We should take a moment to stand with these students in Seoul, South Korea to honor the tens of thousands of deceased Korean “comfort women” who did not live to see justice. Not that this current agreement between South Korea & Japan, 70 years in the making, is justice. We should note that sexual slavery by the Japanese military occupation included women throughout Korea, now divided into North & South.

The deal is being heralded as landmark & historic. Enough with the hyperbole. It’s a shabby agreement based solely on the expediences of military collaboration between South Korea, Japan, & the US & the need to make the issue to go away if military buildup in the region is to go forward without popular resistance.

Color me vengeful but over a day ago I commented on The Nation article entitled “Is hijab really a symbol of liberation when millions are oppressed into wearing it?” by a Muslim woman named Arshia Malik. Shades of Asra Nomani. Over 24 hours later & the comment objecting to the article has not been published.

The Nation is seen as a liberal publication but it’s similar in many ways to the Guardian-UK: sometimes it’s liberal, sometimes–especially on issues of Islamophobia & Zionism–it skirts right-wing. To me, it’s always been a bore. I’m no sophisticado but it’s just lowbrow intellectualism & often politically banal.

It’s politically fashionable these days to defend prostitution as just another way for women to earn a living & to rebrand the commodification of women & children’s bodies as “sex work.” That approach derives from the prostitution industry itself (much like the 2011 “slut walks” phenomenon) as a public relations stunt to legitimize prostitution which has taken in many elite feminists as well as leftist anti-feminists. Flaunting a regrettable disdain, they think it suitable work for poor & working class women but not a career choice for their own daughters. Rebranding & cinematic glorification notwithstanding, prostitution remains what it has always been–the often violent sexual exploitation of poor women & children. And for the record, it is not the ‘oldest profession for women’. That would be farming.

Those unable to envision a world where women are not for sale, or even worse, women & children are not trafficked, are suffering the cognitive dislocations of misogyny. Part of the cognitive problem is the denial of realities about the character of prostitution which begins with economic coercion, proceeds with degradation & violence, & often ends in murder. It has an astronomical humiliation & homicide rate which office & factory work do not.

Prostitution & the trafficking of women & children is inextricably connected to militarism. It’s often the place young men are introduced to the notion of women as commodity & where they develop a violent twisted attitude toward sex & women. There is an excellent library of research by feminists on the relationship of prostitution & militarism–most of it difficult to read because of the sadism & hatred involved in the flesh market.

Now we are confronted with the undeniable realities of militarism & prostitution in the agreement reached between the governments of South Korea & Japan over the Japanese military practice of sexual slavery in WWII & earlier involving an estimated 200,000 to 410,000 “comfort women” from countries occupied by Japan. (The numbers are disputed–especially by Japan.) Women from Korea, China, the Philippines, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Portuguese Timor (now East Timor) were forcibly relocated to military brothels in those same countries as well as New Guinea, Hong Kong, Macau, & French Indochina. Some Dutch & Australian women were also involved as sex slaves.

Most of this history was buried because of the social shame involved & more importantly, the massive physical & psychological trauma suffered by so many women. They began to speak out in the 1950s & since then considerable research & political agitation has been done to demand the Japanese government face the music for these monstrous crimes against so many women. It’s taken over 70 years for Japan to even acknowledge what it did.

The agreement reached Monday between South Korea & Japan was brokered by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe whose own father was involved in sex trafficking for the Japanese army. The agreement doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Japan made a reluctant apology & pledged $8.3 million to provide care for the women who are now in their 80s & older & suffer many health problems as a result of the violence & psychological abuse. Paltry contrition & chump change is not what justice demands. There are only about 50 South Korean women still alive. What about the women from the other countries involved?

Media is portraying the US as a morality broker in this dispute just as they were often portrayed as liberating the “comfort women” when they defeated Japan. It’s like a rendition of Hollywood WWII movies glorifying the US Marines. Except that the US still has nearly 100,000 troops in South Korea & Japan where prostitution serves as an auxiliary force. It may not be sexual slavery but it does involve children–which is rape. The US war in Vietnam created massive problems with prostitution in Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, & elsewhere in Southeast Asia. There were lawsuits by Filipino women against the US Navy because it administered prostitution, including children, & when it pulled out left thousands of orphaned homeless children by US soldiers without providing for their welfare.

The remilitarization of Japan & the entire US buildup in the region going on now is a direct threat to women & children. That’s why it is so important to oppose the current in US feminism supporting war as a way to liberate women. That’s why it’s so imperative that the antiwar current in feminism become more assertive & organize women to oppose every damn US move to war.

The women here are former South Korean “comfort women” watching television news about the new agreement. They reside at the House of Sharing, a special shelter in Gwangju, South Korea for Japan’s sexual victims from the occupation of Korea & WWII.

(Photo by Hong Ki-won/Yonhap/Reuters)

Good thing I wasn’t on the jury for the “affluenza” kid who got away with vehicular homicide using the defense his parents never said no to him. I’d have sent him up the river just for the snotty look on his face. News today is they picked him & his mother up in a resort area of Mexico after they went on the lam. Nothing like being a fugitive living the high life in a luxury suite.

The best response is from Martha Odom: “What now…a good spanking?”

(Photo of the snotty kid, Ethan Couch)

This is 12-year-old Tamir Rice who was fatally shot by Cleveland police in November 2014 while playing in a park with a toy gun–what media refers to as “brandishing a replica gun” to make the crime less odious.

A grand jury refused to bring charges against either of the two officers. The prosecutor, who set up the case probably to create that eventuality, said there were a series of mistakes that led to the shooting but no criminal culpability. It was just an unfortunate accident.

David Duke, the prominent US white supremacist & former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan has produced many videos ostensibly to support Palestinian justice which frequently circulate on social media.

No Palestinian supporter or progressive of any kind should touch this pasty-faced creep with a ten-foot pole. He identifies as a “European American” & his only interest in Palestinians is as a way to have a go at & do harm to Jews. But when people object to his videos we are often told he is a changed man who acknowledges what a steaming pile of manure he once was.

It was nearly one year & a half ago the Mexican military–which functions as an occupying force in its own country–disappeared 43 student teachers from the Ayotzinapa teachers college near Iguala, Mexico. After a phony investigation, the government of smooth-talking president Enrique Peña Nieto tried to declare the case closed. Only one of the students was found buried but in the search by family & volunteers, the bodies of 100 other unidentified disappeared Mexicans were found in the area.

The families of the Ayotzinapa 43 believe their sons may be held in secret prisons enduring torture & eventual murder & they have not ceased protests demanding the regime come clean about the fate of their sons & return them home alive.

Kidnapping & disappearing activists is one of the most monstrous methods used under neoliberal capitalism, the barbaric phase of capitalism. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people have been disappeared, tortured, & dumped in mass graves like rubbish. Somewhere near fifty regimes employ or have employed this method in the past several decades.

During the “Dirty War” in Argentina between 1976 & 1983, human rights groups estimate 30,000 were disappeared–including by taking them over the ocean & shoving them out of planes. In the Sri Lankan civil war of the 1980s, estimates are from 12,000 to 20,000 disappeared by the military. In Guatemala, over 45,000 were disappeared by the military between 1960 & 1996. In Kashmir, Indian military & paramilitary forces have disappeared over 8,000 (as of 2009). In Mexico, the estimates of disappeared since 2006 are between 26,000 & 30,000. (It doesn’t appear that Central American immigrants disappeared as they travel through Mexico to the US border are included in the estimates of the Mexican government.) Disappearing is also used as a weapon of war by the US in Afghanistan & elsewhere & appears to be the modus operandi of special forces like the Green Beret, who are nothing more than psychotic death squads valorized as heroes.

Disappearing people is a particularly heinous crime because it allows families no resolution to grief. Since the grief cannot be resolved until families have their loved ones back to bury & honor–& thus becomes more wrenching–the disappeared remain an active part of social struggle. They will haunt justice until it is addressed. Decades after the crimes, families display photo montages of those lost. They’re still showing such montages from the thousands disappeared by Franco forces in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s & still demanding justice. It should also be considered a remarkably stupid crime because it forever indicts the regimes that use it.

As governments try to skirt & trash civil liberties in the so-called war on terror, they will employ more of this method since it short-circuits due process & prosecution for an actual crime rather than just protesting for justice. Educating ourselves & others about this vile crime is part of the struggle against it.

Our fullest respect & solidarity with the families of the Ayotzinapa 43 & with the Mexican people in their struggle to end military occupation which has also taken over 100,000 civilian lives, made Mexico an extremely dangerous country for journalists & Central American immigrants–but a paradise for drug traffickers.

Photo is protesters, including family members of the Ayotzinapa 43, at a Christmas Day rally in Mexico City.

(Photo by Marco Ugarte/AP)