Women’s Lower Wages Worsen their Circumstances

Women’s Lower Wages Worsen their Circumstances In a Difficult Economy

April 2010

American women who work full-time, year-round are paid only 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts. This gap in earnings translates into $10,622 less per year in female median earnings, leaving women and their families shortchanged. The wage gap is even more substantial when race and gender are considered together, with African-American women making only 61 cents, and Latinas only 52 cents, for every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men. Although enforcement of the Equal Pay Act as well as other civil rights laws has helped to narrow the wage gap over time, it is critical for women and their families that the significant disparities in pay that remain be addressed.

I. Fair Pay for Women is Particularly Important in Difficult Times

A loss of over $10,000 per year due to women’s lower wages is tough on families that rely on women’s earnings as a source of income, but lower earnings have a significant impact on the

lives of women and the families that rely exclusively on their wages, especially in a difficult economy.

►► The recession has impacted families in all demographics across the United States, but female-headed households—which make up 85% of single parent families4—have been particularly hard hit, with an unemployment rate of 11.3 percent. Even before the sharp rise in unemployment, more than one in three (37.2 percent) female-headed families with children were poor in 2008, the most recent year for which poverty data is available. Thus, the wage gap only compounds the economic hardships facing female-headed families. For the 9.9 million families that are headed by single mothers and who rely almost exclusively on a woman’s wage,

lowered earnings have a serious impact on their economic security.

►► With unemployment high among men, more and more families are depending entirely on women’s wages:

◙◙1.9 million married couples with children relied exclusively on women’s earnings in 2009, representing 7.4% of all married couples with children. In one year, the number of families relying on women’s earnings increased by 511,000, or 36.6%, compared to a 5.1% increase from 2007 to 2008.

◙◙Over 15 million married couples with children relied on both parents’ earnings in 2009, representing 58.6% of all married couples with children.

►► Unemployment insurance provides temporary income support to workers who lose their jobs and serves as a crucial safety net for many families in a difficult economy. Because unemployment benefits are tied to past wages and women’s wages lag behind men’s wages, unemployed women receive less in unemployment benefits than men. Worse yet, women face particular barriers in even obtaining unemployment insurance, which further women’s economic insecurity. For example, the 1.1 million unemployed women seeking part-time work would be ineligible to receive unemployment benefits in 23 states because of rules that require them to look for full-time work. Inequities in the unemployment insurance system due both to outdated rules and to the gap between men’s and women’s earnings depletes the financial resources available to women and their families during challenging economic times.

►► The persistence of the wage gap results in lower lifetime earnings for women compared to men, resulting in women’s loss of income in retirement, particularly in pensions and savings.

◙◙Closing the gender wage gap is an important tool to enhance women’s ability to save and ensure economic security for women and their families in retirement. For example, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research has calculated that a typical woman with a college diploma would lose more than $440,000 in a 20-year period due to the wage gap.

◙◙Unmarried women in the workforce today will receive, on average, about $8,000 a year less in retirement income than their male counterparts—even after controlling for number of years worked and educational levels, occupational segregation and pay differences account for more than two-thirds of the difference in the retirement income of women and men.

◙◙The wage gap also impacts pension income. In 2007, on average, women age 65 and older received less than half of the pension income received by men (approximately $3,176 vs. $7,568).

◙◙The amount contributed by female workers to defined contribution plans, such as a 401(k) or IRA, is also reduced by the wage gap. Indeed, for 2005, the average contribution of female workers was thirty percent smaller than that of male workers. Furthermore, only half as many women as men contribute the maximum to their 401(k) plan.13

II. Closing the Wage Gap Would Significantly Improve Families’ Finances

Given the importance of women’s earnings to family economic security, bringing women’s earnings in line with men’s earnings would greatly improve the economic situation of women and their families. An additional $10,622 per year is enough to:

... pay the average cost of rent and utilities for a year with over $1,500 to spare, or the average mortgage and utilities for 11 months and 20 days.

►► With nearly 3 million households receiving at least one foreclosure filing in 2009, the lost earnings due to the wage gap could make a substantial difference in reducing family economic insecurity and financial hardship. Indeed, one in forty-five households—over 2.8 million properties nationwide—were in default last year.

… feed a household of four for a year with almost $1,500 to spare.

►► The difficult economy has stretched family budgets for basic needs thin, particularly for women and their families. In 2008, female-headed households made up 58% of all households with children receiving food stamp benefits, and 40% of all households overall, with or without children.17 With the deepening economic crisis, food stamp participation has continued to climb: In January 2010, nearly 39.5 million people received assistance, an increase of over 7.2 million (or 22.4%) from the previous year.

… pay a year’s child care costs for a four-year-old with over $3,600 to spare.

►► Child care expenditures consume a large percentage of the earnings of families, particularly those who are low-income. Among families who pay for child care, families in poverty spend an average of 32% of their income on care and families between 100 and 200 percent of poverty devote an average of 15% of their income on care. Even higher-income families paying for child care spend 6% of their income on care.

The lost earnings due to the wage gap could alleviate much of this financial pressure.

…pay for three years of health insurance premiums with over $400 to spare.

►► Women spend a significant amount of their income on out-of-pocket health costs and health insurance premiums, and are more likely than men to experience serious financial hardship as a result of medical bills: In 2007, more than one-third (35%) of working-age women spent 10% or more of their income on these expenses, and one-third of women, compared to one-quarter of men, were unable to pay for basic necessities because of medical bills. Closing the wage gap would provide essential help in meeting these tradeoffs, particularly since the current economic downturn has exacerbated medical debt.

III. Women Earn Less Than Men in All States, but the Size of the Gap Varies

Although women and their families are grappling with this tough economy around the country, there is not a single state where women have gained economic equality with men. In every state across the U.S., men earn more than women, impacting women across race, class, and occupation. The size of the disparity varies by state: In 2008, Washington, D.C. had the nation’s smallest wage gap, at 88%, well ahead of California, where women earned 84.9% of what men earned. The median of 75.9% is shared by the states of Connecticut, Kentucky, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. Women fared worst relative to men in Wyoming, where women’s earnings represented only 64.3% of men’s earnings, the widest gap of any state.

Women and their families cannot sustain a wage gap that persists this deep in this economy. There is no doubt that more is necessary both to strengthen equal pay laws, which have been weakened over time by courts, and to require the federal government to be more proactive in

preventing and battling wage discrimination. In particular, the Paycheck Fairness Act, which has already passed the House of Representatives, would serve these goals

IV. The Paycheck Fairness Act Would Fight Pay Discrimination Based on Gender

Introduced in both the House (H.R. 12) and the Senate (S. 182) and passed by the House last year, the Paycheck Fairness Act would address discriminatory pay practices, an important source of the wage gap. The Act builds upon the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which made it illegal for

employers to pay unequal wages to men and women who perform substantially equal work. Among other things:

►► The Paycheck Fairness Act allows victims of wage discrimination based on gender to receive full compensatory and punitive damages, as opposed to only liquidated damages and back pay awards, putting gender-based wage discrimination on equal footing with discrimination based on race and ethnicity.

►► The Act would make it easier for parties that have been discriminated against to work together through a class action suit by automatically considering members part of the class unless they choose to opt out, in keeping with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

►► The Act would close loopholes in how discrimination is counted by clarifying that a gender differential in pay within a company need not be within the same facility to count as discrimination, and by tightening the rules concerning defense of a gendered pay differential that employers claim is not due to sex

►► The Act would facilitate detection of pay discrimination by prohibiting punishment of employees who share salary information with coworkers, by requiring employers to submit pay data by race, sex, and national origin to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and by reinstating collection of gender-based data in the Current Employment Statistics Survey.

National Women’s Law Center, Washington, D.C.,

April 2010

www.nwlc.org

Footnotes and tables at link above.

important coming war with Iran update (or is it Syria?)

"The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag."

-- Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (1981-1940) Major General USMC. Source: from a speech in 1933

Re: Paul Craig Roberts: "A Third American War Crime in the Making"

I spend my days crying most of the day.

How I live I would not wish on anyone else. And I do not wish it on anyone else, either. I see little hope of escaping either. I stood up and got counted and now I must PAY.

I think muchly about my sisters around the world - the ones who have had their illusions and dreams stripped away. Most are in remote places and don't even know I exist. But I know much about their plights and those of their daughters and sons.

I make it my business to know, you might say.

I try to harness my incredible brain power to try to help them -- reading, researching and writing away at all hours of the day and night and even my dreams I pretend I am their diplomat and that I can convince young people to take up the "Unpopular causes." Causes that must be taken up if this planet is to have any sanity left.

I analyze away using a higher brain function than most, and try to keep my feelings attached which is no small feat.

People are not too interested in what I have to say for many reasons. I refer to myself as a Cassandra - the woman who tells the future that no one wants to hear.

For I am a woman who has been living with the effects of The Big Lie for nearly 40 years. That lie is that "all men are created equal" and that somehow the US government is the protector of certain inalienable rights granted by God.

Unless a person is absolutely brain dead, that fact that the US is anything BUT a protector of such views and was founded on a phony premise. The premise is that under a court of law, equal justice will applied to all parties. In fact, it is to my mind a ridiculous premise to assume that most law cases where justice is demanded will even make it to court. And should it fall into some other venue, well, the same standard of equality is not a basic premise.

I was denied my rights in America. I came to Canada expecting to find (with God's help) equal justice as asylum seeker. Boy! was that ever naive. Yes, after a long and horrible wait, I seemed to achieve something like fairness and life was good for about six months and then the carpet was pulled out from under me, my son and my husband. And then "the wheels of justice" ground on so interminably that all three of us had bodies that just gave out. The human body can really only take so much stress when under the weight of oppression.

Eight years after I came here, I was denied refugee status in a kangaroo court where I was not even really allowed to speak in my own defense. Lots of attorneys got paid a bundle of money to be in on the "photo opportunity" though. Plenty of money was spent on the exercise of holding all the court sessions, generally. Plenty of money was spent surveilling me. Everyone went home from that courtroom in 2001 feeling "justice" had been served. Not surprisingly my son and I did not feel justice was served.

No one apologized. These people - 7 highly paid attorneys - all live comfortably now surrounded by their families, I am sure. They have letters after their names and also, they can insulate themselves from ongoing human pain.

I have an ex husband I put through law school. He is very very comfortable indeed. He has a very low moral standard, in actual fact and doesn't hold himself accountable the law to his own personal legal obligations. He owes me thousands of dollars. Dollars which I will never see. Years of outstanding child support payments which were ridiculously low to begin with, were never paid to me. This doesn't pain him one little bit. It pains me a great deal. I could surely use that money even without factoring interest payments. He's used that money he owed me to build his fame, his prestige in a community that we both grew up in. His reputation goes untarnished; I am disappeared. That was so very convenient.

Would he eat dinner with Richard Cheney? Would he eat dinner with me?

These seem like trivial questions: I assure you that that are not.

These are the kinds of questions that people from nice society are not supposed to ask. But these are fundamental questions that show how a lack of seeing the real consequences of one's choices can affect many people. Choices can have catastrophic effects on the lives of others.

Today, I watched in horror as I found myself set up by David Swanson's deceit just one more time. I fell for it once before and no one questioned why he did what he did. I don't think David Swanson would eat dinner with Richard Cheney; but then I think Richard Cheney wouldn't allow that. But I do think that David Swanson would eat dinner with John Conyers.

In fact, in my morose state tonight, laying in bed, hurting so badly with no one around, I had a distinct picture of David Swanson in a DC bar or coffee shop "hobnobbing" with those on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee after today's "action" - and I began to cry again.

I became one of the 9-year old prostitutes in Syria dancing and having sex with psychopathic men to make sure my mother had food to eat. She had this to say:

I wondered why David Swanson and his compatriots sold me out AGAIN in that big palace that they have where they make deals to fund the war in Iraq. I thought that they wanted an end to the war so that I could go back home to Baghdad again. Maybe in Baghdad we would find others who would help us plant a little garden. But I think David Swanson and his friends in that big palace forgot about that today.

I wondered why David Swanson had so many people supporting him today, but my diplomat had so little reach. Why did no one listen to her? Why was no one really was concerned with what she had to say. I so badly wanted to see someone acting on my behalf. I think everyone in the United States must be deaf these days! I know my diplomat keeps a picture of me on a table. This makes me feel better. She has one of me as a baby and one of me here, where I dance for the men, two different pictures!! She must care about me!!

I wondered why my diplomat works long hard hours to find out why my family and I got treated this way, but no one allows her to publish her findings, and no one asks her to speak on my behalf.

Today, I thought about my cousins who work in Saudi Arabia who make good money working in the oil fields but never sent my mother any money. They don't send anything and they don't even write us. I wonder how my cousins get through Ramadan and what treats they might eat after sunset when they need to replenish their energy. Ramadan is time to think about Mohammad might do, figure out what must be done to get back to doing right and then to atone. But I am not sure what that atonement means to older people. For me it means never forgetting that I sometimes scream at my sister for bossing me around - and then saying to her, that I love her anyway.

I wondered today if my cousins in Saudi Arabia go to other towns and have fun with other nine-year old girls like me, getting high and crazy with other Saudi Arabian men and having fun. And then I wonder: Do those men send checks to their Iraqi cousins? Or do they keep those cheques all for themselves like my cousins do.

The man who owns my club - he likes me and not my sister. Maybe I can get him to give me a little something extra one night and I can share that with my sister and my mother. We talk about being able to get enough money to buy gas masks if the shooting starts here, as it did in Baghdad - in that long ago time when my father was still alive and before my brother lost his leg.

I do not understand adults at all. But maybe I will when I grow up. I can act very adult now, but sometimes I just do not understand it all. I'd like to school but I cannot. My sister and I must be breadwinners and that's all we really have time to do. We must make sure our hair looks nice, that we have proper cosmetics. Fashions change - the magazines say so and we are always buying new ones!! When we look nice people fuss over us which is better than being ignored and sometimes then we make more money.

We would really like to buy some gas masks but the money just gets spend so quickly. There is so rarely enough money now. The magazines in the shops I go to don't have advertising for gas masks in them and we wonder how we would get them if we had the money.

I have to go now. Someone has asked me to dance. Do you think someone will speak for us in Washington DC tomorrow? Or will they forget about me and my sister and my brother here in Syria? Will they have drinks with my Saudia Arabian cousins instead? If I keep thinking about these hard things, I'll forget to smile, and no one will throw any money at me on the dance floor. Going home with no money will make the next day very hard for me, my mother and my brother.

I will write to my diplomat again. Maybe she will show people how sweet I am ask them to help me and my sister and my mother just one more day. I would really like to go home to Baghdad one day. At least I could go see where I used to live. But I don't want to go there until all the tanks are gone. And I not sure what I could do to make money if I went now so I can help my mother and my brother! I have another cousin in an orphanage in Baghdad - and I'd like to share some of my clothes with her; I have many clothes now and she might like some of them.

I really must go now. They are getting very angry with me.

I am sure the reader is confused why I write this. What possible connection can there be between me and this nine-year old girl? Why is my story like hers? Am I too presumptuous in thinking that there is?

No, I am not. People were presumed in the US government to be looking after our best interests. But they were not. People responsible for our well-being who were paid to look after our interests and keep our families together did not. Instead, we watch in horror as those we loved were taken away from us. The girl as yet, the one in my mind, is not yet a motherless daughter but one day, inevitably, unless the girl gets a STD or some other horrible form of physical decay sets in will probably outlive her mother and THEN she will be an orphan. This will have many many effects on her for the rest of her life. This is something I know quite a bit about - the emotional cost.

That's why despite my pain (and plenty of it) I get up each day and run from site to site, from email to email to try to keep people AWAKE and demand real justice. It's quite a tiring job, really. It demands constant, vigilant ability on my part to not go into the "disconnect zone".

Today, I noted with interest how many on the ACLU team going down to Guantanamo Bay to defend detainees were women. There were quite a number and I was very very proud of them all!! Some of them are really "sticking it" to Richard Cheney too!! RAH!! Not everyone is emotionally disconnected as Cheney and Halliburton/KBR make super profits off human misery, leaving death, destruction and the rape of souls in their wake. Some people got up today and DID THE RIGHT THING - and were doing their best.

I wish I could say the same thing about David Swanson and my ex husband. But I cannot. In my life time, I have seen many people not DO THE RIGHT THING when it comes to the interests of me and my sisters around the globe.

What follows now is a strategic summary by Paul Craig Roberts about the Cheney war plans - war plans that don't take women and children's into account in any way.

Roberts assessment is probably close to true - I am sure he has many sources "leaking" away to him.

Webster Tarpley will look like the idiot - for now - as setting up the war planning is taking up a lot of time. I think that using outsourced agents for intel is a factor in that time lag - Webster said 6 April, but I don't expect an attack this week myself, based on what I read in Seymour Hersch's article in The New Yorke.

Bill Gates, George Dubya, Dick Cheney and Isreali's running the White House are just going to have wait a bit to get that "VICTORY!" that they think history demands of them. As victors, surely, surely no one is going to come after them for WAR CRIMES. And the 2009 proposed US budget for defense will HAVE to be approved, eh? Can't let our troops down by not giving them what they need to get the job done? And the money is so easily printed now - by the time the full weight of the attack and the consequences for America are know, all US forests can be taken to print more lovely US dollar bill$.

I cannot definitely call the target of the next war of AGGRESSION. THEY, as I know refer to THEM, may go after Syria, using Israel as a proxy. They may expect that "doing" Syria may bring Iran to kowtow to Israeli government demands that Iran be without nuclear abilities. Take note: the failure to stop this is now equally the result of the Warcast Media and the "The Democratic Party" - and in my opinion the codepedent nature of the so-called US antiwar movement which still thinks being coopted time after time after time after time is stil the way to "go".

Here then, is Roberts' assessment of the next chapter in The MADMAN as Ruler of the World section of this phase of global history.

I would dispute his title: Many are the war crimes that have been committed. And I type those words with despair in my heart. I would like my nine-year old girl inside me living in Syria to make it back home to Baghdad some day. I would like to see the Witch Tree in Grand Portage one more time.

She has a lot of grieving to do to stay whole, a huge amount of crying needs to be done by her and her sister. They don't have time to shed them; they are too busy making money.

I may subcumb to the illness I have because my immune system is shot and my liver with it. And ditto on my thyroid. Small wonder about the thyroid. Constant stress is hard on me and my sister's around the world's thyroids.

Those young girls in Syria dance. I just continue to type away ...

Have you gone deaf yet? Can you hear what I am trying to tell you all?

Things are NOT right; people are not doing THE RIGHT THING.

IMPEACHMENT NOW, not after an attack!!

John Conyers, you are the biggest CRYBABY I have ever seen on this planet.

And ICH, a forum I once I held dear -- I am sick of you leaving us women FACELESS. Maybe then people would truly GET FED UP. Many of us women are SUFFERING daily. Right now, I don't want to go back. I got censored when I wrote about the women and children, even in the threads there. If some people miss me there, well, that remains to be seen.

Veeger


A Third American War Crime in the Making

By Paul Craig Roberts

31/03/08 "<http://www.informat ionclearinghouse .info/>

ICH" -- -- The US Congress, the US media, the American people, and the United Nations, are looking the other way as Cheney prepares his attack on Iran.

If only America had an independent media and an opposition party. If there were a shred of integrity left in American political life, perhaps a third act of naked aggression-- a third war crime under the Nuremberg standard--by the Bush Regime could be prevented.

On March 30, the Russian News & Information Agency, Novosti, cited "a high-ranking security source: "The latest military intelligence data point to heightened US military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran." <http://en.rian. ru/russia/ 20070327/ 62697703. html>http://en.rian. ru/russia/ 20070327/ 62697703. html

According to Novosti, Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov said "that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure in the near future."

The chief of Russia's general staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, said last November that Russia was beefing up its military in response to US aggression, but that the Russian military is not "obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans." <http://www.mnweekly .ru/national/ 20071115/ 55289883. html>http://www.mnweekly .ru/national/ 20071115/ 55289883. html

On March 29, OpEdNews cited a report by the Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz, which was picked up by the German news service, DPA. The Saudi newspaper reported on March 22, the day following Cheney's visit with the kingdom's rulers, that the Saudi Shura Council is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors." <http://empireburles quenow.blogspot. com/2008/ 03/worried- yet-saudis- prepare-for- sudden.html>http://empireburles quenow.blogspot. com/2008/ 03/worried- yet-saudis- prepare-for- sudden.html

And Admiral William "there will be no attack on Iran on my watch" Fallon has been removed as US chief of Central Command, thus clearing the way for Cheney's planned attack on Iran.

The Iranians don't seem to believe it, despite the dispatch of US nuclear submarines and another aircraft carrier attack group to the Persian Gulf. To counter any Iranian missiles launched in response to an attack, the US is deploying anti-missile defenses to protect US bases and Saudi oil fields.

Two massive failures by the American media, the Democratic Party, and the American people have paved the way for Cheney's long planned attack on Iran. One failure is the lack of skepticism about the US government's explanation of 9/11. The other failure is the Democrats' refusal to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush for lying to the Congress, the American people, and the world and launching an invasion of Iraq based on deception and fabricated evidence.

If an American president can start a war exactly as Adolf Hitler did with pure lies and not be held accountable, he can get away with anything. And Bush and his evil regime have.

Hitler launched World War II with his invasion of Poland after staging a "Polish attack" on a German radio station. On the night of August 31, 1939, a group of Nazis disguised in Polish uniforms seized a radio station in Germany. Hitler announced that "last night Polish troops crossed the frontier and attacked Germany," a claim no more true than the Bush Regime's claim that "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. " Hitler's lie failed, because his invasion of Poland, which began the next day allegedly in reprisal for the Polish attack, had obviously been planned for many months.

Iran is a beautiful and developed country. It is an ancient civilization. It has attacked no one. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Iran is permitted by the treaty to have a nuclear energy program. The Bush Regime's case against Iran is based on the Bush Regime's desire to deny Iran its rights under the treaty.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have repeatedly reported that they have found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Despite all the disinformation from US Gen. Petraeus and other Bush Regime military lackeys, Iran is not arming the Iraqis who are resisting the American occupation.

If Iran were arming insurgents, the insurgents would have two weapons that would neutralize the US advantage in the Iraqi conflict: missiles to knock down US helicopter gunships and rocket-propelled grenades that knock out American tanks. The insurgents do not have these weapons and must construct clumsy anti-tank weapons out of artillery shells. The insurgents are helpless against US air power and cannot mass forces to take on the American troops.

Indiscriminate American violence has reduced Iraq to rubble. The civilian infrastructure is essentially destroyed--electric ity, water and sewer systems, medical care and schools. Depleted uranium is everywhere poisoning everyone, including US troops. There is no economy, and half or more of Iraqis are unemployed. Literally no Iraqi family has escaped an injury or a death as a consequence of the US invasion. Millions of Iraqis have become displaced persons. A developed country with a professional middle class has been destroyed because of lies told by the President and Vice President of the US. The Bush Regime's lies are echoed by a neoconservative media, and have gone unchallenged by the opposition party and an indifferent American public.

In Afghanistan, death and destruction rains on even the smallest village from the air. America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wars against the civilian populations.

Just as the world could not believe Hitler's next horror and thus was always unprepared, the Iranians despite all the evidence cannot believe that even the Great Satan would gratuitously attack Iran based on nothing but lies about non-existent nuclear weapons.

Iran's only chance would be to strike before the US delivers the first blow. Instead of using its missiles to take out the Saudi oil fields and to sink the US aircraft carriers, instead of closing the Strait of Hormuz, instead of arming the Iraqi Shi'ites and moving them to insurgency, Iran is perched like a sitting duck in denial even as the US and its Iraqi puppet Maliki move to eliminate Al Sadr's Iraqi Shi'ite militia in order to avoid supply disruptions and a Shi'ite rebellion in Iraq when the US attack on Iran comes.

It is important to emphasize that Iran is making no moves toward war. Having tamed, blackmailed, and purchased Congress, the US media, and US allies and puppets, Cheney might delight in the arrogance with which he can now attack Iran free of any restraint or fabricated provocation. On the other hand, he might cover himself by orchestrating an "Iranian provocation" to justify his attack as a response. But like Hitler's planned attack against Poland, Cheney's attack on Iran has long been in the works.

On March 29 the Associated Press reported that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi "poured contempt on fellow Arab leaders" at the Arab summit that day. Gadhafi told the Arab "leaders," many of whom are on the American payroll, that their American masters would turn on them all, just as America turned on Saddam Hussein after using him to fight a proxy war against Iran.

Saddam had once been an ally of Washington, Gadhafi reminded the Arabs, "but they sold him out." Gadhafi told the American puppets, "Your turn is next."

Gadhafi asked,

"Where is the Arabs' dignity, their future, their very existence?"

If Arabs remain disunited, he predicted,

"they will turn themselves into protectorates. They will be marginalized and turn into garbage dumps."

Indeed, it is this disunity that permits the US to bomb and murder at will in the Middle East.

Paul Craig Roberts a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, is forthcoming from Random House in March, 2008.

VIDEO: Maxed out

If you want want to know more about the banking and credit card scam, if you want to learn about the possibilities of beating them, then do you self and family and friends a favour and read this "MUST READ" book: www.natural-person.ca/pdf/mary_croft.pdf

about this documentary: How credit cards impose modern slavery on the people. To give people digits on their bank account and charge interest on something that is not real, backed up by nothing except debt, never had value, does not have value and will never have value.

Today’s Hidden Slave Trade

By BOB HERBERT

Published: October 27, 2007

The woman testifying in federal court in Lower Manhattan could hardly have seemed more insignificant.

Go to Columnist Page »

She was an immigrant from South Korea and a prostitute, who spoke little or no English. She worked, she said, in brothels in New York, Philadelphia, Georgia, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

She did not offer a portrait of the good life. Speaking through an interpreter, she told about the time in D.C. when a guy came in who looked “like a mental patient, a psycho.” Weirded out, she wanted nothing to do with him. But she said the woman who ran the brothel assured her everything would be fine.

It was fine if you consider wrestling with Hannibal Lecter fine. The john clawed at this woman, gouging her flesh, peeling the skin from her back and other parts of her body. She was badly injured.

According to the government, the woman was caught up in a prostitution and trafficking network that ruthlessly exploited young Korean women, some of whom “were smuggled into the country illegally.”

In prior eras, the slave trade was conducted openly, with ads prominently posted and the slaves paraded and inspected like animals, often at public auctions. Today’s sex traffickers, the heirs to that tradition, try to keep their activities hidden, although the rest of the sex trade, the sale of the women’s services, is advertised on a scale that can only be characterized as colossal.

As a society, we’re repelled by the slavery of old. But the wholesale transport of women and girls across international borders and around the U.S. — to serve as prostitutes under conditions that in most cases are coercive at best — stirs very little outrage.

Leaf through the Yellow Pages in some American cities and you’ll find pages upon pages of ads: “Korean Girl, 18 — Affordable.” “Korean and Japanese Dolls — Full Service.” “Barely Legal China Doll — Pretty and Petite.”

The Internet and magazines have staggering numbers of similar ads. Thousands upon thousands of women have been brought here from Asia and elsewhere and funneled into the sex trade, joining those who are already here and in the business but unable to keep up with the ferocious demand.

This human merchandise — whether imported or domestic — is still paraded, inspected and treated like animals.

What’s important to keep in mind is the great extent to which the sex trade involves real slavery (kidnapping and rape), widespread physical abuse, indentured servitude, exploitation of minors and many other forms of coercion. This modern-day variation on the ancient theme of bondage flourishes largely because of the indifference of the rest of us, and the misogyny that holds fast to the view of women — all women — as sexual commodities.

The case in Manhattan federal court involves a ring that, according to prosecutors, used massage parlors and spas as fronts for prostitution. Some of the women were in the U.S. legally. Others, according to the government, were brought in by brokers (more accurately, traffickers or dealers in flesh), who provided false passports, visas and other documents.

Elie Honig, an assistant United States attorney, said women brought in illegally were pushed into prostitution to earn money “to pay back the tens of thousands of dollars that the brokers charged the women as quote, unquote, fees for bringing them into the United States.”

He told the jury:

“We are talking about a regional network of businesses throughout the Northeast United States and beyond involved in transporting and selling women.”

A jury will decide whether the five defendants in this case — all Korean women, and accused of running a prostitution enterprise — are guilty. But the activities alleged by the government mirror the sexual trafficking and organized prostitution that is carried out on a vast scale here in the U.S. and around the world.

There is nothing benign about these activities. Upwards of 18,000 foreign nationals are believed to be trafficked into the U.S. each year. According to the State Department, 80 percent of trafficked people are women and children, an overwhelming majority of whom are trafficked for sexual purposes.

Those who think that most of the women in prostitution want to be there are deluded. Surveys consistently show that a majority wants very much to leave. Apologists love to spread the fantasy of the happy hooker. But the world of the prostitute is typically filled with pimps, sadists, psychopaths, drug addicts, violent criminals and disease.

Jody Williams is a former prostitute who runs a support group called Sex Workers Anonymous. Few women want to become prostitutes, she told me, and nearly all would like to get out.

“They want to quit for the obvious reasons,” she said. “The danger. The physical and emotional distress. The toll that it takes. The shame.”