The ability to generate publicity on this scale can be used in a positive way to the benefit of millions of the less fortunate or in a negative way as the antics of imbeciles like Justin Bieber demonstrate.
The media gave Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt blanket coverage recently when they teamed up with the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, to progress their campaign of tackling the issue of rape during wars. The campaign centred on Bosnia where a vicious and bloody civil war claimed the lives of tens of thousands of innocent civilians and where some fifty thousand men, women and children were the victims of rape.
Jolie, Pitt and Hague must be commended for using their celebrity to generate publicity for such a noble cause and hopefully their action to get as many of the perpetrators prosecuted will come to fruition. In addition to visiting Sarajevo, they have also visited other war zones such as Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo where rape was endemic during their respective civil wars.
(See the story here and here)
Looking a little deeper into the issue of rape, Angelina Jolie, who is fronting the campaign, has overlooked the fact that her efforts are not without their negative side and one has to wonder whether she has chosen the wrong target. By using her considerable ability to draw the media's attention to war zone rape , she has inadvertently taken the spotlight off horrific rapes that have recently been in the news elsewhere.
The world was shocked and horrified when young girls were not only gang raped in India but hung from a tree afterwards. Young girls were being gang raped on the transportation systems, including buses, with one unfortunate lady dying from the injuries she sustained during a particularly brutal attack.
In a country that is renown for its poor treatment of women, the negative global publicity that ensued had the effect of forcing the government and the police to act in the women's interests not only with the issue of personal safety but of women's rights in general.
Jolie's campaign has distracted the attention away from India and apparently the momentum for change has been lost, much to the relief of the authorities no doubt.
Looking at the issue of rape in a wider context, its been twenty years since the war in Bosnia ended and although fifty thousand rapes during the three year conflict is an appalling number it is a minor statistic when compared to rape generally.
When discussing war time rape it is worth remembering that rape and pillage has always been an indulgence of war from time immemorial, the spoils of war had always been counted in treasure, slaves and concubines.
In ancient times Alexander the Great indulged as did the Romans before the Vikings took things to whole new level. During the Second World War the Germans raped, pillaged and murdered their way across Russia before the Russians did the same as they conquered Germany. It is estimated that over a million German women were raped after the fall of Berlin.
It could be argued that the way to end rape during war is to stop war from starting in the first place and that is unlikely to happen. Angelina Jolie's campaign to bring the perpetrators to justice however remains right, proper and noble.
But what of rape during peacetime? The statistics are shocking and although there are no mitigating circumstances for rape, one would think that rape on this scale outside the heat of battle would be more deserving of Angelina Jolie's attention.
As mentioned earlier some fifty thousand people were raped during the three year Bosnian conflict but according to UN statistics eighty thousand were raped in the USA between 2004 and 2010. Even this is overshadowed by the US Justice Department figures of some three hundred thousand rapes per year. (That's 300,000 per year)
(See the DOJ report here and more stats here)
When looking at the country by country rape statistics, and they do vary considerably depending on source, the USA, India, Great Britain, South Africa, Mexico, Germany, Russia, Sweden, Belgium, Lesotho, Botswana and Canada are consistently at the top.
(See one such report here)
As the British Foreign Secretary William Hague will be well aware, the rape crises in some European Union countries is a scandal that is being deliberately ignored on the grounds of cultural sensitivity and political correctness.
Rape in Sweden is now reaching epidemic proportions due mainly to the sudden influx of Muslims. According to some statistics, one in four Swedish women will be raped by a Muslim in their lifetime. The Swedish government are renown for their craven obedience to the EU and they are at the forefront of the campaign to impose multi-culturalism across the continent but this shouldn't be at the cost of their women's safety.
(See Swedish rape stats here)
Sweden considers itself to be the vanguard of 'progressivism' in the EU and prides itself on its record of equality and women's rights but as one commentator noted they can have women's rights or Islam but they can't have both.
(See a report here, also Muslims rape 300 Swedish children in seven months, see here)
The story is the same in Belgium where there were five gang rapes in a single week carried out by Muslim gangs with similar horror stories in all other European countries and in countries as far away as Canada and Australia.
(See here and here)
In Great Britain, the adherence to the cultural replacement agenda by the political class is the stuff of legend; this is where the authorities including the local councils, teachers, socials services and the police 'service' ignored Muslims paedophile gangs in most of the major cities on the grounds of cultural sensitivity.
Hundreds of underage white girls were groomed then subjected to horrific sexual abuse, including gang rape, with the complicit approval of the authorities.
(See stories here)
In conclusion I will add that once the objectives of Angelina Jolie's campaign against war rape are achieved, she should concentrate her efforts on peacetime rape which is a far bigger issue and more widespread.
William Hague is well aware of the rape epidemic engulfing Great Britain and Europe, which includes the rape of children, and he should bring his influence to bear on Angelina Jolie and urge her to use her publicity generating prowess to combat peacetime rape. She should draw particular attention to Muslim gangs, who believe that all western women are prostitutes, and who are ruining the lives of thousands of victims across the continent and the wider world at large.
Some previous posts on Muslim child sex abuse in Great Britain here and here.
Update: Teenager raped by 30 men in Birmingham, UK. It's not a war zone so Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and William Hague are not interested. See here.
