Mr Cheney, can I say something ?
“Being your president requires doing what I believe is right and accepting the consequences ”
Is Bush a president or a king ?
Fifth speech in less than three weeks… Looks like there are some problems in sight for Mr Bush
Looks like an excinting 2006 year is to come !
I’m off for the rest of the holidays. To my CSC pals and everyone else: Enjoy the holidays, Merry Christmas, happy new year and all of that stuff.
I’m with the new family!
When the face of my ex arch nemesis, Wendy Babcock, appeared on the cover of the Toronto Sun I think my first reaction was “well, she worked long and hard enough for the recognition”. But my next thought was “what the fuck is up with the Toronto Sun?”
For a paper that’s been so pro-Harper and anti-progressive, it was a big leap to write an article that clearly stood on the side of decriminalizing prostitution. I wondered when the Sun had started to give a shit about the plight of prostitutes. The article was clearly an attempt to prompt local MP’s and candidates to take a position on the issue.
With a little theoretical understanding we can see why the Sun, which normally takes the moralist right wing stance on issues, would suddenly accept the decriminalization of prostitution as a valid option:
The basest right wing philosophy, while expounding its moral superiority, advocacy of property rights, individual responsibility, and focus on the family, is after all the slave of business. Their philosophy is one which destroys itself. It lets the market reign, and then wonders why its families are being torn apart and why its people have become so self-centred.
And if one can see past the apparently humanist tone of the article they will see that the decriminalization of prostitution is nothing but a business solution. Valerie Scott, advocate for decriminalization and head of the Sex Professionals Of Canada (SPOC) once said, “This committee is very focused and primarily business people, and I find, while I love activists and academics, it is business people who tend to really get things done in this country”. (link)
This is exactly the line of thinking I outlined above. Business people certainly “get things done”, but it is input from academics and activists, and the dialogue we create as a community, that help us decide whether something is right.
When it comes to paying taxes, our self-proclaimed business woman notes, “We should pay at the same rate as any other small business owner.” There is not even an attempt to hide her business-oriented agenda.
Moreover, the SPOC makes no attempt at a real theoretical or moral argument, saying only that decriminalization would recognize prostitution as a “legitimate and necessary business”. They even sabotage whatever implicit moral argument they may have by adding “no government or religion in history, including the most repressive, (i.e. those that have the death penalty for prostitution, Iran, Afganistan, etc.) have ever been able to eradicate our noble profession for the simple reasons that money and sex are so much more powerful than governments and/or religions.” The idea being that we should then give in to the powers of money and our harmful sexual culture. The SPOC’s agenda has nothing to do with reversing the trend that makes money such a controlling factor in our lives, nor does it aim to curb the growing perversity of our sexual norms – it only aims to accept defeat.
The matter of prostitution’s “legitimacy” is subjective according to the government of the day, the law, and even the person. Its “necessity”, however, is completely disputable. If I can show you one community anywhere in the world or in history that has no prostitution (which I can), then any argument for its “naturalness” or “necessity” is invalid. Instead of seeing prostitution as a kind of pervasive human activity, we should see the trends that have allowed for its existence. Here is where prostitution has been, and still is, necessary:
Where there is social and economic inequality between men and women, where women have limited options for income or survival, and where male culture lends itself to the subordination and dehumanization of women.
These are the trends we must reverse. Instead of giving in to our failures, we should overcome them. After all, the only world that is safe for prostitutes is a world without them.
As for seeing Wendy in the paper, I am surprised she did not ask herself why the Sun had taken an interest in her cause. For a paper that has only had negative things to say about the homeless, our socialist mayor, the NDP, and the anti-war movement, it can only mean business.
Michael Ignatieff is running in my riding. He was plopped in by the Liberal party to replace veteran candidate Jean Augustine.
Lets just review some of the reasons why even Liberals think his nomination is a bad idea:
1) He hasn’t lived in Canada, let alone this riding, for over 30 years.
2) Other potential Liberal candidates were blocked from running in the riding.
3) He supported the war in Iraq.
4) In his book, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, he makes some remarks about Ukranian independence that he now claims are being “taken out of context”. Nonetheless, this could be a problem in a riding that is 7% Ukranian.
5) He’s a pompous neo-con asshole.
And since all the other candidates suck I’m voting for the garbage bin outside my apartment.
Can you say “democratic deficit”?
It’s election time in Canada again, and that could only mean thousands of stupid parents bringing their kids to political rallies. Kids don’t belong at these events, let alone at pro war “counter-protests“.
But every time an election comes around these parents bring their kids out with them to support, oh, lets see… Greater military spending, corporate tax cuts, tougher sentences for criminals, foreign policy changes, etc. The business of politics should in no way involve children, whether “left” or “right”.
Some of the kids I see at these events don’t even know they’re about to hit puberty, and for that matter, don’t even know what puberty is. So how are they expected to understand the complexities of tax reductions, gun legislation, separatism, and war?
I imagine that some of these kids will change their mind by the time they’ve grown up. But now there are photographs and videotapes of their having attended a Conservative rally calling to ban gay marriage… And the next thing you know the boy’s 24 and grinding with some hot stud at a gay bar.
And more…
It was fun to meet people greener than me, I was impressed…
It was also providencial that the same day, in Venice, St Mark’s square was covered by 20cm of water.
It reminded me of a military Christian housewife making a fool of herselef about Climate change.
Climate change is one of the problems that Capitalism cannot deal with.
While I will not attempt to accuse Capitalism of being responsible for climate change it is nonetheless clear that the profit aspect of Capitalism hinders our society to look for better alternatives for the planet.
Enviroment falls behind profit and while there have been genuine attemps to solve enviromental problems, it has not lead to anywhere offering future generations a secure life.
Only an alternative such as Communism can put enviroment and ourselves before profit.