U.S. Christian WHM Supremacist Anti-Semitic, Racist, Misogynist, Virulently Homophobic Activists Don't Take Vacations, Until Death Deports Them To Hell

A FALLIBLE FASCISTIC CHRISTIAN

 

The book whose cover image is above, from here, 

is by all accounts a rather CRAPpy book. 

If it were any good, I wouldn't publicise it.

I live in a country entirely ruled by Christian WHM (current president-without-independent authoritative power aside), who have been and largely remain against civil rights and human rights, covertly or overtly, for everyone other than Christian wealthy WHM. That white Christian men have demonstrated themselves to be a rather glaringly, humiliatingly, and embarrassingly amoral and unethical bunch of thugs and fools should be rather obvious by now to anyone who's been paying attention. For those who haven't, we have this latest effort, in the AP report below, to secure and stabilise WHM Christian power in the U.R.A. This post's article came to my attention via Tim Wise's Facebook page.

There is controversy if I say I live in "a Christian nation" and there's controversy if I say I don't. The white male liberals (including het and gay men) go nuts with the former; the white male conservatives (including het and closeted homophobic gay men who sleep with men on vacations spent away from their primary nuclear families) go nuts with the latter. White Christian Family Values might be summed up as follows: "let hot gay men privately have sex with publicly het men when you can get away from the wife and kids, but fuck over gay men every other time in your life.

Hypocrisy is not the only White Christian Family Value. The Christian WHM tyrants have a character defect that ought to make it into the DSM-V. They think that they don't ever have enough power, even when they are they are in charge. If it weren't so institutionalised, it'd just be pathological.

Christian Conservative Lawyers Say They're On A Mission From God To Unseat Judges

(AP) - A group of conservative attorneys say they are on a mission from God to unseat four California judges in a rare challenge that is turning a traditionally snooze-button election into what both sides call a battle for the integrity of U.S. courts.

Vowing to be God's ambassadors on the bench, the four San Diego Superior Court candidates are backed by pastors, gun enthusiasts, and opponents of abortion and same-sex marriages.

"We believe our country is under assault and needs Christian values," said Craig Candelore, a family law attorney who is one of the group's candidates. "Unfortunately, God has called upon us to do this only with the judiciary."

The challenge is unheard of in California, one of 33 states to directly elect judges. Critics say the campaign is aimed at packing the courts with judges who adhere to the religious right's moral agenda and threatens both the impartiality of the court system and the separation of church and state.

Opponents fear the June 8 race is a strategy that could transform courtroom benches just like some school boards, which have seen an increasing number of Christian conservatives win seats in cities across the country and push for such issues as prayer in classrooms.

"Any organization that wants judges to subscribe to a certain political party or certain value system or certain way of ruling to me threatens the independence of the judiciary," San Diego County's District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said.

"Judges should be evaluated based on their qualifications and their duty to follow the law."

The campaign by California's social conservatives comes at a time when judges and scholars in many states are debating whether judges should be elected or appointed, citing the danger that campaign contributions could influence their rulings. Other states have lifted restrictions allowing judges to express their opinions publicly so people know what their biases are.

Special interest groups, including those representing gay marriage opponents, have ramped up donations for judicial races in recent years, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's school of law.

In Iowa's June 8 primary, two Republican gubernatorial candidates have announced they favor ousting Supreme Court judges whose unanimous decision last year legalized same-sex marriage.

"An effective way in driving policy is to try to influence who is on the courts in a state, particularly the highest court, the supreme court," said Adam Skaggs, counsel for the Brennan Center. "It's cause for concern because Americans expect courts to be places where people get a fair trial."

Most of those efforts have been aimed at state supreme courts, not courts like San Diego Superior Court that rules on custody battles and crime cases.

Called "Better Courts Now," the movement was the brainchild of Don Hamer, San Diego County's late Zion Christian Fellowship pastor who campaigned locally for California's ban on gay marriage, Proposition 8, and vetted the candidates before he died of a heart attack in March.

His fellow Pastor Brian Hendry and other supporters have carried on his legacy, launching the mostly online campaign to replace the incumbent judges -- all Democrats -- with Christian conservatives.

Backers include El Cajon Gun Exchange, a store that encourages customers to fight for
California's gun owners and visit the "Better Courts Now" website before voting. Pastors have vowed to spread the word. Hendry said the group had raised about $2,000 last month.

Some say it would not take much to win the traditionally low turnout race. The election usually draws fellow judges, attorneys, prosecutors and others closely following the legal community.

Lantz Lewis, who has been a judge for 20 years, said his opponent's campaign is taking judicial elections in the wrong direction.

"I have no problem with elections, but I think it really should focus on a judge's qualifications, and it's very difficult to think something good could come out of a partisan judicial election," he said.

"Better Courts Now" says it wants courts to be more accountable to the public.

At a debate the group organized at the Rancho del Rey church in San Marcos, a sprawling city of strip malls and suburban earth-tone homes perched atop green canyons, candidate Harold J. Coleman Jr. told supporters it's fair for voters to know a judge's values.

"That doesn't mean he won't follow the law," Coleman said as his supporters faced a wall with the words, "Live Jesus."

About 25 attendees broke into prayer at the church, which was in an office complex shared by an Irish dance studio and gymnasium.

Organizers invited the incumbents but none came.

Lewis said "Better Courts Now" appears to be seeking allegiance to its views -- not accountability.

"That's one of the reasons, we declined the invitation to go to that forum," he said. "I just don't think judges should be in a situation, where they are asked, 'Do you believe in God, abortion, gay marriage?'"

If judges proclaim to be either liberals or conservatives, people will feel the decks are either stacked against them or in their favor. If only one parent goes to church and the other does not in a child custody battle, a judge proclaimed to be a conservative Christian may favor the churchgoer, he said.

The district attorney and nearly every judge on the bench are endorsing incumbents Lewis, Robert Longstreth and Joel Wohlfeil, rated by the San Diego County Bar Association as "well qualified," its highest grade.

The bar rated Candelore and his running mates Bill Trask and Larry "Jake" Kincaid as "lacking some or all of the qualities of professional ability, experience, competence, integrity and temperament indicative of fitness to perform the judicial function in a satisfactory mode."

Trask is a lawyer for a mortgage firm and Kincaid is a family law attorney.

The bar said it did not have enough information to rate Coleman, an arbitrator for business disputes. He faces Judge DeAnn Salcido, who also received the bar's lowest mark of "lacking qualifications."

The Better Courts Now candidates accused the bar of being swayed by politics.

Candelore said a victory would mark only the beginning: "If we can take our judiciary, we can take our legislature and our executive branch."

Michelle Alexander on The New Jim Crow: On Prison and Criminal Injustice Systems and White Male Supremacist Power

A new contact, with sort of my name, "Juliano", contacted me about posting the above video.

My "real" name comes from my grandfather. Giuliano Reali. Yes, there are/were Italian Jews: if you haven't read his work, please read the writings of Primo Levi. Anglophilic family members, or possibly Ellis Island, altered the course of the name, as happened so much back in the day when not-yet-white people came here and became white. What is meaningful to me is the name means something like "soft beard" which has been interpreted to mean "a male youth" but I've taken it to mean a man who isn't into being, pardon the pun, "a real man". I also like that the first syllable, no matter the spelling, is pronounced "Jew".

But, anyway, Juliano, who has a blog *here*, sent me the link and asked for it to be made available to people, so please also post the video if you wish, with relevant information such as that below. I'm very pleased to present it here, to you. It's about time I posted and supported the work of Michelle Alexander. (Thanks, Juliano!)

This is the blurb that accompanies it on YouTube:

joefriendly — February 19, 2010 — Litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, argues that we have not ended racial caste in America, we have simply redesigned it: The U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary means of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. Her provocative new book challenges the civil rights community—and all of us—to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America. As the United States celebrates the nation's triumph over race with the election of Barack Obama, the majority of young black men in major American cities are locked behind bars or have been labeled felons for life. Event at Demos February 18, 2010. Camera, edit Joe Friendly.

To All My Aussie Friends: HELP Needed to Assist a Battered Woman Trying to Regain Custody of her Battered Child, from the Abuser-Father

[image is from here]

6 June UPDATE:

Here is a similar story, not hers, but one that has been published which raises similar issues of atrocity and lack of justice for women and children of men who are terrorists in their homes:

http://mamaliberty.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/how-far-abusers-will-go/

Could anyone in Australia, or anyone who is very familiar with resources for women in Australia, please post here the names and contact information for ANY and ALL Feminist and Women's Organisations, Groups, Support and Legal Resources for Women dealing with custody, immigration, domestic violence, and racism and misogyny in the white male supremacist court system.

A white Australian man who is a batterer/abuser of a woman and child has custody of the battered woman of color's child, "their" child. She is working to get this child safely out of his custody, into hers. She is safely away from him, but the courts, so far, have placed the abused girl in his control.

THANK YOU. The sooner you can get this to me, the sooner I can get the information to her. Any information would be GREATLY appreciated.

On Writing Off (And NOT Writing Off) White Radical Lesbian Feminist Sheila Jeffreys

 [photograph of Sheila Jeffreys is from here]

What is missing from much supposedly "intelligent critical thinking" that white men are so renowned for accomplishing, is the capacity, it appears, to even engage with ideas that critique patriarchy at all. Radical political thinkers' work has limitations: like that of Noam Chomsky, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze. But I know academic white het men who have mental orgasms reading and discussing their ideas and perspectives (seemingly endlessly) on political and social reality. "Limitation" is endemic among white radical men's writing especially when considering and centering the perspectives of political philosophers who are women--Indigenous women, lesbian women, and women of color, for example. I do not know of one single (not one) white het man who has read Yurugu, by Dr. Marimba Ani. I know of no white men who have concerned themselves with the work of Patricia Hill Collins. Or Mary Daly. (Amazon won't even list her books on their "Mary Daly Page"!) Or Winona LaDuke.

Or Sheila Jeffreys. (Amazon also cannot seem to figure out how to list all of Jeffreys' work on their "Sheila Jeffreys Page".) I do know a few men who have read and appreciated the work of Audre Lorde and Andrea Dworkin, although I question the extent to which they comprehend the meaning of the writings or appreciate the complexity of the authors' ideas.

There is a blatant double standard and gross misogynist (and also racist) and anti-lesbian bias I find among "academically trained" white het male and white gay and queer men. And I've never it seen adequately challenged by other white men. Whole academic fields, disciplines, courses, and seminars, as well as community organising and resistance, are built upon the severely flawed ideas of Great White Het (and Gay) Men. But when the "great thinker" is a woman, in this post focusing on one white radical feminist lesbian woman, she is generally dismissed by most white men for no legitimate reasons at all that some inane dismissive remark like "she hates men". This concern for "writers who hate a gender" doesn't seem to stop the allegedly brilliant white boys from pondering the intellectual efforts of pro-patriarchal misogynists.

In the cases of writers like Mary Daly and Sheila Jeffreys, white boys typically and predicktably take one bit of something either writer once wrote, use that as "representative" of ALL of her ideas, and rid themselves of the necessity to engage thoughtfully with the bulk and main points of the work, the philosophies, the political challenges to patriarchal (male supremacist) harm, privileges, entitlements, and power. I find this to be true among men of color as well. Men of color will expect white women to read the philosophical and political works of great men of color, but let a white woman hand a man of color a book by Daly or Jeffreys and watch the look on their faces. It is more or less like the look on white men's faces. This wouldn't be because men don't want to deal with their patriarchal methods of harming women, with male privileges, entitlements, and power, would it?

You have one guess whose interests are served by men writing off radical lesbian feminists of any color. (The answer sounds and looks a lot like the word "MEN's".)

See the video below for a THOUGHTFUL discussion on the matter of reading the work of Sheila Jeffreys. I challenge white men and men of color to be at least as thoughtful and considerate in their readings of her work as they are of their much adored Great Male Thinkers. And, yes, that will mean men will have to start by reading her work with masculinist defenses checked before opening the front cover.

Peace With Criminals, War With People: a Statement from RAWA on the Puppet Afghan Regime Supported by U.S. Force

 

[image is from here]

Eight and a half years and counting 

is hardly the life of a mayfly, 

but the graphic image above makes a point 

I've rarely seen made so graphically.

This is a news release may also be linked back to by clicking on the title below.

RAWA, June 1, 2010

Peace with Criminals, War with People!

Statement of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) on “Consultative Peace Jirga”

By inviting criminals like the Taliban, the leaders of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s party and other “Jehadi leaders” to be part of a “Consultative Peace Jirga,” Mr. Karzai is committing yet another treason against the Afghan people. Like any puppet, anti-people ruler, he initially compromised with all the murderers associated with April 27th 1978 (former Russian puppets) and April 28 1992 (the Northern Alliance warlords) and installed them in key posts of his government. He then went to the extent of assigning the two most notorious warlords Karim Khalili and Qasim Fahim as his vice presidents. Now, he calls the Taliban and Hekmatyar party terrorists “Afghan sons” and tries to either share power with them, or offer them the opportunity of asylum and amnesty to their leaders in any country of their choice. He is also offering jobs to their gunmen so he can prolong his mafia-style rule with ease of mind.

A known terrorist from Hekmatyar’s Islamic Party called Farooq Wardak has been awarded the responsibility of running the Jirga. Additionally, the delegates from Hekmatyar’s blood-thirsty party in Kabul were received like showbiz celebrities with local Afghan media being offered in their service. The infamous criminals Mullah Wakil Ahmad Motawakal, Mullah Zaef, Humayun Jarir, Abdul Hadi Arghandewal, Sabaoon, Mullah Rocketi and many other such terrorists of the Taliban and Islamic Party have had their reputations sugarcoated in the past few years. All these things not only illuminate the true nature and goal of this Jirga, but also constitute an insult to our people who have sought their liberation in the prosecution and punishment of Khaliqi, Parchami, Jehadi and Taliban criminals, but instead still feel the heavy load of these brutal enemies on their wounded bodies.

Without receiving a green light from their US masters, the puppet government of Afghanistan could never raise a hue and cry about this “Consultative Peace Jirga.” It could also not consider making peace with the Taliban and Islamic Party assassins while they are apparently still on the “Black List” of the US government. This in itself proves that the US doesn’t just want a puppet government, but also a stable and efficient government to easily change Afghanistan into a strong military base in Asia, extend its grip on the oil and gas of the Central Asian Republics and maintain its supremacy in competition with rivals such as China and other regional powers. For the US and allies, the deeply criminal, treacherous, anti-democracy and anti-independence essence of this puppet regime has no significance at all. Apart from a handful of sold-off intellectuals of Afghanistan, this reality is crystal clear to even our children that the claim of the US about bringing “democracy” and “women’s liberation” to Afghanistan was the biggest lie of the century. In fact, it was even more striking than the claims of the US about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and more comic than its pretence of having an opposition to fundamentalist bands and governments.

At the height of a piercing outcry over a “Peace Jirga,” the Taliban intensified their inhuman brutalities by killing school children, teachers, men, and women of Kabul and other cities, but Karzai and his spokesmen expressed with detestable indifference that, “Inshallah, with national unity soon we will emerge from these problems”! If their own sister, mother or daughter were raped, killed publicly or torn to pieces by suicide bombings, would they still call these killings “problems” they have with Taliban, their “disaffected brothers”? But considering the power-lust and impunity of the ruling mafia, they may still not call the Taliban criminals, and their acts as crimes, because despite having some differences, in the final stage they regard themselves from the same ranks and deem it necessary to become united in order to run the state machinery in front of people’s wrath. Both the Taliban and the ruling mafia know well that the day US/NATO occupation forces leave Afghanistan; all the tribes of Afghanistan will consider unity amongst themselves to topple their bloody rule.

While the US is trying to unite its lackeys through the “Peace Jirga” and other means, it is afraid of unity and integration among Afghan people. Therefore, through its puppet government and Northern Alliance agents, the US is trying hard to sow disruption and animosity among the different tribes of Afghanistan. For example, in Behsood and Daimirdad they inflamed fighting between Hazaras and Nomads and similarly in Northern Afghanistan among Tajiks, Pushtoons and Uzbeks so they can continue the occupation of a divided and disarrayed nation.

The so-called intellectuals of Afghanistan who directly or indirectly hope that the Taliban will end the US occupation, are carving a dark mark of history on their forehead. They are like those who rely on the US and the bloodthirsty Iranian regime to emancipate them from the yoke of the Taliban. If such people are not foolish, then they are spineless because they neither remember the marks of the Taliban flogging our mothers, sisters and fathers nor the beheading of our children and poor women (in the name of rooting out “spies”), or the spraying of acid on innocent school-girls. If they believe that by relying on tribal issues, corruption, and looting of the puppet regime they can find an argument for their support of the brutal Taliban, then by what trick can they ignore the ISI-born nature and medieval mentality of the Taliban? Can they point out any example anywhere in the world of such an anti-democratic and anti-women group dominated by drug lords and dependent on the intelligence agency of a foreign country that dares to struggle for independence and liberation? The intellectual supporters of the Taliban are possibly agents of the US CIA and other agencies who by upholding the Taliban and calling them a “resistance movement” want to pave the way for their joint domination with President Karzai and the “National Front” mafia.

In the past, through the meddling of Zalmay Khalilzad and Hamid Karzai as representatives of UNOCAL, the US dealt with the Taliban and pumped tens of millions of dollars into their pockets. Today if the Taliban once again comes to power, the US will easily “work” with them and prefer their bloody and suffocating rule of Afghanistan to an independent, pro-democracy and pro-women’s rights government, because the US counts on them as the most loyal group to safeguard its interests in the region. The Taliban also will not forget that the US was their creator, trainer and mentor through Pakistan’s ISI god-fathers.

The current conflict between the US, Taliban, and Northern Alliance is in fact a family matter between them which will be solved sooner or later. When that happens, the ranks of friends and enemies of our people will become clear and the illusion spread by pro-Taliban, pro-April 27 and April 28 treacherous intellectuals will be countered. Under such conditions, it is the duty of pro-independence, pro-democracy and pro-women’s rights intellectuals to increase their organized efforts for a coordinated uprising of our people against all traitors to Afghanistan.

Let the puppet mafia government of Karzai bring together all its agents in the “Peace Jirga” and similar ridiculous shows and by organizing luxury meetings, dance over the dead bodies of our innocent people, but the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA), alongside the aggrieved Afghan people thinks that such deceitful games mean throwing salt on the wounds of our people caught in the US/NATO bombings, insecurity, poverty, unemployment and desperation all over Afghanistan.

Shame to the “Peace Jirga” of criminals with criminals!
Neither USA, Nor Taliban and the National Front murderers!
An independent and democratic Afghanistan!

URL for news «Peace with Criminals, War with People!»

http://www.rawa.org/rawa/2010/06/01/peace-with-criminals-war-with-people.html

A Human Rights Approach to Combating Human Trafficking

 [photo of girl wearing lipstick is from here]

Victims and survivors of trafficking want us to not accept their slavery as inevitable by simply trying to mitigate its circumstances through the offer of beds in shelters or condoms in brothels. They want us to dismantle the very system of trafficking by bringing traffickers and end users to book. They want a world in which it is unacceptable to buy or sell another human being and to create an economy in which one is not forced to sell oneself. They want Human Rights Principles to ensure their right to food, housing, education and livelihood to pave the way for their right not to be trafficked.

My organization has a membership of over ten thousand trafficked human beings. They are women and children trapped in prostitution. They were kidnapped, sold, coerced, tricked or forced into situations of exploitation. Some are as young as seven.-- Ruchira Gupta, of Apne Aap Women Worldwide

I hear and read pro-prostitution advocates and pimp-apologists and patriarchal procurers argue for legalisation of prostitution. They take this stand rather than advocate and stand in alliance with those who are working for the criminalisation of pimping (buying, stealing, beating, and raping), trafficking (transporting across regions), and procuring (renting and abusing) human beings for men's profit and pleasure. To do this, to be "for prostitution", serves whose interests, politically? When only class-privileged and white women and men advocate for this, I want to ask them: Are you directly accountable to the particular poor women of color worldwide who do not have Western or white privileges, who were raised in poverty, and for whom the distinctions between "prostitution", "sexual trafficking", and "sexual slavery" are meaningless? Because that is most women (and girls) in prostitution.

Most women are not choosing prostitution as a means of paying for college. Most women are not in prostitution because it is, in any ethical sense, in any sense of empowerment that has human rights meaning, "a choice". Do you understand that arguing for legalisation puts women's and girls' lives in greater danger? What do you say to the girls and women who are harmed more because you won't support criminalising being a procurer regionally and internationally? What follows is a speech delivered by Ruchira Gupta, who works in close alliance with poor girls and women who have escaped prostitution. Whites take notice please. Class privileged folks take notice please. And Westerners take notice please. Because if it feels like "a choice" for you to be in prostitution, you're at the tip of a brutal iceberg, and your position ought not dictate policy and law any more than the rich ought to dictate economic policy and law for everyone else, who are mostly "not close to rich". What follows may be linked to be clicking on the title.

Seminar on A Human Rights Approach to Combating Human Trafficking: Challenges and Opportunities. Implementing the Recommended Principals and Guidelines on Human Rights and Human Trafficking

I am Ruchira Gupta and I bring greetings from the victims and survivors of sex trafficking who are members of my organization, Apne Aap Women Worldwide in India. We appreciate the attention that the High Commissioner for Human Rights has devoted to the issue of human trafficking and the fact that she has invited us to contribute to the Guidelines on Human Rights from a survivor-centric perspective.

The victims and survivors of human trafficking that I represent see visibility, accountability and access to all civil, political, economic and social rights as the best way to combat trafficking. They want their slavery to be acknowledged as slavery. They want all forms of their enslavement including prostitution to be not defined as a choice but to be acknowledged as the absence of choice. Nobody chooses to be born poor, female, low caste, fairer or darker in colour, or as an ethnic or religious minority.

Victims and survivors of trafficking want us to not accept their slavery as inevitable by simply trying to mitigate its circumstances through the offer of beds in shelters or condoms in brothels. They want us to dismantle the very system of trafficking by bringing traffickers and end users to book. They want a world in which it is unacceptable to buy or sell another human being and to create an economy in which one is not forced to sell oneself. They want Human Rights Principles to ensure their right to food, housing, education and livelihood to pave the way for their right not to be trafficked.

My organization has a membership of over ten thousand trafficked human beings. They are women and children trapped in prostitution. They were kidnapped, sold, coerced, tricked or forced into situations of exploitation. Some are as young as seven. They have been kept in small locked rooms and raped repeatedly. They live in absolute terror. Most die by the time they are thirty or thirty five. They never had a past, and now they hope to have a future.

We have been organizing survivors and victims of trafficking in groups to be able to collectively struggle for their own rights and entitlements. We have formed 150 self-help groups. These groups are demanding arrests of traffickers and end users, jobs, safe housing, and education as a combined best practice to dismantle the system of trafficking.

We have held conferences of survivors in different states in India to develop a survivor framework to combat trafficking. The first demand that survivors lay out in these conferences is that they want accountability. They want their exploitation to be recognized as a crime. They want states to admit that they are citizens of the state, whose human rights have been violated. They want protection. They want both their own state and the global community to provide them protection. They want those responsible for trafficking to be punished and stopped. They want interventions to focus on the responsibility of those who buy trafficked people such as buyers of prostituted sex and those “entrepreneurs” (traffickers, procurers, pimps, brothel owners, and managers, owners of plantations and factories and money lenders) who make a profit off trading in women and girls, boys and men.

So far a large number of trafficking interventions have focused on the victim through rescue and post rescue care. While this has provided much-needed relief to victims and survivors, it has not made a dent in the trafficking industry. According to a study by the National Human Rights Commission of India, most traffickers state that they identify the demand areas before indulging in trafficking to ensure ‘prompt delivery.

In each of the survivor conferences, in state after state in India, and even in the conference organized by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, at the United Nations in New York last year survivors have repeatedly said they want the demand for trafficked sex and labour to be addressed. They say and I quote Fatima Nat Dhuniya, trafficked when she was 12 in Bihar: “As long as buyers and traffickers exist, somebody will buy us and the slavery business will never close down.”

Our survivors believe that if the number of convictions goes up, the costs of operations of human trafficking will become untenable and the business models of traffickers will be disrupted and individuals who create the demand will be embarrassed by being identified.

The second demand that survivors are asking for in each of the conferences is access to all their economic and social rights along with their civil and political rights. They want more than a bed in a shelter or a condom in a brothel. They want access to safe housing, education and training, jobs, land and livelihoods based in open communities.

They want both the process of human trafficking to be tackled as well as its outcomes. In this context they say that border management is not the answer to trafficking. In fact, they say that trafficking is not always about movement of forced or deceived people across borders. It is also about those whose vulnerability is abused to trap them into situations of exploitation in brothels, sweatshops, and farms, sometimes in the very places where they were born. Those targeted for commercial sexual exploitation and cheap labour share key characteristics: poverty, youth, minority status in the places of exploitation, histories of abuse, and little family support. They want comprehensive protection programmes that address their vulnerabilities. They want legal protection tied in with viable economic options and the notion of rehabilitation to extend to community empowerment as well as individual empowerment.

They also want immediate relief from the violence, trauma and sever exploitation that they were subjected to. Trafficked women may be freed from their employers in police raids, but they are given no access to services or redress and instead face further mistreatment at the hands of authorities. Even when confronted with clear evidence of trafficking, officials focus on violations of their immigration regulations and anti-prostitution laws, rather than on violations of the trafficking victims’ human rights. Thus those women who are trafficked across borders are targeted as undocumented migrants and/or prostitutes, and the traffickers either escape entirely, or else face minor penalties. By making the victims of trafficking the target of law enforcement efforts, governments only exacerbate victims’ vulnerability to abuse and deter them from turning to law enforcement officials for assistance.

By allowing traffickers to engage in slavery-like practices without penalty, governments allow the abuses to continue with impunity. Some brave girls and women, and men are in a faceoff with traffickers and police in a small village Forbesgunge in my own country, India right now. Due to the failure of police to arrest traffickers, in spite of repeated complaints for the last six months, four 12 year old girls trapped in home based brothels, have already been prostituted and are being raped repeatedly. The police has refused to act in spite of political and judicial pressure and the traffickers have issued death threats to Apne Aap community members living in the red-light area. Unless law enforcement agencies take action against end users and traffickers no human rights programmes of victims and survivors can be implemented.

Apne Aap survivors have repeatedly been petitioning the Parliament of India to change its law to include more severe punishment for buyers and traffickers. Each country needs to amend its own laws to tackle this growing crime and tragedy. The Central Bureau of Investigation in India said that there are 3 million prostituted children in India today. This number has grown by seventeen times in the last fifteen years. No country can afford to delay in amending laws to change this rapidly growing crime.

I appeal to member states, including my own country to apply a human-rights based approach to identification, victim protection and support that is embedded in the UN Protocol and put addressing the demand for trafficking, exploitation of victims and abuse of a person’s vulnerability at the centre of the amended laws. We want the practical applications to not dilute, modify or change the UN Protocol. protocol but strengthen it in every way.

Ruchira Gupta,
Founder President, Apne Aap
www.apneaap.org

Challenging Users and Abusers of Prostitutes, including Traffickers and the Police: The Radical Feminist Work of Ruchira Gupta's organisation, A2W2, and of Sheila Jeffries

[a2w2 poster image is from here]

What does Audre Lorde mean when she says,

"the masters tools will never dismantle the masters house"?

From a larger sense, Lorde is suggesting that the notion of empowerment and reclamation of voice can only happen when there is a pure transformation of paradigm. Individuals that seek to enhance voice and discourse can only do so when they are committed to increasing power and sharing it with these voices. For example, if a company is not committed to racial and ethnic inclusion, but installs a person of color in their bevy of vice presidents or other executives, little, if anything, changes. The "master's house" is still present as well as the repression of voice. Simple and shallow forms of inclusion do not alter the imbalance of power in dynamics and relationships. Only when there is a true transformation, or dismantling of "the master's house," can there be change to the house and those who inhabit it. [source: here]

"Unless law enforcement agencies take action against
traffickers, no human rights programmes
for victims and survivors can be implemented."

"India must change its anti-trafficking law to
dismantle the system of prostitution immediately."

-- Ruchira Gupta, Geneva, 2010

One of many arguments put forth by pro-prostitution activists including pimps and procurers is concern for women's safety and how to assist in making the lives of women in some systems of prostitution safer. It is a matter that warrants careful review--not because pimps and procurers claim to care (I don't accept that they do). It ought to be a concern because the safety to women is an overarching concern, well beyond the scope of systems of prostitution, but within those systems, particular emotional, physical, and sexual abuses happen that are somewhat system-specific. So, for example, while men battering women ought to be an overarching concern for anyone concerned with human rights violations and social justice, pimps and procurers battering women in systems of prostitution (hereafter, s.o.p.) has its own dynamics, that aren't necessarily replicated in other systems. It is not, in the U.S., under general law, illegal for a woman outside s.o.p. to report a man battering her. But for a woman in prostitution, reporting abuses can result in her arrest and detainment in prison.

A pro-legalisation argument, often supported by procurers who want their 24/7 access and don't want it to be impeded by prostitutes being in jail, is that prostitutes could organise within brothels, possibly without a pimp, and have protections due to not having to be vulnerable on the street or when meeting men in places in which they are unfamiliar and know no one. At the end of this post is a counter-argument to that one, noting what is changing, due to technology, regarding procurement strategies. I stand with the girls and women of A2W2 and many other human rights organisations and activists across the globe who do not support legalisation of prostitution as a means of creating a better world for women inside and outside s.o.p. Any approach that legalises a form of white male supremacist activity and abuse is clearly using the master's tools.

First, though, is a report from the Times of India, focusing on some of the brilliant and brave work of Ruchira Gupta and the many girls and women who have escaped s.o.p., including those who were trafficked and enslaved. It is these girls and women to whom I look for guidance, particularly in that region but also beyond, on how best to deal with the overlapping in intricately interlinked het male (and frequently white) supremacist problems of prostitution, pimping, procurement, trafficking, and sexual slavery.

Both pieces are linked to by clicking on their respective titles.

CM vows to free girls from brothels
TNN, Jun 1, 2010, 06.11am IST

PATNA: During his Vishwas Yatra in Araria district on Sunday, chief minister Nitish Kumar visited Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya Girls' Hostel at Forbesganj and promised an inmate, Juhi Nat, rescued from a brothel, that he would ensure release of her friends from the clutches of human traffickers.

This residential school is being run by an organization `Apne Aap Women Worldwide (A2W2)'. The girls petitioned the CM for prompt action against traffickers who had forcibly taken away their fellow students for purpose of sexual exploitation.

"I will ensure action on this," Nitish told the girls. In fact, a few months back, the A2W2 had lodged a complaint with the CM and government officials and a team had visited the institute for an on-the-spot study. Some actions were also initiated, but the traffickers forcibly took away some teenaged girls and have allegedly detained them in home-based brothels in Rampur redlight area at Forbesganj where they are being sexually exploited.

Three 12-year-old girls, the institute complained, are trapped in home-based brothels for prostitution in spite of repeated complaints to the police and local authorities since January.

A couple of days before the CM visited the institute, founder president of A2W2 Ruchira Gupta took the case of the victim girls to an international seminar in Geneva, Switzerland, and explained how some brave girls and women, and men were in a face off with human traffickers and police.

Gupta was attending a seminar on `A Human Rights Approach on Combating Human Trafficking: Challenges and Opportunities' organized by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations Office in Geneva.

"Unless law enforcement agencies take action against traffickers, no human rights programmes for victims and survivors can be implemented," she said. "India must change its anti-trafficking law to dismantle the system of prostitution immediately," said Gupta.

She appealed to member states, including India, to change their law based on the UN Protocol and put addressing the demand for trafficking, exploitation of victims and abuse of a person's vulnerability at the centre of the amended laws.

*          *          *

Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society

Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 2010

E-ISSN: 1468-2893 Print ISSN: 1072-4745

Sheila Jeffreys

"Brothels without Walls": the Escort Sector as a Problem for the Legalization of Prostitution
Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society - Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 2010, pp. 210-234

Oxford University Press

Abstract:

This article examines a developing trend in the prostitution industry in the western world, the boom in escort prostitution. Escort prostitution, operating through mobile phones and the Internet, is supplanting the brothel as the major form in which prostituted women are delivered to male buyers. Policy-makers who promote the legalization of the prostitution industry have argued that this policy will make prostituted women and girls safer and combat organized crime. These assumptions are based upon the idea that prostitution will take place in brothels which can institute health and safety codes, and enable easy identification of the illegal brothel industry which can be closed down. Escort prostitution provides particular challenges to the regulation of prostitution because there is no way in which it can be controlled or made "safe." Alongside the other harms associated with prostitution which are exacerbated in legalized regimes, this development provides a significant reason why the policy of legalization is doomed to fail in achieving its objectives. The problems associated with the escort boom will be examined in relation to the state of Queensland in Australia, and the Netherlands, jurisdictions in which the prostitution industry has been legalized.