Ah the Christmas season! The time of year when the news organizations can sneak stories through that allow them to claim they are doing their jobs while assuring that the stories die with little to no coverage.

Yesterday’s (December 26) Washington Post had two front page stories that fit this template. The irony is because on the web site, they were on top of each other, with no one apparently thinking about the appearance and connection.

The first story was how the CIA has been providing Viagra to warlords to get them on "our" side. Spencer hit on this over at Attackerman but I wanted to point this little nugget out:

Among the world’s intelligence agencies, there’s a long tradition of using sex as a motivator. Robert Baer, a retired CIA officer and author of several books on intelligence, noted that the Soviet spy service was notorious for using attractive women as bait when seeking to turn foreign diplomats into informants.

What the reporter is glossing over in this story, with the "wink-wink, nod-nod" presentation though is discussion of the women who are affected by this. Stories in the last year have covered the rise on drug addiction among Afghani women. This isn’t a culture where the female spy willingly "sacrifices her virtue for the greater good of the United States." This is a culture where women are second class citizens, who have no say in how they live their lives.

Which brings me to the irony that the Post missed. The second front page story was on the exploitation and abuse of young girls around the world hired as domestics but often treated as slaves.

The International Labor Organization (ILO), a U.N. agency based in Geneva, said more girls under 16 work in domestic service than in any other category of child labor. The organization said that maids are among the most exploited workers and that few nations have adequate regulations to safeguard them.

Rights groups say rural families often send their girls off to work willingly, as a way to escape poverty, not understanding the risks of abuse. And the employers are often only marginally better off. Having climbed a step or two on the economic ladder, they can afford one of the first trappings of prosperity: a girl to do the chores.

Human Rights Watch has documented nearly 150 cases of female domestic workers from Indonesia who killed themselves in recent years in Singapore, many jumping to their deaths from high-rise apartments. In Saudi Arabia, thousands of girls and women from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Indonesia and other nations have fled abusive employers, according to the New York-based rights group.

The exploitation of women and children is a world-wide problem. Yuk-it-up stories about the CIA providing Viagra to warlords and territorial chiefs in Afghanistan, implying that all participants are willing and happily go along, don’t help things. But then, I guess that wouldn’t have allowed the reporter to have his laugh.