my savior who came to ruin my life

the sameer project

dahnoun mutual aid

municipality of gaza

gaza soup kitchen

care for gaza

ele elna elak

mutual aid page on operation olive branch

help hilda nasr - post + chuffed

this is the book's argument:

the unspoken precondition of america's supposed "global war on prostitution" (which in itself was not reflected in official military policy until the 21st century) is that the u.s. military is directly responsible for the trafficking of millions and millions of women via military prostitution in the many many countries they occupy.

During the years of direct U.S. occupation from 1945 to 1948, the U.S. military government created an administrative state that was dominated by Koreans who had collaborated with Japan’s colonial rulers. The leaders of this first occupying regime outlawed prostitution, but got around the prohibition by building brothels for U.S. troops. These outposts were dubbed “comfort stations” after the Japanese wartime model, according to documents Park recently unearthed from South Korea’s Ministry of Health. The shift from Japanese- to American-coerced sex work was an easy transition, she said: “High-ranking Korean officials who served under Japanese colonial rule were familiar with the comfort station system.” Park also found U.S. documents showing that, after the Korean War, American commanders rejected the idea of the Korean state running brothels as the Japanese military had done. Instead, they did what future generations of the military would practice in Iraq and Afghanistan: They privatized military functions—in this case, the provision of sex workers to American troops. Under U.S. pressure, Park said, the Republic of Korea (ROK) government licensed the bars and clubs that, in turn, hired the women who entertained the U.S. troops. She likens those establishments to “de facto brothels.” But much as had been the case with the Japanese comfort stations, the Korean brothel owners permitted vanishingly little agency for their sex-work recruits. If the comfort women for Japan were kidnap victims, the U.S. camp-town women were victims of sustained economic coercion—much like indentured servants or tenant farmers. Once they were recruited to the camp towns, women found themselves trapped. They carried out their sex work in rooms they had to rent from the bar owners. They also had to buy all their supplies, including their bed, their clothes, and the phonographs they set up to entertain their American clients. “From the get-go, you have a pile of debt,” Choi said. “You try to pay your way out, but it’s a never-ending story.”

from this article: https://newrepublic.com/article/155707/united-states-military-prostitution-south-korea-monkey-house