Naomi Wolf: Call sex crimes what they are

26 June 2008

Sex crime has a telltale signature, even when those directing the outrages are some of the most powerful men and women in the United States. How extraordinary, then, to learn that one of the perpetrators, Condoleezza Rice, has just led the debate in a special session of the United Nations Security Council on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.

I had a sense of deja vu when I saw the photos that emerged in 2004 from Abu Ghraib prison. Even as the Bush Administration was spinning the notion that the torture of prisoners was the work of "a few bad apples" low in the military hierarchy, I knew that we were seeing evidence of a systemic policy set at the top. It's not that I am a genius. It's simply that, having worked at a rape crisis centre and been trained in the basics of sex crime, I have learned that all sex predators go about things in recognisable ways.

We now know that the torture of prisoners was the result of a policy set in the White House by the former secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld; the Vice-President, Dick Cheney; and Rice - who chaired the torture meetings. The Pentagon has also acknowledged that it had authorised sexualised abuse of detainees as part of interrogation practices to be performed by females. And documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union have Rumsfeld, in his own words, "checking in" on the sexualised humiliation of prisoners.

The sexualisation of torture from the top turned Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay into an organised sex-crime ring in which the trafficked sex slaves were US-held prisoners. Looking at the classic sadism-and-masochism nature of some of this torture, it is hard not to speculate that someone setting policy was aroused by all of this.

The non-sexual torture ranged from beatings and suffocation, electrodes attached to genitals, and forced sleep deprivation, to prisoners being hung by the wrists from the ceiling and placed in solitary confinement until psychosis was induced. These abuses violate both US and international law. Three former military attorneys, recognising this blunt truth, refused to participate in the "military tribunals" - rather, "show trials" - aimed at condemning men whose confessions had been elicited through torture.

Although we can now debate what the penalty for water-boarding should be, America as a nation, maintaining an odd silence, still cannot seem to discuss the sexual crimes involved.

Why? It's not as if the sex crimes that US leaders either authorised or tolerated are not staring Americans in the face: the images of male prisoners with their heads hooded with women's underwear; the documented reports of female US soldiers deployed to smear menstrual blood on the faces of male prisoners; and the reports of military interrogators or contractors forcing prisoners to simulate sex with each other, to penetrate themselves with objects, or to submit to being penetrated by objects. Indeed, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was deliberately written with loopholes that gave immunity to perpetrators of many kinds of sexual humiliation and abuse.

There is also the testimony by female soldiers such as Lynndie England about compelling male prisoners to masturbate, as well as an FBI memo objecting to a policy of "highly aggressive interrogation techniques". The memo cites a female interrogator rubbing lotion on a shackled detainee and whispering in his ear - during Ramadan when sexual contact with a strange woman would be most offensive - then suddenly bending back his thumbs until he grimaced in pain, and violently grabbing his genitals. Sexual abuse in US-operated prisons got worse and worse over time, ultimately including, say doctors who examined detainees, sodomy.

All this may sound bizarre if you are a normal person, but it is standard operating procedure for sex offenders. Those who work in the field know that once sex abusers control a powerless victim, they will invariably push the boundaries with ever more extreme behaviour.

Abusers start by undressing their victims and, once that line has been breached, you are likely to hear from the victim about oral and anal penetration, greater and greater pain and fear being inflicted. There is more and more carelessness about exposing the crimes as the perpetrator's inhibitions fall away.

The perpetrator is also likely to engage in ever-escalating rationalisations, often arguing that the offences serve a greater good. Finally, the victim is blamed for the abuse: if the detainees would only "behave", and confess, they wouldn't bring all this on themselves.

Silence, and even collusion, is also typical of sex crimes within a family. Americans are behaving like a dysfunctional family by shielding sex criminals in their midst through silence.

Just as sex criminals - and the leaders who directed the use of rape and sexual abuse as a military strategy - were tried and sentenced after the wars in Bosnia and Sierra Leone, so Americans must hold accountable those who committed, or authorised, sex crimes in US-operated prisons.

Throughout the world, this perverse and graphic criminality has added fuel to anxiety about US cultural and military power. These acts need to be called by their true names - war crimes and sex crimes - and people in America need to demand justice for the perpetrators and their victims. As in a family, only when people start to speak out and tell the truth about rape and sexual assault can the healing begin.

Naomi Wolf wrote The End Of America: Letter Of Warning To A Young Patriot and the forthcoming Give Me Liberty: How To Become An American Revolutionary. She is the co-founder of the American Freedom Campaign, a US democracy movement, and is part of Project Syndicate, 2008.

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By ankara travestileri on 2012 03 23 - 10:15:26

RECLAIM AUSTRALIA IS DOOMED

Although I agree with many of their ideas, the forces reigned against RAM are too great, violent, statist and reactionary for them to remain a non-political, broad based, multi-ethnic, community protest group for much longer. The Left and their Antifa nihilist fellow travelers are already pushing them towards the extreme Right, by calling them racists and Islamophobes and so on. Whilst the extreme Right have aligned themselves with RAM. With fascists of the Left and Right pressuring them they will not be able to remain beyond the Left-Right divide and will inevitably move to the Right - the extreme Right. Which is already happening. A development which will alienate decent Australians of all ethnic backgrounds many of whom currently support them.

The RAM leadership have already established open alliances with the Patriotic Front (the ape in the photograph is a Patriot Front supporter at a recent Richmond demonstration) Australia First and Golden Dawn, a Greek neo-Nazi party. Members of these collectivist groups are currently attending RAM demonstrations all over Australia.

There is a real need in Australia to establish a political movement beyond the Left-Right divide and their vested interests, a movement that questions the current direction Australia is heading i.e. the direction the Left/Right and their extremes would like to take it; that questions the efficacy of state sponsored multiculturalism, as opposed to a proper, non-discriminatory immigration policy; that questions the validity of political correctness; that is politically neutral, anti-war and pro environment; that is opposed to all collectivists ideologies (fascisms of the Left and Right); that would dismantle the power pyramids of corporations and banks and their ability to impact on government; that would dissolve all anti-terror laws and all laws that impose on the rights and freedom of the individual and the people.

(The ape in the photograph is a Patriot Front supporter at a recent Richmond demonstration)

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/reclaim-australia-rally-set-for-sydney-on-sunday-20150718-gifb9s.html

http://australiafirstparty.net/news/reclaiming-australia-queensland-senate-campaign/

By Eugene Donnini on 2015 07 26 - 15:36:56
From the entry 'Dylann Roof: soldier in a new race war or just a pawn in the game?'.

Hello there I am so thrilled I found your web site, I really found you by error, while I was searching on Digg for something else, Anyways I am here now and would just like to say thanks for a incredible post and a all round thrilling blog (I also love the theme/design), I don韙 have time to go through it all at the minute but I have bookmarked it and also included your RSS feeds, so when I have time I will be back to read a lot more, Please do keep up the great work.

By Prova a Adidas Neutro Originals Nizza Nero Giallo on 2015 07 20 - 08:41:30
From the entry 'Statism, the greater good and the big lie'.

I second Keith’s assertion that Mike Holt from Restore Australia is very much a fake. He bangs on about Halaal being a scam and money maker for Islam (and no I don’t support Halaal whatsoever), but makes excuses for its counterpart Kosher as being a somehow legitimate. Double standards? When I confronted him about this fact he went off on a convoluted tirade about Israel being some sort of “Bastion of Democracy” in the middle east…Really!, I will leave that one up to the readers to decide on. I found that MH came across as disingenuous to say the least.

By Citizen Scorn on 2015 07 19 - 07:33:43
From the entry 'Restore Australia!'.

Without doubt, TNR is one of the best, if not the best alternative news source on the net. Which doesn’t mean Herewood is always right. His job, I believe, is to present the facts as he sees them as an objectively as possible, without fear or favor. For this, he has my respect and support. But I believe he needs to be careful and to think a little deeper about the problems of “racism,” in Australia. He has labelled the Reclaim Australia Movement as racist. I’m wondering if his objectivity is a little weak on this point, a little without foundation.

Of course all political movements have its fringe groups and individuals. We make a distinction between, for example, a Muslim and a fundamentalist Muslim (Islamist), and by so doing we don’t claim that all Muslims are blood thirsty fanatics. If its good for the Muslims, then its good for RAM, which is bound to attract a few lunatics and real racists. But to brand the entire movement as “racist” is wrong; it is the same ploy that is used by the mainstream media and its left-wing, establishment Marxist boot boys.

One of the first things I noticed when i attended a RAM rally recently were the amount of non-white people in attendance, including Aboriginals. In fact the main banner of RAM contains an Australian flag and an Aboriginal flag. Speakers at their rallies have included Jews, Arabs, Indians, Aboriginals, Chinese and so on. What does this tell you? Is this really a fascist-Nazi-racist movement whose stated aim are the eradication and exclusion of other cultures, in place of some sort of Aussie white Reich, or is this just propaganda that is being propagated by the left for their own political interests. Consequently, we all know where the culmination of their politics have led, historically speaking, which are to the imposition of terror and dictatorships.

We can be thankful for small mercies, in terms of the Left, which today mostly tends to attract collectivists, establishmentarians and the privileged sons and daughters of the upper bourgeoisie, who seems to share one thing in common, nativity….

By Eugene on 2015 07 18 - 16:03:54
From the entry 'Dylann Roof: soldier in a new race war or just a pawn in the game?'.

Mike Holt from Restore Australia is very much a fake. He hasn’t even been citizen for but a few years. But, he makes out like he was born there. ALSO - this guy spent 30 years in Thailand working shady businesses. I would wager that his primary purpose in being an activist is that he wants to make money off selling merchandise.

By Keith on 2015 07 17 - 20:51:15
From the entry 'Restore Australia!'.

good to see you putting out some new shows heraward

freely the banana girl is to a certain extent a troll, as is her boyfriend durian rider. they have been trolling the fitness community on youtube for some time… and yes they are extreme but they are also trolls. They use their trolling to spread their message. currently, another dude called vegangains is trolling the fitness community as well.

i am a vegetarian, and it was seeing this documentary on the pork industry that started me on the vegetarian path. for anyone interested, its pretty off the charts disturbing and its australian as well. its pretty much made by dudes breaking into pork farms and filming what they find

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KArL5YjaL5U

Would the world be better if people cared where their food came from? probably, they might then care about other things too

do you become a better person if you dont eat meat? i feel like a better person mainly because animals aren’t being hurt because of me. i dont feel humans have to eat meat really… or at least not much. How can you watch that documentary on pork, know that that is pretty much whats going on and turn a blind eye to it? I think its basic empathy and just saying well ‘i like bacon so yeah’ is in my opinion wrong and i can see freleys point of view to an extent. In my opinion, at least these people believe in something. i see my money as my vote, henceforth im ethical as to what i do with it. free range eggs became mainstream for exactly this reason… although im pretty sure woolies and coles lobbied the state to change the definition of the word ‘free range’ at some point. I dont eat beef because the amount of resources that go into growing a cow are pretty crazy. Think about how much grass that cow needs to eat before it is harvested and how much space it requires. think of how many vegies you could grow in the same space with the same amount of water. lamb? comon, think about what your doing here… but that being said i think most vegans are total loons. People like freeley should be advocating for the destruction of lions and tigers, as lions and tigers murder other animals in truly horrific style. if we humans are smart enough to not harm animals, then we should be stopping the animals that harm other animals from existing. Freeley also kills birds when she flies in aeroplanes so she is a hypocrite.

feminism is one of the biggest problems in society today and although there is some valid historical basis to it, the liberation of the human female from their biology is in my opinion largely a product of the technological advance of humans. sufferagettes where never machine gunned on the streets, unlike the men that where drafted and sent off to war to die just a few years earlier. as technology has advanced, women have advanced as well, however now its going way too far and is pretty blatantly anti male in many respects. i view feminism in its modern context as a tool of the social marxists that really isnt doing society a great deal of good at this time. its screwing up gender dynamics and is wrecking women and men for each other. i see it as low frequency, lowest common denominator idiocy, just like a lot of the the race baiting ‘is this racist’ stuff getting around that is being perpetuated pretty much as a distraction, divide and conquer strategy by the power elite. idiots love this kind of bicker and beef… it would be funny if it wasn’t so serious

anyway

I agree with steven friar. gods a maniac

good show… keep making them

By r0Kb3B0p on 2015 07 14 - 21:05:32
From the entry 'Addictions, obsessions, fanaticisms and distractions'.

Really truthfull.

By OZE on 2015 07 07 - 16:56:36
From the entry 'Defending your personal health choices'.

Yeah sure authority aware.

By OZE on 2015 07 07 - 16:28:55
From the entry 'What is the future of Australia?'.

Stay tuned for more rules here as usually is the case!!!

By OZE on 2015 07 07 - 16:21:50
From the entry 'Mass media disinformation and brainwashing dissected'.

Almost two months since the last broadcast! How the hell can you expect people to donate when you don’t broadcast? Looks like the ship of truth has sprung a leak. This broadcast has been part of my life almost since its inception…it is one of the few alternative news sources that hasn’t gone off the deep end, by dilution credible information with crap e.g. Fairdinkum Radio and Info Wars…Pittard started FR with some incredibly interesting material, but then he flipped…Today he sounds like a fundamentalist preacher, the Christian equivalent to a Fanatical Islamist. As an atheist, I think he’s really ###### up a potentially good show. As for Info Wars, all they would have to do to improve is dump Alex Jones, what a shit-for-brains. I reckon Jones and Pittard are allowed to proliferate, because they’re so stupid and harmless. I suppose they have some entertainment value, and along with David Icke are living examples of how low the alternative media has sunk. Truth News Radio is, or should I say was, way ahead of them all ahead of them all in terms of credibility How sad that its come to this.

By Eugene on 2015 06 28 - 17:28:56
From the entry 'Introducing Internet.org: Mark Zuckerberg's free 'private' internet which will soon be rolled out to 4 billion+ people'.

Naomi Wolf: Call sex crimes what they are

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