1. Masturbating on Your Mobile
2. Saakashvili: Tinpot Nationalist Fanatic
3. Dodgy Funding in the Presidential Campaign [Video]
4. NYT Whitwashes Georgia's Authoritarian Regime
5. Keep Protesting! Obama Won't Stop the Iraq War
6. Afghanistan & Déjà Vu in Georgia
The working mum: "I've only been a phone-sex operator for
a few months now to help with extra income ? I'm a single mother
of two young boys so money is very important to me.
I'm in a loving relationship with a wonderful man who loves
my kids and treats me very well. He understands that I'm only
doing this part-time, to help save for my children's college fund."
Phone-Sex: Masturbating on Your Mobile
When I see the late-night ads for premium-rate phone sex lines featuring nubile, tanned young women, I get curious about who is actually on the other end of the phone.
Like many people, I sometimes imagine that she's a bored housewife, moaning and calling herself a "naughty girl" while smoking a fag and doing the ironing.
But whether they are working in a packed call centre wearing headsets or from home wearing lingerie, phone-sex operators (or PSOs) are as diverse as the callers.
I can definitely see the appeal of wanting to make money from talking dirty, like the Americans pictured here in Phillip Toledano's compelling portraits. But these women (and men, some very successful PSOs have been boys with high-pitched voices!) have to do so much more: they have to morph into a role that is part therapist, part sexual surrogate.
They also have to improvise and create multiple personae in order to play the submissive secretary, the naughty nurse, the adult baby, the porn star or the barely legal teen girl.
In fact, a quick skim of UK websites reveals that any scenario not involving children or animals seems to be up for grabs.
There are some who believe that, in an era of YouPorn and free internet chatrooms, phone sex lines may soon become an anachronism.
Although callers often pay more than £1 per minute to 0909 numbers, and the industry still rakes in billions, the salaries advertised for operators are from £10 to £24 per hour – and that, presumably, is if the phone rings constantly.
There is a darker side to phone sex. I once had a boyfriend who ran up £2,000 in charges in six weeks and lied about it, which seemed insane when he had a girl who was perfectly willing to engage in filthy banter for free.
Experts say that women are more likely to view porn use of any kind as a betrayal, so men should tread carefully before letting their fingers do the walking.
But in moderation, I think that the allure of phone sex is the same as Erica Jong's "zipless fuck". It's absolute anonymity on to which we can project our fantasies.
Who cares if the sexy-sounding woman on the other end of the line is actually a 20-stone mum of four? In the caller's mind, she's "Cassandra", a horny 18-year-old university student.
I just hope that the in-your-face nature of adult webcams doesn't kill phone sex for ever. It's good to have a bit of mystery; and after all, as Truman Capote once said about masturbation, "The good thing is that you don't have to dress up for it."Saakashvili: Tinpot Nationalist Crusader
President Mikheil Saakashvili came to power after November 2003 elections on a wave of nationalism and with the promise of recovering both Abkhazia and South Ossetia.In the past four years, the acquisition of significant numbers of more modern armored vehicles, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, small arms, armed helicopters, reconnaissance drones and much else could not have failed to raise alarm in the breakaway provinces and in the Kremlin.
Western intelligence services were also fully aware of military developments and indeed significant numbers of US and Israeli military personnel helped the Georgian special forces in particular in preparing for large-scale counter-insurgency operations ...
Exactly the type of training required for any serious attempt to suppress the citizens of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, who were certain to violently resist any Georgian takeover.
This current conflict was born out of a crisis that has been simmering since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) action in the former Yugoslavia and has most certainly come to boil since February 2008>
This was when the breakaway province of Kosovo achieved a degree of doubtful international acceptance as an independent state, but only, it is suggested by many observers, after considerable pressure was exerted on its allies by the United States.
There is little or no difference between Russia's actions to ensure the right of self-determination of the South Ossetians and the US/NATO support for the Kosovans.
Dodgy Funding in the Presidential Campaign [Video]
The road to the seat of power in the White House is not easy, and certainly not cheap. This year's US presidential race is on track to be the most expensive in history.Al Jazeera's senior Washington correspondent Rob Reynolds discovers there are some unconventional methods being used to finance the campaigns.
NYT Whitwashes Georgia's Authoritarian Regime
The Saakashvili government is a regime of immense crisis, resting on the narrowest of social foundations and based on virulent Georgian nationalism.The picture of a government that cannot be held back from lashing out militarily does not conform, needless to say, with the image of “democratic Georgia” so assiduously promoted by the US government and media.
In fact, there is nothing democratic about the Saakashvili government. It is a right-wing regime that rests on a faction of the post-Soviet oligarchy that enriched itself by plundering the formerly nationalized economy.
It has promoted a tiny wealthy elite on the basis of “free market” policies, while the broad mass of the Georgian people have slipped ever more deeply into poverty.
Its methods are authoritarian. Saakashvili himself was reelected in January 2008 in snap elections which he called after putting down mass protests the previous November and declaring martial law.
The Times’ potted account of the background to the Georgian-Russian conflict is part and parcel of its effort to whitewash the incendiary role of American imperialism in the region and conceal the predatory aims that underlie US policy toward Russia.
The major organ of the liberal establishment, allied politically to the Democratic Party, is doing its part to deceive and confuse public opinion and legitimize the mad drive of the American ruling elite for hegemony over the Eurasian continent.
Keep Protesting! Obama Won't Stop the Iraq War
The outrage and disgust at the Bush program and its wars has only grown deeper and more widespread. But now, what will become of this outrage?> Allowing it, or helping it, to be channeled into supporting Obama when he is busy telling you he wants to better prosecute America’s wars is the most unrealistic idea there is!
Yes, millions will vote for Obama believing, or at least telling themselves, that he will bring the change they want to see. But as the policies of a murderous empire advance, in one form or another under the next administration, will these people be demoralized and demobilized, or will they become radicalized and energized?
The answer to that question has a LOT to do with what the anti-war movement does now. Whether we tone the message down so, as Leslie Cagan put it, it’s not seen “as an anti-Democratic Party protest,” and we don’t offend the delegates—or plant a pole of real opposition right up against the misplaced hopes that will be projected onto the Democratic National Convention?
At a time when the tens of millions of people who have the potential strength to stop this war are being pacified and corralled into a dead-end, what meaning does it have to call oneself “anti-war” if you are not protesting outside the convention?
Anyone serious about stopping this whole direction of unjust war, torture and fascist repression should be in the streets.
Afghanistan & Déjà Vu in Georgia
As Georgetown professor Charles King sees it, "the war began as an ill-considered move by Georgia to retake South Ossetia by force."Saakashvili's larger goal was to lead his country into war as a form of calculated self-sacrifice, hoping that Russia's predictable overreaction would convince the West of exactly the narrative that many commentators have now taken up."
Michael Klare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, says the US is trying to use Georgia as an "energy corridor" to transport Caspian energy to the West without going through Iran or Russia.
"Russia seeks to frustrate America's use of Georgia for this purpose, and uses Abkhazia and South Ossetia as daggers pointed at the jugular of the BTC pipeline," he told the Institute for Public Accuracy. "When Saakashvili sought to drive the Russians out of these enclaves, the Russians struck back."
In a sense, history has come full circle. Thirty years after the US created a "trap" for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan a similar dynamic seems to have emerged.
The Georgian army is US-trained and increasingly US-equipped; according to the Associated Press, thousands of its troops in Iraq are being flown back to Georgia at US expense.
Yet any accusations that the US administration played a provocative role or has oil on its mind no doubt will be vigorously denied. Again the truth about any covert US activities is likely to remain buried for years.
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