Catching-up

Well, it's been almost a week since I posted anything. I've never intended for this blog to be anything other than a place to do some writing, provide some unfiltered opinions, and debate with whomsoever traipsed onto the site (slightly less intimidating than a formal discussion board) and if necessary, be able to insult and ban any right-wing trolls who I'd otherwise have to endure on my main discussion board.

So, I never wanted it to be an institution, like some other personal websites. All that having been said, my week-long hiatus (due to baby and work concerns) has probably lost me what tiny readership I had. My apologies to anyone who kept coming here and finding nothing new.

At the moment, I still don't have a lot of time. But I'd like to mention two stories:

Amnesty International's case that our Afghan prisoners have rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has been dismissed by a federal court today.

In a decision released yesterday, Federal Court Judge Anne Mactavish said detainees do have rights under the Afghan constitution and international law -- but not under Canadian law. The case was brought by Amnesty International Canada, which argued the prisoners should be protected by the Charter. Amnesty raised the matter in an attempt to stop the transfer of detainees to local Afghan authorities after reports of torture.

In other news, it's recently come to light that a high-ranking US politician has been found to have "links with a prostitution ring," which, as somebody somewhere mentioned, makes it sound like the dude is a partner in an escort service, a pimp. In actuality, he's a john. And the story is rather meaningless. More important is bush II's actual work in making Syria a favourite hotspot for wealthy Saudi exploitation tourists.

That's right: George W. Bush has links with a prostitution ring!!!

Bush's invasion destroyed the Iraqi government and unleashed a wave of political and sectarian violence that has killed over 1 million Iraqis and forced 4 million to become refugees, according to the UN.

Facing starvation, as many as 50,000 women and girls have been forced into prostitution in Syria alone, according to Hana Ibrahim of the Women's Will Association. "70 percent to 80 percent of the girls working this business in Damascus today are Iraqis," 23-year-old Abeer told the New York Times. "The rents here in Syria are too expensive for their families. If they go back to Iraq they'll be slaughtered, and this is the only work available."

According to the Times, "inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club's parking lot, nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates."

Personally, I've nothing against trading sex for money, per se. But at the present time I'd never consider using the services of a prostitute because there's so little guarantees that they're not working under economic coercion, or genuine physical corecion. They have so little rights and protections. There are so many vile monsters willing to prostitute women who have addiction problems. (How could any guy knowingly take advantage of someone like that?)

It's certainly the case that Iraqi women, fleeing violence and death in their war-torn homeland (torn up by the drooling idiot bush and his similarly afflicted fan-base) are not by any stretch of the imagination, engaged in the sex-trade voluntarily. No doubt, given what I understand about the social norms in the area, these women, all 70,000 of them, are probably dying inside, several times a night.

So, it's quite a shitty feather in bush II's cap, the sufferings he's imposing on millions of people, each and every day. What a piece of human garbage.