idea beginning to produce a whole array of new content. Suddenly, it's relatively easy to subscribe to the media you choose, and to have it 'follow you' in an almost unobtrusive manner, right onto your computer, your mp3 player, mobile or portable platform. As the web becomes a distribution platform in its own right, a new breed of media producer is beginning to emerge.
 
Dubbed 'Citizen Media' this phenomenon, where ordinary people become reporters or commentators on a whole range of current events, issues, and topics, has exploded onto the web, prompting some to claim that the entire model for news media and journalism is undergoing a major revolution.

Initiatives like Ourmedia.org led by blogger and consultant J. D. Lassica have helped to establish  a non-profit base camp for media activists, and the efforts of Journalists like Dan Gilmor, author of the book ‘We the Media’ and founder of the Center for Citizen Media have given further credibility to the idea of grassroots journalism.

The notion that an active citizenry can create and distribute its own news, entertainment, opinion and conversation is certainly an interesting one, and podcasting and blogging are currently spearheading this movement. By creating a generation of active participants in the media making process, rather than the passive consumers of the past, this is helping to broaden the range of opinions and ideas available to the average person. Podcasts are already allowing previously unheard voices and viewpoints to enter the media landscape, and in the process new ideas which can influence debates and (on occasion), alter course of events.
 
 Equally, the proliferation of high quality portable mp3 recording devices, camera phones and DVD cameras is leading to more and more examples of citizens capturing the news in situations where there is no formally accredited journalist present. In this new climate, citizen reporters are already linking their audience to a whole range of material that would have been difficult, and in some cases impossible to obtain in the past. During the recent disasters of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina, it was ordinary people who were able to contribute a depth of comment, opinion, and a range of video and images that would possibly never have seen the light of day in the past.
 
 Imagine a ‘citizen reporter' who attends and records an unedited audio recording of an important public or town meeting. The act of doing so, and uploading the results onto the web, creates an accessible and portable public record, available to anyone who wants to hear it, and which would no doubt prove very useful to some. However, it also raises a series of difficult and (as yet), unresolved questions.

How are we to establish the authenticity and credibility of these new sources? If a podcaster or blogger posts false or misleading information about an individual or a company, should they not be held accountable for their actions? Currently podcasting is an unregulated medium, which has no doubt contributed to its popularity, but how long it can remain so is currently very much open to debate.

Of course very few podcasters would like jumping through a series of technical and regulatory loops in order to produce their shows. Nor is it a very appealing prospect to have to learn to navigate a whole series of legislative and ethical mazes in order to produce one! Indeed, given the current secretive and dictatorial nature of many western governments, the question should be asked, how are we to strike a balance between the public’s right to know, and a government’s desire to maintain a veil of secrecy? Certainly where podcasters and citizen reporters are concerned these issues are set to grow in importance.

The US Department of Homeland Security is carrying a press release detailing a US government program called US VISIT   more »

An insightful piece of news on Statewatch.org which quotes the Secretary General of the Council of Europe speaking recently at a press conference as saying;   more »

The Independent is carrying an excellent article highlighting the governments infringements on individuals civil liberties, and the restrictions currently being placed on free-speech in the UK.   more »

A YouGov survey published this week reports that less than a quarter of Britons trust their government to protect their identity on line.    more »

America's national debt is currently clocking in at a staggering 8.3 trillion dollars. That's $8,310,200,545,702 and counting.

By the time George Walker Bush leaves the White House it looks likely to break through the 10 trillion mark, which will require an extra digit to be added to the national debt clock.

Is this currency heading for a crisis or what!!?

Link

The Guardian reports: MI5 knew that two British residents who were seized and secretly flown to Guantánamo Bay were carrying harmless items when it tipped off the CIA that they were in possession of bomb parts.   more »

Unsurprisingly the Blair government is continuing its campaign to raise the maximum period of detention without charge for terror suspects from 28 to 90 days. The Guardian reports the Home Secretary Charles Clarke as having told MP's that he believes the police case for 90 days is compelling, and that the government may  return to the issue when it brings forward yet another package of anti-terror legislation next year. (Link)

The debate over the raising of the limit caused the Blair government to suffer its first major Commons defeat earlier this year, but that clearly was not enough to prevent them considering a return to the issue. Perhaps the governments original plan was to ensure that the 90 day period would be reached by a series of incremental bites rather than in one fell swoop.

There is an interesting ongoing discussion over at the Britcaster forums that revolves around the release of a statement from the alliance of the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS), and the Performing Rights Society (PRS). The statement describes itself as "the first serious attempt by a European collecting society to support the growth of music podcasting" and touts the introduction of a new licensing scheme, that will "enable music podcasters to trade legitimately over the next year."

The longer I think about though, the more it looks like a carrot is being offered to lure in the amorphous collective that currently constitutes the UK podcast community. Here's how I see the orange vegetable being employed by the MCPS-PRS Alliance in the coming days and months. No doubt the appearence of the  'stick' will not be very far behind..

1. Leverage your legitimacy as recognised collecting agencies protecting the interests of a section of the licensed creative content community, (musicians signed to record labels), to assume a leadership position in a debate over the future of podcasting, and the legal issues arising from it.

2. Lure in early adopters by offering them access to your treasure box of owned content. "Hey guys now you can play your favorite corporate music media in your podcasts!"

3. Offer professional organisations and business interests a greater incentive to colonize the podcast creation space. Simultaneously confer a degree of legitimacy upon those independent podcasters who enter into licensing agreements with you.

4. Ensure that your licensing proposals contain language designed to establish a clear sense of ownership and authority in your favor. Equally, ensure that the content creator (podcaster), surrenders secondary rights of creative control to you, in return for the loan of access. This is achieved by creating a series of 'rules' which must be strictly adhered to in the construction of the podcast in order for the podcaster to enjoy the full support of the Alliance.

5. Encourage a pay-per consumption model that will apply directly to the podcast creator.

6. Force a formal response from the community to the introduction of your (partially illegitimate) licensing scheme. This will in itself likely divide opinion further, between those suspicious of attempts to introduce regulation into an unregulated medium, and those who see it as an opportunity.

7. Begin the process of further legitimising those people who have accepted your carrot! Meet with them to discuss terms, and address any minor grievances that do not involve surrendering any of your newly acquired licensing and leadership powers.

8. With carrots duly distributed, and a two tier community created, begin the second phase consolidation by ensuring the prominence of content created and controlled under your licenses. Rinse and repeat.


Comment

I have no problem with musicians and artists earning their legitimate entitlement from a performance of their work. Nor do I have a problem with any podcasters who wish to enter into a private agreement with the Alliance in order to secure access to this content. However, there is a paragraph at the end of the statement, which indicates that the Alliance believes it has the power to license content it does not legally own. This content being the free speech of the podcaster during the course of the program.

Non-music podcasts (e.g. predominantly speech with very little music) will be licensed under a new on-demand scheme for non-music services which is being prepared for launch at the end of April 2006.

The issue here is not whether the industry has the right to enforce copyright upon works it already owns, clearly it does, but whether it can seek to extend licensing requirements so as to apply them to podcasts that have no legal obligations to the Alliance whatsoever. Under what set of circumstances could the content of my original thoughts expressed during the show, be inferred to require that I seek a notice of permission from someone who has not created them, and has no degree of ownership over them? I do not see any valid circumstance during which this would be the case. Assuming of course that the 'carrot' remains uneaten!

Lat night I watched Channel 4's screening of Michael Winterbottom's docudrama "The Road to Guantanamo." It was a film that was both horrifying and heartbreaking in equal measure. Using a mixture of interviews and dramatic re-construction, the film chronicles the terrifying odyssey of three young British muslim men from Tipton, who were arrested in Afghanistan in 2001 and accused of being either terrorists, members of the Taliban, or al-Qaeda militants. They subsequently suffered weeks of abuse at a detention camp in Kandahar, where they were hooded, shackled, beaten, and questioned on their knees at gunpoint. This was followed by 26 long months of isolation at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Upon their arrival at the outdoor cages of Camp X-ray, their captors told them that they were "the property of the US Marine Corp" and that they would never be released. In the months that followed, they endured a punishing cycle of isolation, degradation, and humiliation. In the middle of 2002 they were moved to Camp Delta, where the standard punishment was confinement in a sensory deprivation wing. Apart from the 12 hour interrogation sessions conducted by US security agencies and (apparently) MI5, there was no break in this regime except for occasional showers, and exercise for 20 minutes two or three times a week.

Despite repeated attempts to force an admission from them that they were in some way linked to terrorism, the three men refused to accept this, and steadfastly maintained their innocence. In 2002 their families (upon learning of their whereabouts), had launched a federal lawsuit on their behalf, but the men themselves were not informed of this fact until some two years later. However, when it began to become blatantly obvious in September 2003 that the men were innocent, their treatment improved, but it was March 2004 before they were finally released. No apologies were given, and no explanations were offered.

The film is available for online rental or paid download here, and if you wish to see for yourself a glimpse of the dark underbelly of the "war on terror" I hope you will take the time to watch it.

I have spent a portion of time lately exploring the massively multiplayer online synthetic world that is Second Life. I've noted a few thoughts about it in previous blog/audio entries, but to be honest it's much easier to experience it than it is to describe. Because of the open-ended and user created structure of large aspects of the second life universe, experiencing it will be a unique and personal experience for everyone. It is an environment that is constantly changing and evolving, and it encourages its residents to create and modify much of the world themselves. Everything from digital clothes, or accessories for your virtual self, to multi-story neon nightclubs, and apartment blocks in the sky can be built using the tools provided by Second Life's creators Linden Labs.

Cyber-geeks, digital artists, and early adopters are already mingling together, in gravity defying virtual rooms, fractal forests, and mountain retreats, their shiny digital avatars moving, dancing, or flying through an imaginary world. The social interaction and conversation is as unusual as might be expected, and there are hundreds of virtual clubs, shops, destinations, and new communities emerging in-world. Each one created in lovingly rendered 3D, and providing a hugely diverting and entertaining cornucopia of sight, sound, and simulated experience.

To spend more than a few hours in the metaverse, is to be dazzled by a seemingly endless computerised continent of landscapes and oceans, that rise and fall into view complete with shimmering light effects, textures and sounds, and form a veritable sprawl of data, stretching out as far as the (digital) horizon. Mingling navigation, conversation, and creation in new and extremely interesting ways Second Life really is a challenging experience, but it's also a lot of fun!

The range of communities, activities, and projects underway in Second Life is really quite amazing, and the diversity of world views found amongst the tens of thousands of virtual inhabitants, make it by far one of the more unusual destinations you can visit using your computer and an internet connection. A couple of points though, If you want to get the most out of the metaverse, you'll need a fairly zippy computer. Second Life is currently quite demanding in that respect. Updates to the software occur frequently, and the initial learning curve can be a little steep. Of course it isn't free either, and if you choose to 'buy land' it gets pricier. Also, the whole thing often feels very much as if it is perpetually in beta. Currently however that's the price required, and if you can handle that, and you like a challenge, then saddle up, because you may just have what it takes to be a be a console cowboy/ cowgirl on the new virtual frontier!

More information from: Second Life