Big Pimpin’ For The USA
Normal service is hereby resumed. I was actually back on Wednesday, but it’s taken me a few days to catch up (damn it, why can’t rhe news just stop for a little while?) and while being offline for a whole week is oddly liberating it’s also quite disempowering. I’m not looking forward to being wireless-less in hospital, not at all. It’s also going to take me some time to rectify the chaos that seems to have overtaken the household during my brief absence – it’s almost as though while I was gone someone picked up the whole apartment, books, cats and all, shook it a bit and then put it back down again : everything seems adrift and covered and dust, nothing is in it’s right place, and its’ driving me nuts.
It’s a bit pointless attempting to sum up the past week’s events, so I’ll defer to the many and various commenters and pundits at the blogroll for that. Besides I’m lazy, even though I’m posting at 6am. I’m actually up at this ungodly hour because I’m not feeling well, but one of the few benefits is I get to listen to the World Service news bulletins and pick up odd little snippets from obscure places. One such is this, which on other, less scandal-weary times might actually cause some outrage
US recalls ambassador to Azerbaijan
BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 21 (UPI) — The U.S. State Department is recalling U.S. Ambassador Reno Harnish from Azerbaijan.
The Azerbaijani media is rife with speculation that Harnish is being recalled because of a burgeoning human smuggling scandal which came to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The Moscow newspaper Trud newspaper reported on Thursday that FBI agents began interviews with embassy officials about the smuggling of Azerbaijani prostitutes into the United States and the issuing of visas.
As the investigation proceeded, Zarifa Dzhabieva, a former translator for the American embassy was found knifed to death in her own home. Whoever killed Dzhabieva ransacked her dwelling looking for something, even though none of the victim’s valuables had been touched. Dzhabieva was under investigation for aiding and abetting the issuing of visas and forged documents to girls destined for the U.S. sex trade.
The head of the Public Relations Center for the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan Jonathan Henick said only, “The uncovering of the crime linked to the sale of Azerbaijani girls to the USA, and the punishment of the guilty parties merely shows the high level of American-Azerbaijani relations.”
I note from Ambassador Hornish’s bio that he was previously Chief of Mission at the U.S. Office in Pristina, Bosnia.
By a strange coincidence, at that time employees of US company Dyncorp in Biosnia were accused of allegedly using local children for sex. From Wikipedia ( with the usual caveats):
In 1999, a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) lawsuit was filed by a whistleblower against DynCorp employees stationed in Bosnia, which found that “a few employees and one supervisor from DynCorp were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior and were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged passports and participating in other immoral acts.” DynCorp fired the whistleblower at first, but then eventually settled the case. The employees involved in the case were transferred out of the country. Some were later fired, although none were ever criminally prosecuted.
The company was allegedly involved in the sex trade while working in Bosnia. A DynCorp employee, Kathryn Bolkovac, was fired after revealing that Dyncorp employees had frequented brothels where women had been imprisoned. After filing a lawsuit against Dyncorp, Bolkovac won ?110,000 in damages after a UK Tribunal determined that her firing was not reasonable.[1] Another Dyncorp employee, Ben Johnson, was also fired after revealing Dyncorp’s involvement in forced-prostitution rings in Bosnia. [2] At least 13 DynCorp employees have been sent home from Bosnia — and at least seven of them fired — for purchasing women or participating in other prostitution-related activities. [3] Despite these actions, Dyncorp continues to receive more than $2 Billion dollars in Dept. of Defense contracts to provide “post-conflict police training” around the world. [4]
In Iraq, for example.
Sometimes it seems that sexual perversion, exploitation and corruprion follow the US government and its minions wherever they go.
Image info:
All images ?2003 Nigel Parry. Contact for reprint permission.
More information about this artist
Nigel Parry is a documentary photographer and web designer.
Websites: Nigel specialises in creating websites that can subsequently be maintained by clients. Clients include award-winning alternative media sites Electronic Iraq and The Electronic Intifada), non-profit organisations, art websites (including the Tilsner website), and musicians’ websites (including The Cockburn Project)nigelparry.net.
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