I wonder how long this little 'gem' of Western civilisation will take to filter into Australian society.

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'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits'

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners – who must pay tax and employee health insurance – were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse.

When the waitress looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken the law. Job centres that refuse to penalise people who turn down a job by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer.

"There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry," said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases. "The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits."

Miss Garweg said that women who had worked in call centres had been offered jobs on telephone sex lines. At one job centre in the city of Gotha, a 23-year-old woman was told that she had to attend an interview as a "nude model", and should report back on the meeting. Employers in the sex industry can also advertise in job centres, a move that came into force this month. A job centre that refuses to accept the advertisement can be sued.

Tatiana Ulyanova, who owns a brothel in central Berlin, has been searching the online database of her local job centre for recruits.

"Why shouldn't I look for employees through the job centre when I pay my taxes just like anybody else?" said Miss Ulyanova.

Ulrich Kueperkoch wanted to open a brothel in Goerlitz, in former East Germany, but his local job centre withdrew his advertisement for 12 prostitutes, saying it would be impossible to find them.

Mr Kueperkoch said that he was confident of demand for a brothel in the area and planned to take a claim for compensation to the highest court. Prostitution was legalised in Germany in 2002 because the government believed that this would help to combat trafficking in women and cut links to organised crime.

Miss Garweg believes that pressure on job centres to meet employment targets will soon result in them using their powers to cut the benefits of women who refuse jobs providing sexual services.

"They are already prepared to push women into jobs related to sexual services, but which don't count as prostitution,'' she said.

"Now that prostitution is no longer considered by the law to be immoral, there is really nothing but the goodwill of the job centres to stop them from pushing women into jobs they don't want to do."

Source: The Telegraph

well it's been 7 years so far, and not filtered in yet.

But yes, I second the notion that the west has gone mad, though not for the same reasons you think.

I am trying to figure out what this has to do with Islam?

Far better to read the truth Hey, Father whatever?

Afghan girl 'locked in lavatory for 5 months'

Afghan police have rescued a teenage girl who was beaten and locked up in a lavatory for over five months after she defied her in-laws who tried to force her into prostitution, officials said on Tuesday.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission logged 1,026 cases of violence against women in the second quarter of 2011 compared with 2,700 cases for the whole of 2010 Photo: EPA/ROB ELLIOTT

6:38PM GMT 27 Dec 2011

Sahar Gul, 15, was found in the basement of her husband's house in northeastern Baghlan province late on Monday after her parents reported her disappearance to the police.


"She was beaten, her fingernails were removed and her arm was broken," district police chief Fazel Rahman told AFP.


Three women including the teenager's mother in-law had been arrested in connection with the case but her husband had fled the area, he added.


The case highlights how women continue to suffer in Afghanistan despite the billions of pounds of international aid which has poured into the country during the decade-long war.


"The 15-year-old girl was brought to hospital with severe shock," said Pul-i-Khurmeri hospital chief Dr Gul Mohammad Wardak.
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02 Dec 2011


"She had injuries to her legs and face and the nails on her left had been removed."

Sahar Gul was married to her husband seven months ago in the neighbouring province of Badakhshan, but she was brought to Baghlan to live with her husband, said Rahima Zareefi, the provincial head of women affairs.

During this time her parents were unable to contact her, she said.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission logged 1,026 cases of violence against women in the second quarter of 2011 compared with 2,700 cases for the whole of 2010.

And according to figures in an Oxfam report in October, 87 per cent of Afghan women report having experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence or forced marriage.

Sahar Gul's case comes after a woman known as Gulnaz was pardoned and released earlier this month after spending two years in prison for "moral crimes".

She was jailed after she reported to police that her cousin's husband had raped her. Gulnaz gave birth to the rapist's child in prison.

Last month, the United Nations said that a landmark law aiming to protect women against violence in Afghanistan had been used to prosecute just over 100 cases since being enacted two years ago.

What religion or region of the world would try to force a 15 year old child bride into prostitution, Oh yes that one.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8979354/Afghan-girl-locked-in-lavatory-for-5-months.html

Not quite on subject but I view this as a particular awful form of pernicious prostitution.

“My uncle sold me for 170 dollars to be a suicide bomber”

A senior Afghan intelligence official said up to 60 per cent of the suicide attacks are by minors


By Subel Bhandari & Hares Kakar

Kabul - Sherzai was 13 years old when his uncle sold him to Taliban insurgents for 15,000 Pakistani rupees (170 dollars).

'Then the Taliban told me to carry out a suicide attack,' he said, now in a juvenile correctional facility in Kabul. 'They said I would be a martyr and I would go to paradise.'

Sherzai, a shepherd with no father and a bed-ridden mother, is from Gardez city, the provincial capital of Paktia province that borders Pakistan and is the focus of military operations.

Sherzai escaped shortly after he was sold to the Taliban. But he was arrested, and a court sent him to the centre where he studies and takes vocational training in carpet weaving, tailoring and computers.

He shares his room with nine other children who are in the centre for various offences.

Amanullah, 14, has been there for three months.

He said he was recruited for a suicide mission while studying in a madrassa in the northern province of Kunduz.

Amanullah surrendered to police at the last moment, just before he was to blow up a mosque frequented by Afghan security forces.

Amanullah, like Sherzai, was promised paradise through martyrdom.

'First, I believed but then later I lost my faith,' he told dpa.

'We have evidence that the Taliban have been recruiting children aged 11 to 17 to carry out a range of activities, from armed combat to smuggling of weapons across the Pakistan-Afghan border and planting IEDs (improvised explosive devices),' Dee Brillenburg Wurth, a child rights adviser with the UN in Afghanistan, told the IRIN news website.
On the eve of the Muslim festival Eid-ul Fitr in August, President Hamid Karzai pardoned 20 children, some as young as 7, who were groomed by the Taliban to become suicide bombers.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Nov. 30, 2011

Like Amanullah and Sherzai, many children have been lured or forced to become human bombs in the decade-long war, especially since the insurgents turned increasingly to suicide bombings after 2004.

Last year, 1,141 people were killed in 140 suicide attacks, according to the India-based Institute of Conflict Management.

The United Nations in September said the number of civilian deaths caused by bombs and suicide attacks in the first eight months was 177 per cent higher compared to 2010.

The report also said the UN found 'anti-government elements' recruiting children to carry out suicide attacks, plant bombs and smuggle weapons and uniforms.

'We have evidence that the Taliban have been recruiting children aged 11 to 17 to carry out a range of activities, from armed combat to smuggling of weapons across the Pakistan-Afghan border and planting IEDs (improvised explosive devices),' Dee Brillenburg Wurth, a child rights adviser with the UN in Afghanistan, told the IRIN news website.

On the eve of the Muslim festival Eid-ul Fitr in August, President Hamid Karzai pardoned 20 children, some as young as 7, who were groomed by the Taliban to become suicide bombers.

'Our mullah told us that when we perform the suicide attack, everyone around us dies, but we would stay alive,' 9-year-old Ghulam Farooq said.

A senior Afghan intelligence official said up to 60 per cent of the suicide attacks are by minors.

Authorities arrested about 100 underage would-be bombers this year, said Lutfullah Mashal, spokesman for the National Directorate of Security.

'Militants in Afghanistan have been using children as suicide bombers and there is an increase in suicide attacks by minors in the last six months,' Mashal said.

The US-based Human Rights Watch described the phenomenon as an 'egregious affront to humanity.' It said the trend of recruiting children by the Taliban to use as suicide-bombers was 'increasing alarmingly in recent months.'

'Younger and younger children have been involved,' it said.

The Taliban denies using children in suicide missions. Their code of conduct, the Layha, also forbids the use of children in 'jihadic operations.'

Rebel spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid called the reports 'propaganda conspired by the intelligence network against the movement.'

'Yes, there have been many allegations in the media about children being recruited, but we have our own rules and regulations for jihad, and these rules do not give us the permission to encourage underage child for martyrdom missions,' Mujahid told dpa.

He also said they select only the 'fighters with full beard' to fight in the Taliban ranks.

'We have hundreds of martyrdom seekers waiting for their turn. Martyrdom operations are not the work of children,' he said.


Read more: www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2011/11/30/my-uncle-sold-me-for-170-dollars-to-be-a-suicide-bomber.html#ixzz1jQ1bgJJt

Abu must be busy, so I'll answer for him. This wouldn't have happened under the Taliban. So it is all America's fault.

Adamant wrote on Jan 14^th, 2012 at 5:53pm:






/sarc off

Western society culturally and morally superior? LOL

You are a joke soren.

Western society is veering into moral decay and has been for a few decades now.

As economic conditions worsen, we will see how rapidly the world we live in changes.

When people suffer harsh economic conditions, that's when their true colours shine through.

We've seen the Muslim world live through a century of economic decline, and the people handled it quite gracefully. I really don't wanna see what it will do to Western society. The only thing keeping this society civil for now is the economic prosperity, once that is gone, it will descend into absolute anarchy I think.