Archive for the 'Activism' Category

Canuck sex workers to fight for basic rights

Tuesday, December 19th, 2006

Kudos to Wendy for being a part of the collective effort to take the Canadian government to court over its inability to provide laws for the protection of those who work in the sex trade.

A Commons subcomittee recently pined over the issue and failed to recommend the full decriminalization of prostitution. In fact, the subcomittee suggested that it would be preferable to engage a campaign of information and education to keep people from entering the sex trade.

Ah, yes, the old “we told you so” attitude. Let’s wash our hands from anything that could happen to these people and give them a paternalistic wag of the finger, followed by a “I told you what you were getting yourself into.” Real constructive.

By propping themselves up like that, the government is creating a second class citizen, one who by choice of his or her lifestyle and career forfeits his or her rights which are available to all Canadians. An idea that the law doesn’t need to stick its head out for you since there were risks which came with the job. Frankly, I don’t consider crippling beatings and homicide as occupational hazards.

It’s no surprise that this kind of stance would be taken from a government which has decided to close three quarters of Canada’s Status of Women offices after announcing a 5 million cut to its budget and preventing the organization from funding any type of advocacy programs.

If worded intelligently (I dare advance), legitimized prositution could not only help reduce violence against sex workers, but it could take a chunk out of sex slavery and child prostitution. Ending unecessary battles against two consenting adults entering mutual accord for sexual services can provide better focus to come to the aid of those who are forced and coerced into doing it. I think that’s something we can all get behind.

There’s so much moral ground slipperyness here, you can smell the grease. But one has to wonder what is more moral: maintaining an ethical stance against someone who demands money for sexual services, or punching a prostitute in the face until she is unconscious (or worse).

(Related: Sex workers to mount court challenge of Ottawa over ‘dangerous’ laws)

The Karl of KthuRove

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006

With the American Midterm Election underway, I just thought all those coming back to the polls or waiting to go could do with a good old fasion’d sci-fi/horror story. I apologize for any grammatical errors or typos, but I do not edit, and that is why I am not a professional paid writer… yet.

The Karl of Khrovtho: Plan W From Outerspace

Of such great powers or plans there is unthinkably one plan… a plan from such a vastly distant era before such… animalistic and orgiastic tendencies were lost, perhaps, in shapes and forms so far removed in our barbaric past by our evolving state of humanity and culture… plans of which the poetry of the insane and the legends of the politicians alone have slapped together such a wild wet dream and called them architects, heroes, and geniuses of all sorts and kinds…

- Brundleby Slapsauce

I. AN APPROACH TO… ELLIPSIS

Never in my the deepest corner of my wildest imaginations would I ever think what I have seen could be seen in this lifetime. I have seen beyond the shadowy veil of that blankets the dinner-theater stage of insanity. I have seen up into the deepest rafters were the sandbags of madness hold aloft it’s velvety texture of psychosis. I listened to the freakish dialogue from grim gaping maws of the phantasmal actors during their demonic performance of Death of a Salesman. I have tasted the chicken ala king of horror. In short, I have seen the truth.

Stuff learned from feminism

Monday, October 2nd, 2006

The rights of women in Canada have been supported and protected by a government agency named Status of Women Canada. SWC has funded many already dangerously underfunded community organisations, such as pregnancy centers and halfway homes, to maintain operations and provide much-needed services to women (and sometimes, anyone) in need.

Our not-very-compassionate Conservative government was recently under pressure by an anti-feminist, “family values” type outfit called REAL Women of Canada to shut down SWC altogether. Instead of doing that, the government decided to cut $5 million in funding to SWC this year, despite registring a $13.2 billion surplus just laying there, gathering dust mites.

In order to attract attention to this situation, my bretheren at Progressive Bloggers have started up a meme of sorts which poses the question “What five things feminism has done for me.” And here is my contribution…

Feminism has made me the best dad ever.
Jump back 50 or 60 years ago, and I’m not quite sure I would have been priviledged enough to have the same level of complicity and attachment I have with my son today. Chalk one up for demanding that dads have a more involved role in raising their children.

Feminism has made me media aware
If one of feminism’s biggest battles was (and still is) the objectification of women in commercial advertisements, it has successfully instilled in me the critical mindset needed to weed through the garbage of crass commercialism. Not just to notice how women are manipulated into feeling/acting/thinking the way corporations want them to, but how everyone is affected by their machinations.

Feminism has taught me to judge people on their merits
Woman, man, black, white, hispanic, buddhist… it doesn’t matter to me. One’s actions, words, exploits however, they will speak volumes. I honestly believe that my mother is the person who made me the excellent judge of character I am today.

Feminism has made me a pretty good cook.
I mean, come on. Had feminists not gone through that whole “women in the workplace” thing, and my girlfriend would have been a stay-at-home mom because of it, chances are I would have never discovered the pleasures of fixing up a meal and sharing it with others.

Feminism has made me understand that gaining any rights is a battle
It’s the earliest civil rights movement I had ever been exposed to directly, and it’s still on today. And what it has shown is that civil rights are not gifts. They’re not hand-me-downs from those in power. They are fought for and warred over by people who are tired of being overlooked and/or suppressed for various reasons. People have fought very hard in wars to protect our freedoms, but others have fought just as hard in different battles to create more freedoms for more people. The last thing a person needs to believe is that these rights were granted to us. Because those in power don’t want little things like human nature coming to muck up their marketing plans.

Beijing Platform for Action and act upon it here at home and around the world.

Banksy hits Disneyland

Thursday, September 14th, 2006

This one is already a couple of days old, and I don’t know how I missed it, but here it is nonetheless, out of the sheer awsomeness of the event.

Hot off his Paris Hilton CD swap, artist Banksy placed a mannequin garbed as a Guantanamo Bay detainee inside the Rocky Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland in Anaheim California.

banksy_disneyland.jpg

More pictures here.

The dummy stayed there for about nintey minutes before Mouse security came to pick it up. Betcha ten bucks he tried to get into Disneyworld but recoiled at the finger scanning machinery.

Via Dateline: Bristol.

The Yes Men strike at Katrina anniversary event

Tuesday, August 29th, 2006

theyesmen.jpgIf you remember the movie The Yes Men, this will probably hit you in the right spot: on a public forum shared with New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin and Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco, Andy Bichlbaum, one of the two Yes Men, posed as Assistant Deputy Secretary Rene Oswin of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and announced that they would re-open closed public housing to New Orleans’ poorest, many of whom are still embroiled in getting their lives back together in the wake of hurricane Katrina.

Said he, in his Oswin guise:

“Today, it is my great pleasure to announce to you that HUD is reversing our policy. From now on, and beginning at all Orleans parish housing communities, our policy will no longer be to destroy much-needed housing, but to do all in our power to make it work.”

Apparently, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has targeted public housing areas and have marked them for replacement by mixed income homes to, as quoted in the article, “produce safer neighborhoods and better lives.”

How can this be in bad taste if it exposes a reality which is in far worse taste: deliberately keeping people out of homes to build one which will generate more revenue?