Canadian Military Commander Pleads Guilty to Murder, Rape Charges

A top Canadian military commander has pleaded guilty to scores of crimes against women including two murders, rape and dozens of home break-ins conducted to steal underwear. Prior to his arrest in April, Col. David Russell Williams was one of Canada’s top military officials. He commanded Canada’s largest air base in Afghanistan and frequently piloted planes for dignitaries, including Queen Elizabeth II.

Rape and Minerals in the Congo

The United Nations is warning Democratic Republic of Congo troops are committing rape and murder in the same areas where rebel forces carried out mass rapes just weeks ago. On Thursday, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Margot Wallström, told the Security Council that DRC troops had carried out abuses in the Walikale region. Between 300 to 500 women, girls and babies were raped when Rwandan and Congolese rebels stormed villages there in July and August. Wallström said Walikale residents are being terrorized because their region has valuable minerals.

Margot Wallström: "The mass rapes in Walikale demonstrate a nexus between the illicit exploitation of natural resources by armed elements and patrons of sexual violence. It is evident that communities in lucrative mining areas are at particularly high risk. The mineral wealth that should be the source of their prosperity is instead the source of their greatest suffering. I encourage more concerted attention on this aspect. Therefore, mass rapes that occurred in Walikale should also be investigated from the angle of the competition over mining interests as one of the root causes of conflict and sexual violence."

Ode to conservatives

State Department Says Economic Crisis Fuels Human Trafficking

The global financial crisis is feeding both the supply and demand for human trafficking, the State Department warned today in its annual international survey of trafficking.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was expected to highlight the issue at a press conference this morning, where she will officially unveil the report.

The report, mandated by Congress, looks at the efforts of nations around the world to combat severe forms of human trafficking. Millions of people are believed to be trafficked across international borders each year for forced or coerced labor and for sexual exploitation.

South African's Attackin The Wrong Group of People

"Archbishop Desmond Tutu's dream of South Africa as a "Rainbow Nation" of exemplary inclusiveness is being negated. Fourteen years of ANC rule have failed to reverse many of the deep social inequalities inherited from the apartheid era, and the strain caused by mass unemployment, poor sanitation and limited services in many townships has now erupted in a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing. Last November, the South African Institute of Race Relations estimated that 4.2 million people were living on $1 a day or less in 2005, up from 1.9 million in 1996. Even when it has managed to suppress the current upsurge in anti-immigrant violence, the government faces a monumental challenge in transforming the poverty and despair that has fueled the hatred"

South Africa Slave Trade (and how the world cup is good for business)

"Despite more than a dozen international conventions banning slavery in the past 150 years, there are more slaves today than at any point in human history. Slaves are those forced to perform services for no pay beyond subsistence and for the profit of others who hold them through fraud and violence."

Obama has pledged to make the fight to abolish modern-day slavery a top foreign policy priority, but the U.S. currently spends more in a single day fighting drug trafficking than it does in an entire year fighting human trafficking

For a South African victim of human trafficking, this was the endgame. On a freezing night last July, Sindiswa, 17, lay curled in a fetal position in bed No. 7 of a state-run hospice in central Bloemfontein. Well-used fly strips hung between fluorescent lights, pale blue paint flaked off the walls, and fresh blood stained her sheets, the rusty bedpost and the linoleum floor. Sindiswa had full-blown AIDS and tuberculosis, and she was three months pregnant. Sweat poured from her forehead as she whispered her story through parched lips covered with sores. A few blocks away, the roars of rugby fans erupted from Free State Stadium. In June the roars will be from fans of the World Cup.