Sex markets have been a concern to feminists because, historically, the “skin trade” has relied predominantly on female service providers and male consumers.

Feminist theorists are divided on the question of whether markets in pornographic materials and sexual services pose a threat to women in all contexts. Some feminist theorists argue that when one is paid for sex, a person contracts to give away her freedom and sexuality.

Others argue that selling sex harms women only because the work carries a stigma generated from double standards of sexual morality and negative attitudes to sex, which need to be challenged.

The debate over sex commerce extends to a number of social practices, including pornography, prostitution, escort services, erotic dancing and strip shows, phonesex and cybersex, and s/m parlors and swing clubs.

Feminist philosophers have primarily focused on the issues of pornography and prostitution, and have subsumed the other practices under one of these broad categories.   more »

The Briton who's split America with 'Nuestro Himno', a Spanish version of 'The Star Spangled Banner', challenges the President to join a Live-Aid style recording amid a raging debate about immigrant rights.

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
Latino stand up and get ready to fight

British music rebel Adam Kidron, who has caused a storm in the US by recording a Spanish version of 'The Star Spangled Banner' to show solidarity with immigrants, last night invited President Bush to sing along on the next record.

After George W Bush railed against Kidron's version of the national anthem, saying it should always be sung in English, the record entrepreneur accused the president of pandering to racists.

But he also challenged Bush, who boasts of his prowess in Spanish, to join his pack of rappers and Latin music stars and sing with them on his 'Live Aid-style' rebel song.   more »

The U.S. military has only seen "loss, disaster and misfortune" in Iraq, al-Qaida's No. 2 said, in a video message that a U.S. official deemed part of a propaganda campaign to demonstrate the terror network's relevancy.

The video by Ayman al-Zawahri, posted on an Islamic militant Web forum Saturday, came within the same week as an audiotape by Osama bin Laden and a video by the head of al-Qaida's branch in Iraq — a volley of messages by the group's most prominent figures.

Al-Zawahri, an Egyptian radical believed to be hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan, also denounced the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq as "traitors" and called on Muslims to rise up to "confront them."

He said that U.S. and British forces in Iraq had bogged down in Iraq and "have achieved nothing but loss, disaster and misfortune."

Al-Qaida in Iraq "alone has carried out 800 martyrdom operations (suicide attacks) in three years, besides the sacrifices of the other mujahedeen, and this is what has broken the back of American in Iraq," al-Zawahri said.   more »

John Mearsheimer, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. Stephen Walt is a 50-year-old tenured professor at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

The two men have caused one of the most extraordinary political storms over the Middle East in recent American history by stating what to many non-Americans is obvious:

That the US has been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of Israel, that Israel is a liability in the "war on terror".

That the biggest Israeli lobby group, Aipac (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), is in fact the agent of a foreign government and has a stranglehold on Congress - so much so that US policy towards Israel is not debated there - and that the lobby monitors and condemns academics who are critical of Israel.

"Anyone who criticises Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle East policy," the authors have written, "...stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-Semite.

"Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israeli lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism ... Anti-Semitism is something no-one wants to be accused of."   more »

This state of unwitting confession to monstrous crime has been the default mode of the U.S. establishment for many years now. Government officials routinely detail policies that in a healthy atmosphere would shake the nation to its core, stand out like a gaping wound, a rank betrayal of every hope, ideal and sacrifice of generations past.

Yet in the degraded sensibility of these times, such confessions go unnoticed, their evil unrecognized -- or even lauded as savvy ploys or noble endeavors.

Inured to moral horror by half a century of outrages committed by the "National Security" complex, the establishment, along with the media and vast swathes of the population, can no longer discern the poison in the air they breathe. It just seems normal.

And so it was again this week when The Washington Post outlined the Pentagon's plan to put dirty war -- by death squad, snatch squad, secret armies, subversion, torture and terrorism -- at the very heart of America's military philosophy.

Not defense against declared enemies, not deterrence of potential foes, but conducting "continuous" covert military operations in countries "where the United States is not at war" is now the Pentagon's "highest priority," according to the new "campaign plan for the global war on terror" issued by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.   more »

28 APRIL

Fuck, F*ck, F**k, F*** or—Swear to God, ****

Bush Sees Himself as a Martyr [Where's Your Suicide Belt, George?]

"Stupid Girls': Pink Satirizes Vacuous Pop-Tart Celebrities

Bush and the Republicans: Owned - Lock, Stock and Barrel - by the Oil Cartel

"United 93": Hollywood Starts Milking 9/11

Paul Krugman: Naming and Shaming Bush as the Crony Fairy

Comparing Workers' Rights in France & UK

Linking the Price of Oil with the Iraq War