veteranstoday--2020-02-10--Super Bowl’s Biggest Losers: Boys and Girls Being Sold for Sex 20 Times a Day

Benjamin Netanyahu obviously was onto something when he said “ If you want to advance regime change in Iran , you don ’ t have to go through the C.I.A .
cloak-and-dagger stuff — what you want to do is take very large , very strong transponders and just beam ‘ Melrose Place ’ and ‘ Beverly Hills 2050 ’ and all that into Tehran and into Iran , because that is subversive stuff .
They watch it — the young kids watch it , the young people .
They want to have the same nice clothes and the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” [ 1 ] Netanyahu is not that stupid .
He knows that this “ subversive stuff ” has been used by ideologues for centuries in order to enslave the masses .
In fact , Netanyahu must know that Samson , one of Israel ’ s undefeated heroes , was eventually defeated by this “ subversive stuff.
” He obviously knows that once a person succumbs to sexual ideologies , particularly in the form of “ democracy ” and “ freedom , ” then the person will ultimately become a slave to his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a classic example here .
In The Bacchae , Euripides introduces us to Pentheus , who is the king of Thebes and who represents the anti-thesis of social disorder and chaos .
Pentheus observes that Dionysus , the god of wine and sexual revelry , is the real cause of sexual licentiousness in Thebes .
All Dionysus has to do to create moral decay throughout the land is unleash sexual debauchery among the women in particular .
How ?
Simple : Allow the women to leave their looms and dance naked .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sexual and uncontrolled passion , which means that they will also drop their moral cognition and intuition .
The end result ?
The men will eventually be slaves to their passion .
As E. Michael Jones interprets it , “ Whoever controls sexual behavior controls the state , and he who controls the mores of women controls sexual behavior .
That is the first lesson of sexual politics.
” [ 2 ] Jones adds that the cultural revolution “ got the women of this country [ America ] to leave their looms and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 3 ] In short , once the mind has been subdued by a potent ideology , namely uncontrolled sexual passion , the person in question is no longer a good man but a slave .
As Augustine rightly put it , “ Thus , a good man , though a slave , is free ; but a wicked man , though a king , is a slave .
For he serves , not one man alone , but what is worse , as many masters as he has vices.
” Later , Edmund @ @ @ @ @ @ @ minds can not be free .
Their passions forge their fetters.
” [ 4 ] What we are saying here is that lust and uncontrolled sexual passion always lead to moral and intellectual blindness , moral blindness inexorably leads to “ sin city , ” and “ sin city ” leads to slavery and sometimes death .
This deduction has been understood by a wide range of individuals—from Marquis de Sade to Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich and all the way to comic book writers such as Allan Moore .
[ 5 ] @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to put an end to Dionysus ’ lust , which drives the men into sexual madness , Pentheus captured Dionysus .
When Dionysus was taken prisoner , he told Pentheus that Pentheus was his slave .
This obviously befuddled Pentheus .
How am I his slave , Pentheus seemed to reason , when I got him in the chain ?
In other words , Dionysus allowed himself to be captured by Pentheus because he wanted to seduce the very man who seeks to prohibit sexual debauchery .
To make a long story short @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like to see the women ( Maenads ) dance naked on the mountainside .
Pentheus , of course , was flattered and seemed to have been sensually aroused .
We could imagine Pentheus saying , “ You mean I ’ ll have unlimited access to naked women ?
Heck , yeah !
Oh , brother , what man would say no to that ?
When will I get to see those beautiful sights ?
” Pentheus—like Shelley , Byron , Wilde , Sartre , Russell , Wells , Schopenhauer , and more recently @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Weiner , Newt Gingrich—could not perceive that he was being lured into a trap which has the potential to even kill him .
Pentheus actually says , “ Aye , indeed !
Lead on .
Why should we tarry ?
… That would I , though it cost me all the gold of Thebes !
” At that point , Pentheus ’ moral reasoning began to wane precisely because lust has started to take over his being .
Dionysus was shocked to see that Pentheus was willing to go the extra miles to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ So much ?
Thou art quick to fall to such great longing.
” Keep in mind that Dionysus has used other means to persuade Pentheus to abandon his moral path but failed .
Dionysus finally rested on the sexual dimension , which Pentheus could not resist and which turned out to be an instrument of control .
Moreover , Dionysus quickly learned that talking about naked women was much more persuasive and alluring than positing philosophical syllogism .
To make a long story short , Dionysus led Pentheus to the mountainside @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tearing Pentheus apart in a sexual frenzy , leading him to a bloody and tragic death .
So the logic is pretty straightforward : If you can manipulate a person ’ s passion—most particularly his unbridled , sexual passion—then you can manipulate his behavior .
If you can manipulate his behavior , then you can make him do what you want .
This is precisely what we have recently witnessed at the Super Bowl .
There is more here than meets the eye and ear .
John W. Whitehead will have more to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day.
” —John Ryan , National Center for Missing & Exploited Children There can only be one winner emerging from this year ’ s Super Bowl LIV showdown between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs , but the biggest losers will be the hundreds of young girls and boys—some as young as 9 years old—who will be bought and sold for sex during the course of the big game .
It ’ s common to refer to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns as child sex trafficking , but what we ’ re really talking about is rape .
Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States .
It ’ s not just young girls who are vulnerable to these predators , either .
According to a USA Today investigative report , “ boys make up about 36 % of children caught up in the U.S. sex industry ( about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 5 % are transgender males and females ) .
” Consider this : every two minutes , a child is exploited in the sex industry .
In Georgia alone , it is estimated that 7,200 men ( half of them in their 30s ) seek to purchase sex with adolescent girls each month , averaging roughly 300 a day .
On average , a child might be raped by 6,000 men during a five-year period .
It is estimated that at least 100,000 children—girls and boys—are bought and sold for sex in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked each year .
Some of these children are forcefully abducted , others are runaways , and still , others are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances .
Child rape has become Big Business in America .
This is an industry that revolves around cheap sex on the fly , with young girls and women who are sold to 50 men each day for $ 25 apiece , while their handlers make $ 150,000 to $ 200,000 per child each year .
This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cities .
It ’ s happening everywhere , right under our noses , in suburbs , cities , and towns across the nation .
As Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children points out , “ The only way not to find this in any American city is simply not to look for it.
” Don ’ t fool yourselves into believing that this is merely a concern for lower-income communities or immigrants .
It is estimated that there are 100,000 to 150,000 under-aged child sex workers in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ volunteering to be sex slaves .
They ’ re being lured—forced—trafficked into it .
In most cases , they have no choice .
Every transaction is rape .
In order to avoid detection ( in some cases aided and abetted by the police ) and cater to male buyers ’ demand for sex with different women , pimps and the gangs and crime syndicates they work for have turned sex trafficking into a highly mobile enterprise , with trafficked girls , boys and women constantly being moved from city to city , state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
For instance , the Baltimore-Washington area , referred to as The Circuit , with its I-95 corridor dotted with rest stops , bus stations , and truck stops , is a hub for the sex trade .
No doubt about it : this is a highly profitable , highly organized and highly sophisticated sex trafficking business that operates in towns large and small , raking in upwards of $ 9.5 billion a year in the U.S. alone by abducting and selling young girls for sex .
Every year , the girls being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The average age of those being trafficked is 13 .
Yet as the head of a group that combats trafficking pointed out , “ Let ’ s think about what average means .
That means there are children younger than 13 .
That means 8- , 9- , 10-year-olds.
” “ For every 10 women rescued , there are 50 to 100 more women who are brought in by the traffickers .
Unfortunately , they ’ re not 18- or 20-year-olds anymore , ” noted a 25-year-old victim of trafficking .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 13 who are being trafficked .
They ’ re little girls.
” This is America ’ s dirty little secret .
But what or who is driving this evil appetite for young flesh ?
Who buys a child for sex ?
Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life .
“ They could be your co-worker , doctor , pastor or spouse , ” writes journalist Tim Swarens , who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America .
Catholic and Protestant churches have been particularly singled out in recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Twenty years after the clergy sex abuse scandal rocked the Catholic Church , hundreds of sexual predators—priests , deacons , monks and laypeople—continue to be given work assignments in proximity to children .
In many cases , the abuse continues unabated .
Although much less publicized , the sex crimes within the Protestant Church have been no less egregious .
For instance , a recent expose into the Southern Baptist Church leaders by the Houston Chronicle documents over 700 child sex victims “ who were molested , sent explicit photos or texts , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or repeatedly raped by youth pastors .
Some victims as young as 3 were molested or raped inside pastors ’ studies and Sunday school classrooms.
” And then you have national sporting events such as the Super Bowl , where sex traffickers have been caught selling minors , some as young as 9 years old .
Yet even if the Super Bowl is not exactly a “ windfall ” for sex traffickers as some claim , it remains a lucrative source of income for the child sex trafficking industry and a draw for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rape young children .
According to criminal investigator Marc Chadderdon , these “ buyers ” —the so-called “ ordinary ” men who drive the demand for sex with children—represent a cross-section of American society : every age , every race , every socio-economic background , cops , teachers , corrections workers , pastors , etc .
And then there are the extra-ordinary men , such as Jeffrey Epstein , the hedge fund billionaire / convicted serial pedophile who was arrested on charges of molesting , raping and sex trafficking dozens of young girls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ circumstances .
It is believed that Epstein operated his own personal sex trafficking ring not only for his personal pleasure but also for the pleasure of his friends and business associates .
According to The Washington Post , “ several of the young women…say they were offered to the rich and famous as sex partners at Epstein ’ s parties.
” At various times , Epstein ferried his friends about on his private plane , nicknamed the “ Lolita Express.
” Men like Epstein and his cronies , who belong to a powerful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that operates according to their own rules , skate free of accountability by taking advantage of a criminal justice system that panders to the powerful , the wealthy and the elite .
Still , where did this appetite for young girls come from ?
Look around you .
Young girls have been sexualized for years now in music videos , on billboards , in television ads , and in clothing stores .
Marketers have created a demand for young flesh and a ready supply of over-sexualized children .
“ In a market that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for tweens , it doesn ’ t take a genius to see that sex , if not porn , has invaded our lives , ” writes Jessica Bennett for Newsweek .
“ Whether we welcome it or not , television brings it into our living rooms and the Web brings it into our bedrooms .
According to a 2007 study from the University of Alberta , as many as 90 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls aged 13 to 14 have accessed sexually explicit content at least once.
” This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pornification of a generation.
” In other words , the culture is grooming these young people to be preyed upon by sexual predators .
Social media makes it all too easy .
As one news center reported , “ Finding girls is easy for pimps .
They look on … social networks .
They and their assistants ’ cruise malls , high schools and middle schools .
They pick them up at bus stops .
On the trolley .
Girl-to-girl recruitment sometimes happens.
” Foster homes and youth shelters have also become prime @ @ @ @ @ @ @ girls enter into prostitution voluntarily .
Many start out as runaways or throwaways , only to be snatched up by pimps or larger sex rings .
Others persuaded to meet up with a stranger after interacting online through one of the many social networking sites , find themselves quickly initiated into their new lives as sex slaves .
Debbie , a straight-A student who belonged to a close-knit Air Force family living in Phoenix , Ariz. , is an example of this trading of flesh .
Debbie was 15 when she was snatched @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Forced into a car , Debbie was bound and taken to an unknown location , held at gunpoint and raped by multiple men .
She was then crammed into a small dog kennel and forced to eat dog biscuits .
Debbie ’ s captors advertised her services on Craigslist .
Those who responded were often married with children , and the money that Debbie “ earned ” for sex was given to her kidnappers .
The gang raping continued .
After searching the apartment where Debbie was held captive , police finally found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bed .
Her harrowing ordeal lasted for 40 days .
While Debbie was fortunate enough to be rescued , others are not so lucky .
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children , nearly 800,000 children go missing every year ( roughly 2,185 children a day ) .
With a growing demand for sexual slavery and an endless supply of girls and women who can be targeted for abduction , this is not a problem that ’ s going away anytime soon .
For those trafficked , it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Those being sold for sex have an average life expectancy of seven years , and those years are a living nightmare of endless rape , forced drugging , humiliation , degradation , threats , disease , pregnancies , abortions , miscarriages , torture , pain , and always the constant fear of being killed or , worse , having those you love hurt or killed .
Peter Landesman paints the full horrors of life for those victims of the sex trade in his New York Times article “ The Girls Next Door ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the other children she was held with were frequently beaten to keep them off-balance and obedient .
Sometimes they were videotaped while being forced to have sex with adults or one another .
Often , she said , she was asked to play roles : the therapist-patient or the obedient daughter .
Her cell of sex traffickers offered three age ranges of sex partners–toddler to age 4 , 5 to 12 and teens–as well as what she called a “ damage group.
” “ In the damage group , they can hit you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” she explained .
“ Though sex always hurts when you are little , so it ’ s always violent , everything was much more painful once you were placed in the damage group.
” What Andrea described next shows just how depraved some portions of American society have become .
“ They ’ d get you hungry then to train you ” to have oral sex .
“ They put honey on a man .
For the littlest kids , you had to learn not to gag .
And they would push @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up better .
We learned responses .
Like if they wanted us to be sultry or sexy or scared .
Most of them wanted you scared .
When I got older , I ’ d teach the younger kids how to float away so things didn ’ t hurt.
” Immigration and customs enforcement agents at the Cyber Crimes Center in Fairfax , Va. , report that when it comes to sex , the appetites of many Americans have now changed .
What was once considered abnormal is now the norm .
These @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the demand for harder-core pornography on the Internet .
As one agent noted , “ We ’ ve become desensitized by the soft stuff ; now we need a harder and harder hit.
” This trend is reflected by the treatment many of the girls receive at the hands of the drug traffickers and the men who purchase them .
Peter Landesman interviewed Rosario , a Mexican woman who had been trafficked to New York and held captive for a number of years .
She said : “ In America , we had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anal sex , often with many men .
Sex is now more adventurous , harder.
” A common thread woven through most survivors ’ experiences is being forced to go without sleep or food until they have met their sex quota of at least 40 men .
One woman recounts how her trafficker made her lie face down on the floor when she was pregnant and then literally jumped on her back , forcing her to miscarry .
Holly Austin Smith was abducted when she was 14 years old , raped , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pimp , when brought to trial , was only made to serve a year in prison .
Barbara Amaya was repeatedly sold between traffickers , abused , shot , stabbed , raped , kidnapped , trafficked , beaten , and jailed all before she was 18 years old .
“ I had a quota that I was supposed to fill every night .
And if I didn ’ t have that amount of money , I would get beat , thrown down the stairs .
He beat me once with wire coat hangers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , he straightened it out and my whole back was bleeding.
” As David McSwane recounts in a chilling piece for the Herald-Tribune : “ In Oakland Park , an industrial Fort Lauderdale suburb , federal agents in 2011 encountered a brothel operated by a married couple .
Inside ‘ The Boom Boom Room , ’ as it was known , customers paid a fee and were given a condom and a timer and left alone with one of the brothel ’ s eight teenagers , children as young as 13 .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as security , while a 17-year-old girl told a federal judge she was forced to have sex with as many as 20 men a night.
” One particular sex trafficking ring catered specifically to migrant workers employed seasonally on farms throughout the southeastern states , especially the Carolinas and Georgia , although it ’ s a flourishing business in every state in the country .
Traffickers transport the women from farm to farm , where migrant workers would line up outside shacks , as many as 30 at a time , to have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to yet another farm where the process would begin all over again .
This growing evil is , for all intents and purposes , out in the open .
Trafficked children are advertised on the internet , transported on the interstate , and bought and sold in swanky hotels .
Unfortunately , as I make clear in my book Battlefield America : The War on the American People , the government ’ s war on sex trafficking—much like the government ’ s war on terrorism , drugs , and crime—has become a perfect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( police checkpoints , searches , surveillance , and heightened security ) on a vulnerable public , while doing little to protect our children from sex predators .
About John W. Whitehead : John is an attorney and author who has written , debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights .
Whitehead ’ s concern for the persecuted and oppressed led him , in 1982 , to establish The Rutherford Institute , nonprofit civil liberties , and human rights organization whose international headquarters are located in Charlottesville @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the constitutional freedoms of every American and the integral human rights of all people , The Rutherford Institute has emerged as a prominent leader in the national dialogue on civil liberties and human rights and a formidable champion of the Constitution .
Whitehead serves as the Institute ’ s president and spokesperson .
Widely recognized as one of the nation ’ s most vocal and involved civil liberties attorneys , Whitehead ’ s approach to civil liberties issues has earned him numerous accolades and accomplishments , including the Hungarian Medal of Freedom and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Award for “ [ his ] decades of difficult and important work , as well as [ his ] impeccable integrity in defending civil liberties for all.
” Whitehead earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Arkansas in 1969 and a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1974 .
He served as an officer in the United States Army from 1969 to 1971 .
• [ 1 ] Quoted in Robert Mackey , “ Kerry Reminds Congress Netanyahu Advised U.S. to Invade Iraq , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2015 .
• [ 5 ] See for example Todd A. Comer and Joseph Michael Sommers , Sexual Ideology in the Works of Alan Moore : Critical Essays on the Graphic Novels ( London : McFarland & Company , 2012 ) .

by Jonas E. Alexis and John W. Whitehead
Benjamin Netanyahu obviously was onto something when he said “If you want to advance regime change in Iran, you don’t have to go through the C.I.A. cloak-and-dagger stuff — what you want to do is take very large, very strong transponders and just beam ‘Melrose Place’ and ‘Beverly Hills 2050’ and all that into Tehran and into Iran, because that is subversive stuff.
They watch it — the young kids watch it, the young people. They want to have the same nice clothes and the same houses and swimming pools and so on.”[1]
Netanyahu is not that stupid. He knows that this “subversive stuff” has been used by ideologues for centuries in order to enslave the masses. In fact, Netanyahu must know that Samson, one of Israel’s undefeated heroes, was eventually defeated by this “subversive stuff.” He obviously knows that once a person succumbs to sexual ideologies, particularly in the form of “democracy” and “freedom,” then the person will ultimately become a slave to his oppressors. Euripides’ The Bacchae is a classic example here.
In The Bacchae, Euripides introduces us to Pentheus, who is the king of Thebes and who represents the anti-thesis of social disorder and chaos. Pentheus observes that Dionysus, the god of wine and sexual revelry, is the real cause of sexual licentiousness in Thebes.
All Dionysus has to do to create moral decay throughout the land is unleash sexual debauchery among the women in particular. How? Simple: Allow the women to leave their looms and dance naked. The men would eventually be drawn to their sexual and uncontrolled passion, which means that they will also drop their moral cognition and intuition. The end result? The men will eventually be slaves to their passion.
As E. Michael Jones interprets it, “Whoever controls sexual behavior controls the state, and he who controls the mores of women controls sexual behavior. That is the first lesson of sexual politics.”[2] Jones adds that the cultural revolution “got the women of this country [America] to leave their looms and dance naked on the mountainside.”[3]
In short, once the mind has been subdued by a potent ideology, namely uncontrolled sexual passion, the person in question is no longer a good man but a slave. As Augustine rightly put it, “Thus, a good man, though a slave, is free; but a wicked man, though a king, is a slave. For he serves, not one man alone, but what is worse, as many masters as he has vices.”
Later, Edmund Burke added that “men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”[4]
What we are saying here is that lust and uncontrolled sexual passion always lead to moral and intellectual blindness, moral blindness inexorably leads to “sin city,” and “sin city” leads to slavery and sometimes death. This deduction has been understood by a wide range of individuals—from Marquis de Sade to Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich and all the way to comic book writers such as Allan Moore.[5]
Going back to Pentheus. In order to put an end to Dionysus’ lust, which drives the men into sexual madness, Pentheus captured Dionysus. When Dionysus was taken prisoner, he told Pentheus that Pentheus was his slave. This obviously befuddled Pentheus. How am I his slave, Pentheus seemed to reason, when I got him in the chain?
In other words, Dionysus allowed himself to be captured by Pentheus because he wanted to seduce the very man who seeks to prohibit sexual debauchery. To make a long story short, Dionysus asks Pentheus if he would like to see the women (Maenads) dance naked on the mountainside. Pentheus, of course, was flattered and seemed to have been sensually aroused. We could imagine Pentheus saying,
“You mean I’ll have unlimited access to naked women? Heck, yeah! Oh, brother, what man would say no to that? When will I get to see those beautiful sights?”
Pentheus—like Shelley, Byron, Wilde, Sartre, Russell, Wells, Schopenhauer, and more recently Gore Vidal, David Petraeus, Anthony Weiner, Newt Gingrich—could not perceive that he was being lured into a trap which has the potential to even kill him.
Pentheus actually says, “Aye, indeed! Lead on. Why should we tarry?… That would I, though it cost me all the gold of Thebes!” At that point, Pentheus’ moral reasoning began to wane precisely because lust has started to take over his being.
Dionysus was shocked to see that Pentheus was willing to go the extra miles to see those naked women. Dionysus says, “So much? Thou art quick to fall to such great longing.”
Keep in mind that Dionysus has used other means to persuade Pentheus to abandon his moral path but failed. Dionysus finally rested on the sexual dimension, which Pentheus could not resist and which turned out to be an instrument of control.
Moreover, Dionysus quickly learned that talking about naked women was much more persuasive and alluring than positing philosophical syllogism.
To make a long story short, Dionysus led Pentheus to the mountainside, and the naked women ended up tearing Pentheus apart in a sexual frenzy, leading him to a bloody and tragic death.
So the logic is pretty straightforward: If you can manipulate a person’s passion—most particularly his unbridled, sexual passion—then you can manipulate his behavior. If you can manipulate his behavior, then you can make him do what you want. This is precisely what we have recently witnessed at the Super Bowl. There is more here than meets the eye and ear. John W. Whitehead will have more to say about that in his trenchant assessment.
John W. Whitehead
“Children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day.”—John Ryan, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
There can only be one winner emerging from this year’s Super Bowl LIV showdown between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs, but the biggest losers will be the hundreds of young girls and boys—some as young as 9 years old—who will be bought and sold for sex during the course of the big game.
It’s common to refer to this evil practice, which has become the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns as child sex trafficking, but what we’re really talking about is rape.
Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.
It’s not just young girls who are vulnerable to these predators, either.
According to a USA Today investigative report, “boys make up about 36% of children caught up in the U.S. sex industry (about 60% are female and less than 5% are transgender males and females).”
Consider this: every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex industry.
In Georgia alone, it is estimated that 7,200 men (half of them in their 30s) seek to purchase sex with adolescent girls each month, averaging roughly 300 a day.
On average, a child might be raped by 6,000 men during a five-year period.
It is estimated that at least 100,000 children—girls and boys—are bought and sold for sex in the U.S. every year, with as many as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked each year. Some of these children are forcefully abducted, others are runaways, and still, others are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances.
Child rape has become Big Business in America.
This is an industry that revolves around cheap sex on the fly, with young girls and women who are sold to 50 men each day for $25 apiece, while their handlers make $150,000 to $200,000 per child each year.
This is not a problem found only in big cities.
It’s happening everywhere, right under our noses, in suburbs, cities, and towns across the nation.
As Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children points out, “The only way not to find this in any American city is simply not to look for it.”
Don’t fool yourselves into believing that this is merely a concern for lower-income communities or immigrants.
It’s not.
It is estimated that there are 100,000 to 150,000 under-aged child sex workers in the U.S. These girls aren’t volunteering to be sex slaves. They’re being lured—forced—trafficked into it. In most cases, they have no choice. Every transaction is rape.
In order to avoid detection (in some cases aided and abetted by the police) and cater to male buyers’ demand for sex with different women, pimps and the gangs and crime syndicates they work for have turned sex trafficking into a highly mobile enterprise, with trafficked girls, boys and women constantly being moved from city to city, state to state, and country to country.
For instance, the Baltimore-Washington area, referred to as The Circuit, with its I-95 corridor dotted with rest stops, bus stations, and truck stops, is a hub for the sex trade.
No doubt about it: this is a highly profitable, highly organized and highly sophisticated sex trafficking business that operates in towns large and small, raking in upwards of $9.5 billion a year in the U.S. alone by abducting and selling young girls for sex.
Every year, the girls being bought and sold gets younger and younger.
The average age of those being trafficked is 13. Yet as the head of a group that combats trafficking pointed out, “Let’s think about what average means. That means there are children younger than 13. That means 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds.”
“For every 10 women rescued, there are 50 to 100 more women who are brought in by the traffickers. Unfortunately, they’re not 18- or 20-year-olds anymore,” noted a 25-year-old victim of trafficking. “They’re minors as young as 13 who are being trafficked. They’re little girls.”
This is America’s dirty little secret.
But what or who is driving this evil appetite for young flesh? Who buys a child for sex?
Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life. “They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse,” writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America.
Catholic and Protestant churches have been particularly singled out in recent years for harboring these sexual predators. Twenty years after the clergy sex abuse scandal rocked the Catholic Church, hundreds of sexual predators—priests, deacons, monks and laypeople—continue to be given work assignments in proximity to children. In many cases, the abuse continues unabated.
Although much less publicized, the sex crimes within the Protestant Church have been no less egregious. For instance, a recent expose into the Southern Baptist Church leaders by the Houston Chronicle documents over 700 child sex victims “who were molested, sent explicit photos or texts, exposed to pornography, photographed nude, or repeatedly raped by youth pastors. Some victims as young as 3 were molested or raped inside pastors’ studies and Sunday school classrooms.”
And then you have national sporting events such as the Super Bowl, where sex traffickers have been caught selling minors, some as young as 9 years old. Yet even if the Super Bowl is not exactly a “windfall” for sex traffickers as some claim, it remains a lucrative source of income for the child sex trafficking industry and a draw for those who are willing to pay to rape young children.
According to criminal investigator Marc Chadderdon, these “buyers”—the so-called “ordinary” men who drive the demand for sex with children—represent a cross-section of American society: every age, every race, every socio-economic background, cops, teachers, corrections workers, pastors, etc.
And then there are the extra-ordinary men, such as Jeffrey Epstein, the hedge fund billionaire / convicted serial pedophile who was arrested on charges of molesting, raping and sex trafficking dozens of young girls, only to die under highly unusual circumstances.
It is believed that Epstein operated his own personal sex trafficking ring not only for his personal pleasure but also for the pleasure of his friends and business associates. According to The Washington Post, “several of the young women…say they were offered to the rich and famous as sex partners at Epstein’s parties.” At various times, Epstein ferried his friends about on his private plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”
Men like Epstein and his cronies, who belong to a powerful, wealthy, elite segment of society that operates according to their own rules, skate free of accountability by taking advantage of a criminal justice system that panders to the powerful, the wealthy and the elite.
Still, where did this appetite for young girls come from?
Look around you.
Young girls have been sexualized for years now in music videos, on billboards, in television ads, and in clothing stores. Marketers have created a demand for young flesh and a ready supply of over-sexualized children.
“In a market that sells high heels for babies and thongs for tweens, it doesn’t take a genius to see that sex, if not porn, has invaded our lives,” writes Jessica Bennett for Newsweek. “Whether we welcome it or not, television brings it into our living rooms and the Web brings it into our bedrooms. According to a 2007 study from the University of Alberta, as many as 90 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls aged 13 to 14 have accessed sexually explicit content at least once.”
This is what Bennett refers to as the “pornification of a generation.”
In other words, the culture is grooming these young people to be preyed upon by sexual predators.
Social media makes it all too easy. As one news center reported, “Finding girls is easy for pimps. They look on … social networks. They and their assistants’ cruise malls, high schools and middle schools. They pick them up at bus stops. On the trolley. Girl-to-girl recruitment sometimes happens.” Foster homes and youth shelters have also become prime targets for traffickers.
Rarely do these girls enter into prostitution voluntarily. Many start out as runaways or throwaways, only to be snatched up by pimps or larger sex rings. Others persuaded to meet up with a stranger after interacting online through one of the many social networking sites, find themselves quickly initiated into their new lives as sex slaves.
Debbie, a straight-A student who belonged to a close-knit Air Force family living in Phoenix, Ariz., is an example of this trading of flesh. Debbie was 15 when she was snatched from her driveway by an acquaintance-friend. Forced into a car, Debbie was bound and taken to an unknown location, held at gunpoint and raped by multiple men. She was then crammed into a small dog kennel and forced to eat dog biscuits. Debbie’s captors advertised her services on Craigslist.
Those who responded were often married with children, and the money that Debbie “earned” for sex was given to her kidnappers. The gang raping continued. After searching the apartment where Debbie was held captive, police finally found Debbie stuffed in a drawer under a bed. Her harrowing ordeal lasted for 40 days.
While Debbie was fortunate enough to be rescued, others are not so lucky.
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, nearly 800,000 children go missing every year (roughly 2,185 children a day).
With a growing demand for sexual slavery and an endless supply of girls and women who can be targeted for abduction, this is not a problem that’s going away anytime soon.
For those trafficked, it’s a nightmare from beginning to end.
Those being sold for sex have an average life expectancy of seven years, and those years are a living nightmare of endless rape, forced drugging, humiliation, degradation, threats, disease, pregnancies, abortions, miscarriages, torture, pain, and always the constant fear of being killed or, worse, having those you love hurt or killed.
Peter Landesman paints the full horrors of life for those victims of the sex trade in his New York Times article “The Girls Next Door”:
Andrea told me that she and the other children she was held with were frequently beaten to keep them off-balance and obedient. Sometimes they were videotaped while being forced to have sex with adults or one another. Often, she said, she was asked to play roles: the therapist-patient or the obedient daughter. Her cell of sex traffickers offered three age ranges of sex partners–toddler to age 4, 5 to 12 and teens–as well as what she called a “damage group.” “In the damage group, they can hit you or do anything they want to,” she explained. “Though sex always hurts when you are little, so it’s always violent, everything was much more painful once you were placed in the damage group.”
What Andrea described next shows just how depraved some portions of American society have become. “They’d get you hungry then to train you” to have oral sex. “They put honey on a man. For the littlest kids, you had to learn not to gag. And they would push things in you so you would open up better. We learned responses. Like if they wanted us to be sultry or sexy or scared. Most of them wanted you scared. When I got older, I’d teach the younger kids how to float away so things didn’t hurt.”
Immigration and customs enforcement agents at the Cyber Crimes Center in Fairfax, Va., report that when it comes to sex, the appetites of many Americans have now changed. What was once considered abnormal is now the norm. These agents are tracking a clear spike in the demand for harder-core pornography on the Internet. As one agent noted, “We’ve become desensitized by the soft stuff; now we need a harder and harder hit.”
This trend is reflected by the treatment many of the girls receive at the hands of the drug traffickers and the men who purchase them. Peter Landesman interviewed Rosario, a Mexican woman who had been trafficked to New York and held captive for a number of years. She said: “In America, we had ‘special jobs.’ Oral sex, anal sex, often with many men. Sex is now more adventurous, harder.”
A common thread woven through most survivors’ experiences is being forced to go without sleep or food until they have met their sex quota of at least 40 men. One woman recounts how her trafficker made her lie face down on the floor when she was pregnant and then literally jumped on her back, forcing her to miscarry.
Holly Austin Smith was abducted when she was 14 years old, raped, and then forced to prostitute herself. Her pimp, when brought to trial, was only made to serve a year in prison.
Barbara Amaya was repeatedly sold between traffickers, abused, shot, stabbed, raped, kidnapped, trafficked, beaten, and jailed all before she was 18 years old. “I had a quota that I was supposed to fill every night. And if I didn’t have that amount of money, I would get beat, thrown down the stairs. He beat me once with wire coat hangers, the kind you hang up clothes, he straightened it out and my whole back was bleeding.”
As David McSwane recounts in a chilling piece for the Herald-Tribune: “In Oakland Park, an industrial Fort Lauderdale suburb, federal agents in 2011 encountered a brothel operated by a married couple. Inside ‘The Boom Boom Room,’ as it was known, customers paid a fee and were given a condom and a timer and left alone with one of the brothel’s eight teenagers, children as young as 13. A 16-year-old foster child testified that he acted as security, while a 17-year-old girl told a federal judge she was forced to have sex with as many as 20 men a night.”
One particular sex trafficking ring catered specifically to migrant workers employed seasonally on farms throughout the southeastern states, especially the Carolinas and Georgia, although it’s a flourishing business in every state in the country. Traffickers transport the women from farm to farm, where migrant workers would line up outside shacks, as many as 30 at a time, to have sex with them before they were transported to yet another farm where the process would begin all over again.
This growing evil is, for all intents and purposes, out in the open.
Trafficked children are advertised on the internet, transported on the interstate, and bought and sold in swanky hotels.
Unfortunately, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government’s war on sex trafficking—much like the government’s war on terrorism, drugs, and crime—has become a perfect excuse for inflicting more police state tactics (police checkpoints, searches, surveillance, and heightened security) on a vulnerable public, while doing little to protect our children from sex predators.
About John W. Whitehead: John is an attorney and author who has written, debated and practiced widely in the area of constitutional law and human rights. Whitehead’s concern for the persecuted and oppressed led him, in 1982, to establish The Rutherford Institute, nonprofit civil liberties, and human rights organization whose international headquarters are located in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Deeply committed to protecting the constitutional freedoms of every American and the integral human rights of all people, The Rutherford Institute has emerged as a prominent leader in the national dialogue on civil liberties and human rights and a formidable champion of the Constitution. Whitehead serves as the Institute’s president and spokesperson. Widely recognized as one of the nation’s most vocal and involved civil liberties attorneys, Whitehead’s approach to civil liberties issues has earned him numerous accolades and accomplishments, including the Hungarian Medal of Freedom and the 2010 Milner S. Ball Lifetime Achievement Award for “[his] decades of difficult and important work, as well as [his] impeccable integrity in defending civil liberties for all.”
Whitehead earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Arkansas in 1969 and a Juris Doctorate degree from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 1974. He served as an officer in the United States Army from 1969 to 1971.


veteranstoday--2020-02-10--Christian 14yo Raped and Forced to Marry by a Muslim: Court allows because she had Menses. Turkey wa

Christian 14yo Raped and Forced to Marry by a Muslim: Court allows because she had Menses. Turkey wants Law “Marry your rapist”

It has been nicknamed “ marry your rapist ” .
It is a bill presented to the Ankara Parliament despite the fact that the UN has already expressed its opposition .
While the legalization of rape against minors is still under discussion in Turkey , which by virtue of its membership of NATO can actually do whatever it wants with regard to human rights violations , a concrete application of this “ pedophile ” law finds legitimacy from Islamic Sharia law in Pakistan .
Despite the family ’ s appeal to the Pope … The 14-year-old Christian kidnapped , raped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ order to marry her Muslim husband can not currently have justice because she has already menstruated and , therefore , according to Sharia , she is not considered of minor age but a girl who can contract marriage .
It matters little that at the last hearing before the Sindh High Court in Karachi , she didn ’ t show up because in the hands of your kidnapper… During the hearing initiated by her Christian parents who are desperately seeking justice , the testimony of the Muslim policeman in charge of summoning her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a month .
The agent said he warned her : it doesn ’ t matter if her Islamic kidnapper Karim Jabbar , who forced her to deny her Christian faith to marry her , prevented her from showing up… In the era of globalization , the silence of Western feminists who appear genuflected in the face of ethnic rape when it is committed by Muslims against underage girls is disconcerting .
No shoes or red t-shirts were in fact agitated in Europe in the name of Huma Younas , the girl torn from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to join in marriage with her kidnapper after forced conversion to Islam with which he would like to sanction legality union .
The parents also appealed to Pope Francis I who does not appear to have taken a stand leaving the Pontifical Aid to the Church in Need to defend the task of defending the human rights of the girl .
It does not appear that even the UN intervened in defense of Huma left to his fate in a country where the freedoms of ethnic and religious minorities are daily violated by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the story of Asia Bibi , the mother of a family detained for years on an absurd charge of blasphemy .
Before reporting the dramatic updates on the case of the Pakistani girl , it is necessary to highlight what is going to happen in Turkey , a few steps from the European Union , in that Brussels with human rights laws but totally unable to prevent the violation of the same by part of that Sharia that legitimizes marriage between adults and minors , even of a very young age .
« @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accused of abusing women under the age of 18 to avoid punishment if they marry their victims is destined to be discussed by the Turkish parliament – writes Middle East Monitor – The bill “ Marry your rapist ” , who has not yet been approved , was presented to the Turkish parliament in preparation for the debates of parliamentarians in late January .
The proposal has sparked widespread and international criticism , with opponents accusing it of legitimizing rape , child marriage , and normalizing child abuse and sexual exploitation » .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the bill , warning that it could lead to greater confidence in rapists without fear of punishment and consequences for their crimes .
It has also been denounced by opposition MPs from parties such as the Democratic People ’ s Party ( HDP ) who urged the government to stop the debate , primarily for fears that it could be used by some to force girls and children into unwanted marriages added the site of Middle Eastern information , noting that a similar law was shelved by the AKP party of Turkish President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ international outrage .
« Turkey has long been subject to scrutiny over the presence of alleged child marriages within the country and its proposed marriage laws .
Although the legal age of consent in the Republic is 18 years old , an estimated 482,908 child marriages have taken place in the past decade » according to a government report released in 2018 that highlighted Middle East Monitor .
While it is the Pontifical Aid to the Church in Need Foundation that tells the update on the terrible story of Huma Younas that we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yet another defeat of justice and yet another proof that the state does not consider Christians to be Pakistani citizens » .
This is the grieving comment released to “ Aid to the Church ” in Need by Nagheena Younus after the hearing on the case of her daughter Huma held on February,2 at 11 am local time at the Sindh High Court in Karachi .
The two High Court judges , Muhammad Iqbal Kalhoro and Irshad Ali Shah ruled that even if Huma was a minor , the marriage between the Christian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ still remain valid because according to Sharia law , Islamic law , once the first menstrual cycle has taken place , a girl of any age can marry .
No value was therefore given to the Child marriage restraint act , the law prohibiting marriages with minors which entered into force in 2014 in Sindh and has never been applied so far .
We hoped that the rule could be applied for the first time in this case – says the lawyer Tabassum Yousaf – but evidently in Pakistan , these laws are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country in the eyes of the international community , ask for funds for development and trade Pakistani products on the European market for free .
There were many expectations from the parents of the 14-year-old Catholic kidnapped on 10 October and the Christian community in general .
Huma was due to appear in court , as requested by the judges during the previous hearing on January 16 to the police officer in charge of the investigations Akhtar Hussain .
When asked about the girl ’ s absence , the agent limited himself to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ summoned this morning .
Since the beginning of the affair , Hussain has maintained an ambiguous attitude , raising strong suspicions of his complicity with the kidnapper Jabbar .
Despite this , the policeman was sent a mandate by the judges to have a medical examination carried out to certify the age of Huma , as requested once again this morning by Yousaf .
It is clear that being Hussain in charge – says the lawyer – there is a high probability that the test results will be falsified .
But our hope @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the girl ’ s minor age so as to at least entrust her to a center , thus removing her from her tormentor .
The next hearing is set for March 4 , unfortunately , even if it is certified that Huma is a minor , the judges ’ decision to consider the marriage valid , cancels any possibility that Jabbar will be punished for the abduction and forced marriage crimes .
Aid to the Church in Need ( ACS ) continues to support Huma ’ s family and lawyer .
The sentence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ judicial system – comments Alessandro Monteduro , director of ACS-Italy – It is unimaginable that sharia can prevail over state law .
We express all our indignation , but at the same time we don ’ t give up .
For Huma and the over a thousand girls and even girls who are kidnapped , raped , converted by force to Islam every year and forced to marry their kidnapper .
But today we learn that everything is legitimate because in Pakistan even an eight or nine-year-old girl who has already menstruated can @ @ @ @ @ @ @

by Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio for VT Italy
It has been nicknamed “marry your rapist”. It is a bill presented to the Ankara Parliament despite the fact that the UN has already expressed its opposition. While the legalization of rape against minors is still under discussion in Turkey, which by virtue of its membership of NATO can actually do whatever it wants with regard to human rights violations, a concrete application of this “pedophile” law finds legitimacy from Islamic Sharia law in Pakistan. Despite the family’s appeal to the Pope …
The 14-year-old Christian kidnapped, raped and forced to convert to Islam in order to marry her Muslim husband cannot currently have justice because she has already menstruated and, therefore, according to Sharia, she is not considered of minor age but a girl who can contract marriage. It matters little that at the last hearing before the Sindh High Court in Karachi, she didn’t show up because in the hands of your kidnapper…
During the hearing initiated by her Christian parents who are desperately seeking justice, the testimony of the Muslim policeman in charge of summoning her was enough to postpone the case for a month. The agent said he warned her: it doesn’t matter if her Islamic kidnapper Karim Jabbar, who forced her to deny her Christian faith to marry her, prevented her from showing up…
In the era of globalization, the silence of Western feminists who appear genuflected in the face of ethnic rape when it is committed by Muslims against underage girls is disconcerting. No shoes or red t-shirts were in fact agitated in Europe in the name of Huma Younas, the girl torn from a Christian family in Pakistan and forced to join in marriage with her kidnapper after forced conversion to Islam with which he would like to sanction legality union.
The parents also appealed to Pope Francis I who does not appear to have taken a stand leaving the Pontifical Aid to the Church in Need to defend the task of defending the human rights of the girl. It does not appear that even the UN intervened in defense of Huma left to his fate in a country where the freedoms of ethnic and religious minorities are daily violated by justice conditioned by Islamic law as recalls the story of Asia Bibi, the mother of a family detained for years on an absurd charge of blasphemy.
Before reporting the dramatic updates on the case of the Pakistani girl, it is necessary to highlight what is going to happen in Turkey, a few steps from the European Union, in that Brussels with human rights laws but totally unable to prevent the violation of the same by part of that Sharia that legitimizes marriage between adults and minors, even of a very young age.
«A new law that allegedly allows men accused of abusing women under the age of 18 to avoid punishment if they marry their victims is destined to be discussed by the Turkish parliament – writes Middle East Monitor – The bill “Marry your rapist”, who has not yet been approved, was presented to the Turkish parliament in preparation for the debates of parliamentarians in late January. The proposal has sparked widespread and international criticism, with opponents accusing it of legitimizing rape, child marriage, and normalizing child abuse and sexual exploitation».
The United Nations has spoken out against the bill, warning that it could lead to greater confidence in rapists without fear of punishment and consequences for their crimes. It has also been denounced by opposition MPs from parties such as the Democratic People’s Party (HDP) who urged the government to stop the debate, primarily for fears that it could be used by some to force girls and children into unwanted marriages added the site of Middle Eastern information, noting that a similar law was shelved by the AKP party of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016 after the international outrage.
«Turkey has long been subject to scrutiny over the presence of alleged child marriages within the country and its proposed marriage laws. Although the legal age of consent in the Republic is 18 years old, an estimated 482,908 child marriages have taken place in the past decade» according to a government report released in 2018 that highlighted Middle East Monitor.
While it is the Pontifical Aid to the Church in Need Foundation that tells the update on the terrible story of Huma Younas that we report in full. «It is yet another defeat of justice and yet another proof that the state does not consider Christians to be Pakistani citizens».
This is the grieving comment released to “Aid to the Church” in Need by Nagheena Younus after the hearing on the case of her daughter Huma held on February,2 at 11 am local time at the Sindh High Court in Karachi.
The two High Court judges, Muhammad Iqbal Kalhoro and Irshad Ali Shah ruled that even if Huma was a minor, the marriage between the Christian girl and her kidnapper Abdul Jabbar would still remain valid because according to Sharia law, Islamic law, once the first menstrual cycle has taken place, a girl of any age can marry. No value was therefore given to the Child marriage restraint act, the law prohibiting marriages with minors which entered into force in 2014 in Sindh and has never been applied so far.
We hoped that the rule could be applied for the first time in this case – says the lawyer Tabassum Yousaf – but evidently in Pakistan, these laws are formulated and approved only to accredit the country in the eyes of the international community, ask for funds for development and trade Pakistani products on the European market for free.
There were many expectations from the parents of the 14-year-old Catholic kidnapped on 10 October and the Christian community in general. Huma was due to appear in court, as requested by the judges during the previous hearing on January 16 to the police officer in charge of the investigations Akhtar Hussain.
When asked about the girl’s absence, the agent limited himself to saying that the young woman had been summoned this morning. Since the beginning of the affair, Hussain has maintained an ambiguous attitude, raising strong suspicions of his complicity with the kidnapper Jabbar. Despite this, the policeman was sent a mandate by the judges to have a medical examination carried out to certify the age of Huma, as requested once again this morning by Yousaf.
It is clear that being Hussain in charge – says the lawyer – there is a high probability that the test results will be falsified. But our hope is to still be able to prove the girl’s minor age so as to at least entrust her to a center, thus removing her from her tormentor.
The next hearing is set for March 4, unfortunately, even if it is certified that Huma is a minor, the judges’ decision to consider the marriage valid, cancels any possibility that Jabbar will be punished for the abduction and forced marriage crimes. Aid to the Church in Need (ACS) continues to support Huma’s family and lawyer.
The sentence this morning casts shame on the Pakistani judicial system – comments Alessandro Monteduro, director of ACS-Italy – It is unimaginable that sharia can prevail over state law. We express all our indignation, but at the same time we don’t give up. For Huma and the over a thousand girls and even girls who are kidnapped, raped, converted by force to Islam every year and forced to marry their kidnapper. But today we learn that everything is legitimate because in Pakistan even an eight or nine-year-old girl who has already menstruated can legally be given as a wife.
© 2020 – Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio – COPYRIGHT GOSPA NEWS – no reproduction without authorization
MAIN SOURCES


veteranstoday--2020-02-09--1917:  A Punishing Review of the World War I Epic Movie up for Best Picture 2019

So last night Her Indoors and I went to the local cinema to watch 1917 ; the epic Sam Mendes directed film that everyone is talking about .
So what ’ s the big deal about a World War I movie right ?
Well , first of all , tonight is the 2020 Academy Awards Show and 1917 is one of the strong favorites to win it all .
But why ?
Well , the movie was much better than I expected .
I actually expected another dour miserable war movie ; more like Dunkirk ( 2017 ) .
Instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Revenant ( 2015 ) , which I loved , meets the ethos of Saving Private Ryan ( 1998 ) .
1917 is a bittersweet trip into the bowels of human hell .
It all takes place on April 6th , 1917 on a battlefield in France .
As a regiment assembles to wage war deep in enemy territory , two soldiers are assigned to race against time and deliver a message that will stop 1,600 men from walking straight into a deadly trap .
Do they make it ?
And if so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it against all odds ?
The movie does NOT go into the bigger picture of World War I .
This is NOT a lesson in history .
So if you ’ re looking for a historical epic that documents , this is NOT your movie .
There is no mention of Kaiser Wilhelm II , Herbert Kitchener , Nicholas Romanov II , Franz Josef Habsburg I , Bethmann Hollweg , David Lloyd George , Georges Clemenceau , Vladimir Lenin , Woodrow Wilson or even the young Winston Churchill .
In fact , there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are ; although later , after some signs , we can figure out they are France .
So the movie really has limited context except we know it ’ s bad and men are fighting and killing one another .
For what ?
We don ’ t really know .
And maybe that was the point… For those that need a brief summary , World War I was a global conflict between the Central Powers of Germany , Austria-Hungary , the Ottoman Empire , and Bulgaria ; and the Allies which was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Great Britain , France , Russia , Japan , and Italy .
It began with the declaration of war by Austria-Hungary on Serbia on the 28th of July , 1914 ; and ended with the surrender of Germany on November 11 , 1918 .
That war , far more than World War II , actually defines where we are today…it literally changed the whole world .
I mean , for gosh sakes , the whole Middle East we know today was created by the results of World War I .
You can see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lawrence of Arabia ( 1962 ) Anyways , the payoff in this movie tastes like a sour strawberry .
I mean , you really want it to find sweetness in the misery but all there really is a bitter taste of broken men in a world gone mad .
Yet , it ’ s super compelling !
So yes , you will be glued to your seat watching this epic adventure .
That alone says go see this movie !
Well done by Director Sam Mendes as an ode to his relative who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ might , at the Oscars , win Best Picture of the Year tonite and more .
And I can see why .
But is it really the best picture of the year ?
1917 Best Picture of the Year ?
For me , the Best Picture of the Year was YESTERDAY .
With Yesterday , I left the theatre happy and singing !
I was in such good spirits .
And the writing was so original and so brilliant .
Towards the end , we see a happy-being-alive working-class hero , aka John @ @ @ @ @ @ @ man of importance life .
It was out of this world .
What a great dream !
Imagine !
But YESTERDAY is not even nominated for Best Picture !
So Go Figure !
Anyways , with 1917 , I left beaten , broken , and mumbling .
I was shellshocked by the explosions ; specifically , the huge one when the 2 messengers were in the German trench looking for a way out ( that one blew me out of my chair ) .
My wife and I talked about it the whole @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ one continuous shot ” feel for the movie as unique and it is .
And it was very compelling .
The effects and the look of the movie stood out .
I mean the sets were incredibly real .
Everything was spot on and it put you into that terrible world .
So yeah , if 1917 wins for Best Picture tonight , I will cheer .
It ’ s really compelling !
Now for those who can take the hardcore adult subject matter , go see this movie .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those that can not take being placed in the middle of a war zone for 2 hours and do NOT want to travel into the darkness and be a belated witness to the worst of humanity , don ’ t see this movie .
It ’ s not for you .
Johnny Punish ’ s Top 5 Picks for Best Picture of 2019 Okay , now here ’ s my Top 5 Picks for Best Picture of 2019 .
FYI , 1917 did NOT make my Top 5 but it ’ s definitely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it out… Source : Free Download ALL OF NOTHING GIRL song written for the sequel to Alita Battle Angel by Johnny Punish

So last night Her Indoors and I went to the local cinema to watch 1917; the epic Sam Mendes directed film that everyone is talking about.
So what’s the big deal about a World War I movie right? Well, first of all, tonight is the 2020 Academy Awards Show and 1917 is one of the strong favorites to win it all. But why?
Well, the movie was much better than I expected. I actually expected another dour miserable war movie; more like Dunkirk (2017). Instead, it was really the adventure of The Revenant (2015), which I loved, meets the ethos of Saving Private Ryan (1998).
1917 is a bittersweet trip into the bowels of human hell.
It all takes place on April 6th, 1917 on a battlefield in France. As a regiment assembles to wage war deep in enemy territory, two soldiers are assigned to race against time and deliver a message that will stop 1,600 men from walking straight into a deadly trap.
Do they make it? And if so, how did they survive and make it against all odds?
The movie does NOT go into the bigger picture of World War I. This is NOT a lesson in history. So if you’re looking for a historical epic that documents, this is NOT your movie. There is no mention of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Herbert Kitchener, Nicholas Romanov II, Franz Josef Habsburg I, Bethmann Hollweg, David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, Vladimir Lenin, Woodrow Wilson or even the young Winston Churchill.
In fact, there is barely a mention where they actually are; although later, after some signs, we can figure out they are France. So the movie really has limited context except we know it’s bad and men are fighting and killing one another. For what? We don’t really know. And maybe that was the point…
For those that need a brief summary, World War I was a global conflict between the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria; and the Allies which was a coalition of many nations, most prominently Great Britain, France, Russia, Japan, and Italy. It began with the declaration of war by Austria-Hungary on Serbia on the 28th of July, 1914; and ended with the surrender of Germany on November 11, 1918.
That war, far more than World War II, actually defines where we are today…it literally changed the whole world. I mean, for gosh sakes, the whole Middle East we know today was created by the results of World War I. You can see that epic unfold in the great movie Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Anyways, the payoff in this movie tastes like a sour strawberry. I mean, you really want it to find sweetness in the misery but all there really is a bitter taste of broken men in a world gone mad. Yet, it’s super compelling! So yes, you will be glued to your seat watching this epic adventure. That alone says go see this movie!
Well done by Director Sam Mendes as an ode to his relative who lived in that hell, the movie might, at the Oscars, win Best Picture of the Year tonite and more. And I can see why. But is it really the best picture of the year?
1917 Best Picture of the Year?
For me, the Best Picture of the Year was YESTERDAY.
With Yesterday, I left the theatre happy and singing! I was in such good spirits. And the writing was so original and so brilliant. Towards the end, we see a happy-being-alive working-class hero, aka John Lennon, just enjoying an average no man of importance life. It was out of this world. What a great dream! Imagine! But YESTERDAY is not even nominated for Best Picture! So Go Figure!
Hey Academy! What’s your problem?
Anyways, with 1917, I left beaten, broken, and mumbling. I was shellshocked by the explosions; specifically, the huge one when the 2 messengers were in the German trench looking for a way out (that one blew me out of my chair).
My wife and I talked about it the whole way home…
Many will tout the apparent “one continuous shot” feel for the movie as unique and it is. And it was very compelling. The effects and the look of the movie stood out. I mean the sets were incredibly real. Everything was spot on and it put you into that terrible world.
So yeah, if 1917 wins for Best Picture tonight, I will cheer. It’s really compelling!
Now for those who can take the hardcore adult subject matter, go see this movie. It’s a really compelling ride. For those that cannot take being placed in the middle of a war zone for 2 hours and do NOT want to travel into the darkness and be a belated witness to the worst of humanity, don’t see this movie. It’s not for you.
© 2020 – JohnnyPunish.com
Johnny Punish’s Top 5 Picks for Best Picture of 2019
Okay, now here’s my Top 5 Picks for Best Picture of 2019. FYI, 1917 did NOT make my Top 5 but it’s definitely in the Top 10. So check it out…
Yesterday: Trailer – Imdb Alita Battle Angel: Trailer – Imdb Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: Trailer – Imdb Ford vs. Ferrari: Trailer – Imdb Little Women: Trailer – Imdb
Source: Free Download ALL OF NOTHING GIRL song written for the sequel to Alita Battle Angel by Johnny Punish


veteranstoday--2020-02-09--Australian Aboriginal Gwions: 12,000 Years Old

Bookended by Wasp Nests , These Aboriginal Artworks May Finally Have Definitive Dates Tiny , trim and vibrantly colored , mud wasps are far more concerned with snaring snacks of spiders than appreciating works of art .
But the insects will still build their nests on artistic creations—and in doing so , they sometimes inadvertently lend a helping wing to modern research efforts .
Reporting this week in the journal Science Advances , a team of researchers has used this stingingly clever technique to date Aboriginal art adorning rock shelters in Australia ’ s Kimberley region .
Cobbled together in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ paintings , the nests place the paintings ’ approximate age at 12,000 years old—making them about 5,000 years younger than previously estimated .
The thousands of dancing human figures depicted on the Kimberley rock shelter walls , called Gwions by modern researchers , have been known to science for more than a century .
Slender , exquisite , and often decked out with headdresses , tassels , boomerangs , and spears , Gwions don ’ t resemble other types of Aboriginal art , and the circumstances surrounding their creation have remained mostly mysterious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the University of Wollongong geochronologist Richard “ Bert ” Roberts noticed a series of ancient wasp nests constructed atop several of the Gwion figures .
Dating those nests , they reasoned , would put an effective…

By Katherine J. Wu/Smithsonianmag.com
Tiny, trim and vibrantly colored, mud wasps are far more concerned with snaring snacks of spiders than appreciating works of art. But the insects will still build their nests on artistic creations—and in doing so, they sometimes inadvertently lend a helping wing to modern research efforts.
Reporting this week in the journal Science Advances, a team of researchers has used this stingingly clever technique to date Aboriginal art adorning rock shelters in Australia’s Kimberley region. Cobbled together in layers that lie beneath or atop the paintings, the nests place the paintings’ approximate age at 12,000 years old—making them about 5,000 years younger than previously estimated.
The thousands of dancing human figures depicted on the Kimberley rock shelter walls, called Gwions by modern researchers, have been known to science for more than a century. Slender, exquisite, and often decked out with headdresses, tassels, boomerangs, and spears, Gwions don’t resemble other types of Aboriginal art, and the circumstances surrounding their creation have remained mostly mysterious.
In the 1990s, scientists led by the University of Wollongong geochronologist Richard “Bert” Roberts noticed a series of ancient wasp nests constructed atop several of the Gwion figures. Dating those nests, they reasoned, would put an effective…


veteranstoday--2020-02-09--Who is going to risk a $13bn Carrier in Combat?

Picture for a moment a scene from the next conflict .
The USS Gerald R. Ford ( CVN-78 ) has sustained a critical hit from a Chinese DF-21D ( CSS-5 Mod-4 ) anti-ship missile .
Whether the Ford is lost entirely or merely removed from the fight , the U.S. Navy just lost a $ 13 billion asset in a matter of seconds .
The financial costs notwithstanding , 2,600 sailors have been put in mortal jeopardy and a massive blow is dealt to U.S. prestige and morale .
For a scenario like this to take place , a good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is predicated on the defensive ring of a carrier strike group failing to protect the central prize .
However , missile defense is based on the unfortunate truth that not all defensive systems will catch all missiles .
Simple saturation attacks can defeat even the most advanced systems .
As such , it is by no means improbable that carriers will be targeted and hit in the next conflict .
With a range of 900 miles , the DF-21D Chinese missile is perhaps enough to cause second thoughts about the deployment and use @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or the Western Pacific .
Additionally , a carrier strike group must contend with the threat of the Chinese People ’ s Liberation Army Navy .
One may conjecture that , given the rate of Chinese military modernization and advancement , the range of acceptable circumstances for a carrier strike group to operate will grow smaller .
This leads to an uncomfortable conundrum for the U.S. Navy .

Picture for a moment a scene from the next conflict. The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) has sustained a critical hit from a Chinese DF-21D (CSS-5 Mod-4) anti-ship missile.
Whether the Ford is lost entirely or merely removed from the fight, the U.S. Navy just lost a $13 billion asset in a matter of seconds.
The financial costs notwithstanding, 2,600 sailors have been put in mortal jeopardy and a massive blow is dealt to U.S. prestige and morale.
For a scenario like this to take place, a good deal must go wrong. The situation is predicated on the defensive ring of a carrier strike group failing to protect the central prize. However, missile defense is based on the unfortunate truth that not all defensive systems will catch all missiles. Simple saturation attacks can defeat even the most advanced systems. As such, it is by no means improbable that carriers will be targeted and hit in the next conflict.
With a range of 900 miles, the DF-21D Chinese missile is perhaps enough to cause second thoughts about the deployment and use of carriers in the South China Sea or the Western Pacific. Additionally, a carrier strike group must contend with the threat of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy. One may conjecture that, given the rate of Chinese military modernization and advancement, the range of acceptable circumstances for a carrier strike group to operate will grow smaller. This leads to an uncomfortable conundrum for the U.S. Navy. Read Full Story at Anti-Empire.com


veteranstoday--2020-02-09--World’s Most Accurate Missile: Iran’s Raad 500 (range-500 miles)

TEHRAN , Iran — Iran ’ s Revolutionary Guards unveiled Sunday a short-range ballistic missile that they said can be powered by a “ new generation ” of engines designed to put satellites into orbit .
The Guards ’ Sepahnews website said the Raad-500 missile was equipped with new Zoheir engines made of composite materials lighter than on earlier steel models .
It also unveiled Salman engines made of the same materials but with a “ movable nozzle ” for the delivery of satellites into space .
Get The Times of Israel ’ s Daily Edition by email and never @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Raad was “ a new generation missile that has half the weight of a Fateh-110 missile but with 200 kilometers more range , ” it added .
The Fateh-110 is a ballistic ground-to-ground missile first unveiled in 2002 .
Its latest generation has a range of 300 kilometers ( 186 miles ) .
“ The complicated achievements on the bleeding edge of global technology that was unveiled today are our key to entering space , ” Salami said .
Salami noted the movable nozzle on the new engine allowed “ maneuverability beyond @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ leap in modern missile technology.
” The new technologies that made the missiles “ cheaper , lighter , faster and more precise ” could be applied to all of Iran ’ s missile classes , he added .
The static test stands footage of the “ Salman ” solid rocket motor test , including the TVC test .
Tensions between Iran and the United States have soared since May 2018 when US President Donald Trump withdrew from a nuclear deal that offered Tehran sanctions relief in return for curbs to prevent it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it seeks to rein in Iran ’ s ballistic missile program as well as its “ destabilizing behavior ” in the region .
It has since slapped crippling sanctions on Iran as part of its “ maximum pressure ” campaign , with Tehran hitting back by progressively rolling back commitments to the nuclear deal .
The US has also raised concerns in the past about Iran ’ s satellite program , saying the launch of a carrier rocket in January 2019 amounted to a violation of curbs on its development of ballistic missiles @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of acquiring nuclear weapons and says its aerospace activities are peaceful and comply with a UN Security Council resolution .

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s Revolutionary Guards unveiled Sunday a short-range ballistic missile that they said can be powered by a “new generation” of engines designed to put satellites into orbit.
The Guards’ Sepahnews website said the Raad-500 missile was equipped with new Zoheir engines made of composite materials lighter than on earlier steel models.
It also unveiled Salman engines made of the same materials but with a “movable nozzle” for the delivery of satellites into space.
Get The Times of Israel’s Daily Edition by email and never miss our top stories free SIGN UP
The Raad was “a new generation missile that has half the weight of a Fateh-110 missile but with 200 kilometers more range,” it added.
The Fateh-110 is a ballistic ground-to-ground missile first unveiled in 2002. Its latest generation has a range of 300 kilometers (186 miles).
“The complicated achievements on the bleeding edge of global technology that was unveiled today are our key to entering space,” Salami said.
Salami noted the movable nozzle on the new engine allowed “maneuverability beyond the atmosphere” and amounted to a “leap in modern missile technology.”
The new technologies that made the missiles “cheaper, lighter, faster and more precise” could be applied to all of Iran’s missile classes, he added.
The static test stands footage of the “Salman” solid rocket motor test, including the TVC test.
Tensions between Iran and the United States have soared since May 2018 when US President Donald Trump withdrew from a nuclear deal that offered Tehran sanctions relief in return for curbs to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Washington says it seeks to rein in Iran’s ballistic missile program as well as its “destabilizing behavior” in the region. It has since slapped crippling sanctions on Iran as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign, with Tehran hitting back by progressively rolling back commitments to the nuclear deal.
The US has also raised concerns in the past about Iran’s satellite program, saying the launch of a carrier rocket in January 2019 amounted to a violation of curbs on its development of ballistic missiles.
Iran maintains it has no intention of acquiring nuclear weapons and says its aerospace activities are peaceful and comply with a UN Security Council resolution.
Source: Times Of Israel


veteranstoday--2020-02-09--Video: Emergency Landing of Airbus 320 Israel Tried to Down over Syria with 172 Onboard

Sputnik/Moscow : The Russian Defence Ministry stated on 7 February that a civilian Airbus-320 with 172 passengers on board was nearly destroyed amid Israeli airstrikes near Damascus in the early hours of 6 February .
An Airbus-320 has been captured on video when landing at the Russian-operated Hmeymim Airbase in northwestern Syria while trying to avoid Israeli shelling .
Russian TV channel Zvezda has published camera recordings at the Hmeymim Airbase , showing how the Airbus-320 successfully lands , and after the end of the strikes , takes off again in the direction of Damascus International Airport .
On 6 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eight air-to-surface missiles in the suburbs of Damascus , according to the Russian Defence Ministry .
The Syrian air defence systems that were on alert responded to the attack while a civilian Airbus-320 with 172 passengers was almost caught in the cross-fire .
The plane managed to leave the area and successfully land at Russia ’ s Hmeymim base , the closest alternative airfield .
Syrian diplomats slammed Israel for “ taking advantage of the fact that Syria is busily engaged in its war against the terrorist groups in Idlib , and taking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disregard for the lives of civilians ” .
The Israeli Defence Forces ( IDF ) have declined to comment on the situation .
Russia and Syria have already accused the Israeli air force of using other aircraft as a shield and putting the lives of innocent people at risk .
In September 2018 , the Russian military held Israel responsible for an Il-20 plane crash in Syria , which claimed the lives of 15 Russian servicemen .
The plane was accidentally downed by a missile launched via Syria ’ s air defence system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out airstrikes in Latakia Province .

Sputnik/Moscow: The Russian Defence Ministry stated on 7 February that a civilian Airbus-320 with 172 passengers on board was nearly destroyed amid Israeli airstrikes near Damascus in the early hours of 6 February.
An Airbus-320 has been captured on video when landing at the Russian-operated Hmeymim Airbase in northwestern Syria while trying to avoid Israeli shelling.
Russian TV channel Zvezda has published camera recordings at the Hmeymim Airbase, showing how the Airbus-320 successfully lands, and after the end of the strikes, takes off again in the direction of Damascus International Airport.
On 6 February, four Israeli F-16 fighters fired eight air-to-surface missiles in the suburbs of Damascus, according to the Russian Defence Ministry.
The Syrian air defence systems that were on alert responded to the attack while a civilian Airbus-320 with 172 passengers was almost caught in the cross-fire. The plane managed to leave the area and successfully land at Russia’s Hmeymim base, the closest alternative airfield. Syrian diplomats slammed Israel for “taking advantage of the fact that Syria is busily engaged in its war against the terrorist groups in Idlib, and taking cover behind civilian flights, with complete disregard for the lives of civilians”. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have declined to comment on the situation. Russia and Syria have already accused the Israeli air force of using other aircraft as a shield and putting the lives of innocent people at risk. In September 2018, the Russian military held Israel responsible for an Il-20 plane crash in Syria, which claimed the lives of 15 Russian servicemen. The plane was accidentally downed by a missile launched via Syria’s air defence system at Israeli F-16 jets that were carrying out airstrikes in Latakia Province.
Headquartered in Moscow Russia, Sputnik is a news agency with offices around the world. Sputnik covers global political and economic news for an international audience. Launched in November 2014 by the Russian media group Rossiya Segodnya, Sputnik works in more than 30 languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, Chinese, and more. *All posts on behalf of Sputnik News are made by Gordon Duff and Jim W. Dean


veteranstoday--2020-02-09--Iraq: Two Top Sadrist Commanders Killed in 24 hours

[ Editor ’ s Note : These attacks on commanders can spin out of control quickly .
Whacking people going to work or coming home , or in the grocery store parking lot is fairly easy .
It ’ s the escape that is the tricky part , but Intel and military factions can do that .
This reminds me of the biblical warning , “ Careful what ye shall sow.
” Iraqi authorities are certainly aware that their country is under full-spectrum attack .
The US has taken the position that it will make the decision on whether it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stance that has triggered virtually no public interest among the US public .
Neither has there been any outrage on the US Bozo the Clown act of assassinating Iranians with diplomatic credentials in Iraq who were in negotiations with Saudi Arabia on decreasing tensions .
The ultimate sin was launching the Soleimani attack from a US airbase in Iraq that had no air defenses .
All we saw from the vet orgs was concern over the “ headache ” comment Trump made , a sign that they still prefer to only take on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of the few platforms to openly discuss the slipping of our military into the General Smedley Butler position when it admitted that he had been a gangster for Wall Street .
Only the remaining Vietnam vets form the bastion of concerned onlookers .
It is hard to take on entrenched bad guys when your own people are asleep at the wheel .
That situation is made worse now that our “ free press ” has been gutted .
That once valuable platform with the ability to shame those in power is almost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the liberal bastion , stays far away from the sensitive Israeli issues , like the massive espionage and election interference , when because of its government funding , the platform is supposed to be free to touch red lines … Jim W. Dean ] Jim 's Editor ’ s Notes are solely crowdfunded via PayPal Jim 's work includes research , field trips , Heritage TV Legacy archiving & more .
Thanks for helping .
Click to donate > > Two commanders of Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ’ s movement have been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of 24 hours in what appears to be a plot to create division among Iraqi groups .
One of them was Hazim al-Hilfi , a commander of the Saraya al-Salam militant group , who was killed on Thursday when the vehicle carrying him was targeted by unidentified gunmen on the Muhammad al-Qasim road , west of Basra province .
He suffered fatal injuries and died on the spot , local security sources said .
They quoted a Sadr movement ’ s media official in Basra , Saad al-Maliki , as saying that Halfi @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Peace Corps .
His assassination came less than 24 hours after Abu-Muqada al-Azirjawi , another top commander of the Saraya group , was seriously wounded on Tuesday night after unknown assailants riding motorcycles opened fire on him near his house in Abou Roummaneh district of Maysan governorate .
He later died of his injuries in hospital , Iraqi media reported .
There are speculations that the assassinations are carried out by foreign intelligence services with the aim of pinning the blame on rival Iraqi groups , and reignite civil war in the volatile @ @ @ @ @ @ @ witnessed the killing of Wissam al-Alyawi , a prominent leader in the Asa ’ ib Ahl al-Haq group , following an armed attack on its headquarters .
Asa ’ ib leader Qais Khazali has said the US had plotted to assassinate Muqtada al-Sadr and pin the blame on Asa ’ ib Ahl al-Haq group in a bid to provoke a civil war in Iraq .
“ The first American-Israeli project in Iraq , which they wanted to implement , was to assassinate Muqtada al-Sadr and then accuse Asa ’ ib of killing him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country , ” Khazali said in an interview with al-Ahad .
“ Sadr and Iran received the intelligence , and the issue was sorted out .
Thank God the plot was failed , ” he noted , saying the source of the intelligence was top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani , who was assassinated in a US drone attack last month .
Khazali also pointed to the issue of “ unknown snipers ” who targeted Iraqi protesters at the beginning of the protests in October and said launching an investigation into the issue and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ important demands of Iraqi people .
“ If this case is opened , Asa ’ ib Ahl al-Haq has sufficient evidence and documents about those behind this issue , ” he added .
Since early October , Iraq has been roiled by mass protests over poor living conditions and corruption , which forced ex-premier Adel Abdul-Mahdi to resign .
The demonstrations have often turned violent and over 600 people , including police forces , have been killed and 17,000 injured , according to an Iraqi human rights group .
Iraq ’ s President @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with forming a government within a month , a decision rejected by some protesters .
The appointment of Allawi as prime minister-designate was expected to end the protest rallies , but the demonstrations have continued across Iraq against the new premier .
The holy city of Najaf , in particular , has in recent days been a scene of violent clashes , which some Iraqi politicians blame on the US and Saudi Arabia .
Fatah Alliance lawmaker Abdul Amir Taiban says the Najaf violence is an American-Saudi plot to distract the Iraqi people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ US troops from the Arab country , which has been demanded by the Iraqi Parliament .
“ Foreign parties are directing the events in central and southern Iraqi provinces behind the scenes , ” he added .
“ By torching , burning , spreading riot and chaos , the US is trying to distract the Iraqi nation and deflect their attention from the issue of expelling alien forces from their country , ” he told Al-Maalomah .

…from PressTV, Tehran
[ Editor’s Note: These attacks on commanders can spin out of control quickly. Whacking people going to work or coming home, or in the grocery store parking lot is fairly easy. It’s the escape that is the tricky part, but Intel and military factions can do that.
This reminds me of the biblical warning, “Careful what ye shall sow.” Iraqi authorities are certainly aware that their country is under full-spectrum attack. The US has taken the position that it will make the decision on whether it will remove its military presence, a stance that has triggered virtually no public interest among the US public.
Neither has there been any outrage on the US Bozo the Clown act of assassinating Iranians with diplomatic credentials in Iraq who were in negotiations with Saudi Arabia on decreasing tensions.
The ultimate sin was launching the Soleimani attack from a US airbase in Iraq that had no air defenses. All we saw from the vet orgs was concern over the “headache” comment Trump made, a sign that they still prefer to only take on the easiest tasks.
VT has been one of the few platforms to openly discuss the slipping of our military into the General Smedley Butler position when it admitted that he had been a gangster for Wall Street.
Only the remaining Vietnam vets form the bastion of concerned onlookers. It is hard to take on entrenched bad guys when your own people are asleep at the wheel. That situation is made worse now that our “free press” has been gutted. That once valuable platform with the ability to shame those in power is almost gone.
Even those like Democracy Now, the liberal bastion, stays far away from the sensitive Israeli issues, like the massive espionage and election interference, when because of its government funding, the platform is supposed to be free to touch red lines … Jim W. Dean ]
Jim's Editor’s Notes are solely crowdfunded via PayPal
Jim's work includes research, field trips, Heritage TV Legacy archiving & more. Thanks for helping. Click to donate >>
– First published … February 08, 2020 –
Two commanders of Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement have been killed in separate attacks in the span of 24 hours in what appears to be a plot to create division among Iraqi groups.
One of them was Hazim al-Hilfi, a commander of the Saraya al-Salam militant group, who was killed on Thursday when the vehicle carrying him was targeted by unidentified gunmen on the Muhammad al-Qasim road, west of Basra province.
He suffered fatal injuries and died on the spot, local security sources said. They quoted a Sadr movement’s media official in Basra, Saad al-Maliki, as saying that Halfi was one of the leaders of the Peace Corps.
His assassination came less than 24 hours after Abu-Muqada al-Azirjawi, another top commander of the Saraya group, was seriously wounded on Tuesday night after unknown assailants riding motorcycles opened fire on him near his house in Abou Roummaneh district of Maysan governorate.
He later died of his injuries in hospital, Iraqi media reported.
There are speculations that the assassinations are carried out by foreign intelligence services with the aim of pinning the blame on rival Iraqi groups, and reignite civil war in the volatile country.
Last October, Maysan Governorate witnessed the killing of Wissam al-Alyawi, a prominent leader in the Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq group, following an armed attack on its headquarters.
‘US plotting to pit Sadr Movement against Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq’
Asa’ib leader Qais Khazali has said the US had plotted to assassinate Muqtada al-Sadr and pin the blame on Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq group in a bid to provoke a civil war in Iraq.
“The first American-Israeli project in Iraq, which they wanted to implement, was to assassinate Muqtada al-Sadr and then accuse Asa’ib of killing him, causing a nationwide slaughter in the country,” Khazali said in an interview with al-Ahad.
“Sadr and Iran received the intelligence, and the issue was sorted out. Thank God the plot was failed,” he noted, saying the source of the intelligence was top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated in a US drone attack last month.
Khazali also pointed to the issue of “unknown snipers” who targeted Iraqi protesters at the beginning of the protests in October and said launching an investigation into the issue and identifying the perpetrators is among the most important demands of Iraqi people.
“If this case is opened, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq has sufficient evidence and documents about those behind this issue,” he added.
Since early October, Iraq has been roiled by mass protests over poor living conditions and corruption, which forced ex-premier Adel Abdul-Mahdi to resign.
The demonstrations have often turned violent and over 600 people, including police forces, have been killed and 17,000 injured, according to an Iraqi human rights group.
Iraq’s President Barham Salih last week tasked Mohammed Allawi with forming a government within a month, a decision rejected by some protesters. The appointment of Allawi as prime minister-designate was expected to end the protest rallies, but the demonstrations have continued across Iraq against the new premier.
The holy city of Najaf, in particular, has in recent days been a scene of violent clashes, which some Iraqi politicians blame on the US and Saudi Arabia.
Fatah Alliance lawmaker Abdul Amir Taiban says the Najaf violence is an American-Saudi plot to distract the Iraqi people’s attention from the expulsion of US troops from the Arab country, which has been demanded by the Iraqi Parliament.
“Foreign parties are directing the events in central and southern Iraqi provinces behind the scenes,” he added.
“By torching, burning, spreading riot and chaos, the US is trying to distract the Iraqi nation and deflect their attention from the issue of expelling alien forces from their country,” he told Al-Maalomah.