cbc opens my eyes.

cbc.ca/docs

Tonight was "SEX SLAVE$".

brutal. I will try not to use profanities.

500,000 women are trafficked into the international sex slave industry each year. This documentary focussed on women from Moldavia (I think), Ukraine, and other parts of former Soviet Union. The women in the story were trafficked to Turkey, England, and Toronto, Canada.

In Canada, there is an exotic dancer/stripper visa program. Isn't that great? Women can be trafficked here, completely within the law! A new life in Canada, as a sex slave. I really think we should advertise this as part of our tourism industry, this beautiful program that gives such a wonderful opportunity to impoverished women. Who have been manipulated, lied to, and often kidnapped. Women who will be beaten, raped, tortured, sometimes to death.

SO. What do I do now? With this information? Knowing that there are women my age, being tricked into sex slavery by traffickers (some of whom are also women!) who will take advantage of...

Women from the poorest countries in the world, who only want to provide for their families by sending home a few hundred dollars a month, and they end up being prostitutes.

Women from Ukraine often end up in Turkey, and when they are discovered in brothels during police raids, they are treated as prostitutes, and illegal immigrants. They are sent back to their homes, where the traffickers come and pick them up, and re-sell them to some other dirty pimp, where their hellish existence will continue without interruption.

And what is it that women's "rights" activists fight for here? The right to choose abortion? Oh, grand. The right to equal pay? To equal educational opportunities? Standing in solidarity with women around the world who are being oppressed, of course. Clearly. Rallies of solidarity and peace songs and nudity (freedom!), so meaningful to a woman being raped 50 times a day.

Seething, is how this should read. Completely seething with anger and frustration and hatred and bold, bold cynicism.

Do you want to know who I'll be voting for? For the politician who has the brain and guts, conviction and integrity to stand up and shut up and effin' do something beyond wasting his or her breath and my time playing games of mud throwing, name calling, and crap.

2% tax decrease? Please.
Take 2% of our taxes and send it to African nations who are being devastated by AIDS.
Send it to China, to help the underground church.
Send it to Ukraine, send a team, start an organization to end poverty.
Food to Canadian children who go hungry.
Send it to India, break the cycle of lies that keep the Dalit as lower than second class citizens.
Shut down and rescue women from one brothel.
Apologize to Canadian Aboriginals, who carry an inheritance of oppression. Admit that WE WERE WRONG. Inquiries and conclusions and judge's decisions mean NOTHING when racism continues to be kept neat and tidy in a glass box called "institution".
To chinese immigrants, forced to live in underground tunnels beneath the streets of moosejaw.
Buy out a sweatshop in a small community in Bangladesh, build a school for the children, pay the workers money that will bring meaningful life...
And at the risk of being too lazy to do anything ourselves, give money world vision, redcross, christian children's fund, christian medical mission (meds for lepers)... some people have hearts and understanding of what the world needs. They'll do all the work.

These tax cuts are supposed to mean $4 billion dollars? Or $4 million?

All this scandal about wal-mart, using child labour. They're doing the "honourable, right" thing, and cutting ties with these factories. BfreakinS. Stay with the factories, provide education for the kids, real wages for the workers...as long as you're there, freakin' wal-mart, you might as well make a difference.

Oh wait...that would mean...sacrifice. Loss of profits. Work. Mmm...sorry, no. Too messy.

Oh, you better believe I'm honest, and angry, and determined. I will change one damn thing in this world if it kills me.

Watch out.