Wednesday, December 08, 2010

Would You Just Rather Not Know This?

"When the truth is treason, the problem is the government." -- US Senator Ron Paul

bacha-bazi

It's been interesting to watch the Main Stream Media contort over the recent release of Wikileaks documents.

First they were all excited, the New York Times and the Guardian and others even staking out exclusive rights for various territories and titillating their readers with the promise of salacious details on what diplomats really say about one another.

There was an initial gush of coverage as they tried to cover everything being revealed.

Then, when the documents began to cast a negative light on some within the political spectrums that different media conglomerates either openly support or oppose, we got conflicting opinions on whether the man behind the dump of secret documents was a saint or a scoundrel.

Some pundits called for him to be assassinated. Others insisted he was the personification of freedom of speech.

That led to an ethical debate about whether the leaks put innocent people in danger or helped others gain wider public awareness of their situation.

And as each day brings new revelations about how our ruling classes behave, I detect a growing concern that the Media might no longer be able to control what news we see or read.

Am I the only one beginning to wonder how you can arrest a man and hold him without bail because a condom broke, but you can't demand a better product from the condom manufacturer sponsoring the newscast obsessed with that part of the Wikileaks story?

Or far more importantly, why the arrest of Wikileaks' Julian Assange is your lead story while there is no mention of new documents he just leaked which prove the American government helped purchase little boys for Afghan police officers to use as sex toys?

Is one story of greater importance than the other? Is the Main Stream Media protecting somebody by not running with that Afghan revelation?

Or has their market research told them that you don't care about that sort of unsettling stuff and would rather watch the "Jersey Shore" version of the news?

Yesterday, the Houston Press ran the following headline:

Texas Company Helped Pimp Little Boys To Stoned Afghan Cops

Kind of gets your attention, doesn't it?

So far not one word in any Canadian news source I can find.

The story details a Wikileaks released document from US diplomats confirming that American security contractor DynCorp, hired by the US Government at an annual cost of almost $2 Billion to train Afghan police officers, used some of that money to procure 8 - 15 year old boys as "gifts" for Afghan police officers who use them for anal sex.

Apparently DenCorp also uses some of their public funding to purchase drugs to get the same Afghan cops in a party mood.

Stunned?

Not even just a little?

You can read the full story here.

Now, this isn't the first time I've heard this tale. It's been a hot topic for months with Alex Jones, an American talk show host who also runs the Prisonplanet.com website.

Prison Planet is the kind of place that inspires people to marry the words "Batshit" and "crazy", being mostly concerned with dangers of Chemical Contrails and Flouride in your drinking water. Yet every now and then Jones ragdolls something that doesn't sound quite as outlandish.

However, the powers that be probably feel as much need to respond to his revelations as they do to "The Weekly World News" reports on President Obama's private meetings with Batboy.

But the story didn't stay within the confines of late night radio and conspiracy websites. Not long after Jones began calling out DynCorp, the PBS series "Frontline" ran a documentary on the practice (known locally as "Bacha Bazi") which is still available on their website.

Again, nobody in the Main Stream Media explored the story further, maybe because they already had their quota of child rape stories what with Roman Polanski and the Catholic Church.  In fact the Washington Post downplayed it as a "questionable management oversight" of those on the ground in Afghanistan.

The only official reaction from the US State Department referred to the Afghan sex slavery of children as a "widespread culturally accepted form of male rape" which also violated Sharia law and the Afghan civil code the cops they were training would soon stop.

Nobody said they were rewarding the Afghan cops they were training by purchasing them their own child sex slaves.

This particular Wikileak raises a huge number of issues.

First, this isn't the first time DynCorp has been involved in the world of child sex. In 1999, one of their own employees, Kathryn Bolkovac, a Nebraska cop, who wouldn't keep quiet about the sex trade of girls as young as 12 in Bosnia. That story has just been turned into a film called "The Whistleblower".

DynCorp, which was also a major player after Hurricane Katrina, has also been criticized for not being able to account for $1.2 Billion in US Federal money paid to them to train police in Iraq.

Which makes you wonder how these guys keep getting hired in Washington.

Or maybe, if you're real good at your job, the government doesn't mind you buggering a couple of orphans.

Then you've got to wonder if some of the ongoing Afghan resistance to NATO forces might have something to do with people not wanting to have their kids ass-raped by the coalition's local partners.

They've already had to endure our troops turning a blind eye to officials ripping off tens of millions in aid money that was supposed to make their lives better, so maybe their corruption line in the sand is Junior's back door.

I've talked to a few Canadian soldiers who've returned from their tours of duty in Afghanistan. The prevailing sentiment was that they felt enormous compassion for the people they were over there to protect but didn't much care for the local officials and warlords they were also instructed to support.

And since Canadian troops will now be staying in Afghanistan to take over the training of the local police, will they have to get into the business of pimping out children in order to get their trainees to play along?

Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton, you want some sound bites guaranteed to make some cabinet minister squirm on "Question Period", they're right in front of you.

Both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and US President Barrack Obama have kids the same age as the boys being abused, raped and murdered in Afghanistan. Shouldn't somebody be asking them why their representatives in Kabul have not only been aware of the practice but enabling it?

But this particular Wikileak isn't in the Globe & Mail today or featured on CBC's Newsworld. Instead both are fixated on the hacking of MasterCard by Wikileaks supporters.

Is that because MasterCard is one of their most important sponsors -- or because they are confident you really don't want to know?

3 comments:

Richard K said...

Wow. Apalling!

I believe in the goals of the Afghan mission but this is NOT helpful in "promoting democracy".

What one wonders is what is going to be done about this. I would hope some criminal charges dirceted at DynCorp. This has got to stop and sufficient deterrent is needed to make sure it stops for good.

Brandon Laraby said...

All I'm going to say on the subject is that people really should read this article before making a judgement about WikiLeaks or how 'horrible' they are. There's a lot of propaganda and mud flying around out there... here's someone trying to sort through it all and get to the facts.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/07/wikileaks/index.html

Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ABacha_bazi