Blessed St. Nicholas, start praying for us

Santa Claus in his holier aspect is 'told off' as the patron saint of prostitutes. It is said that he saved a poor man from pimping his three daughters by giving him a sackful of gold. Why else would a guy want to peddle his daughters' butts than for some of the long green? It seems, though, that this story makes Nicholas the patron saint of almost-prostitutes, gals who get 'on the game'  need more patronage than that.

And so it goes in summertime Canada. For a decent little first world spot, Canada has its share of  'sex trade workers' - males and females who extend whatever paypacket they've got with a little 'professional' sex on the side. Now a non-association "they've" formed to 'represent' them has been hied into court to defend against a government challenge to a lower court ruling on 'anti-prostition laws' being contrary to their Charter rights and freedoms. This after another court ruling that cited prostitution as a "legitimate" occupation. Nobody seemed to challenge the notion that balling for dough was much different than anything else people do for dough, except when it comes to doing it on the street, or by bothering passers-by to find somebody with dough to do it for. Those laws about public prostitution, communicating for prostitution and living on the avails of prostitution are being challenged as laws that 'force' women  to 'work in the shadows' where, sometimes, their customers do them harm. What they want, I imagine, is the right to hang out a shingle, along with the more marketable body parts.

Strikes me that, unless the gals are working out of a high-security establishment, with glorified 'bouncers', that risk of harm isn't much diminished. Nor is any risk to 'johns' from those bouncers - who might be equated with guys who flunked out of police foundations courses at best, or a self-ordained 'lawmen' like 'The Dawg' at worst. One can only imagine the clientele. When you're breaking 'Mom's first law' and exposing yourself to 'strangers' you're asking for some trouble. Just look at the havoc caused by overly-friendly uncles and overzealous persons in authority - even to, we're told, the willing! I would doubt prostitution, even where it's a pillar of the society isn't plagued with a whole whack of related social ills. If it was any sort of social panacea, or even decent way to make a living, it would be promoted world-wide and we wouldn't be trying to remake it, again.

When it comes to banging for bucks there is no telling when a 'relationship' of long-standing isn't going to 'go sour' and somebody receive a good hiding - even in those non-prostitutional relationships. Adding a cash exchange just adds a flillip to the level of customer satisfaction and fogs the notion of another 'tip'. Cash enterprise is the stuff of real-world hurt feelings, donneybrooks and gunshots on  regular occasions. Prostitution has been a risky business since the days when the ladies had to 'show up for duty' in honor of the goddess at the temple once a year. Even nice gals, doing their religious duty, were exposed to the social misfits  who hung around the temple, gland in hand, waiting for just such an opportunity. Just look at the Pig Farmer of Kelowna. He could have slaughtered nice girls, but the hookers' lifestyle made it oh-so-much easier. That wouldn't have changed much, even if there were no 'take-out services', he was inviting them to 'parties'.

The Sex Trade Workers essentially want the law changed so they can 'open' their business in places it's not open now.  Anybody who's had the privilege of living beside an 'illegal' bawdy house can only imagine the fun it would be to have a legal one - running all above-board, 24/7 (closed for Christmas and high holidays)- next door. The increased tax revenue wouldn't begin to cover the increased police costs to fend off the phone complaints and investigate the damage to customers cars. And why would the girls want to give up the goodies they've got now - welfare, state child support  and/or disability payments, untaxed income, free health coverage and other social service benefits? No doubt these lifestyle 'perqs' wouldn't be included in any new legislation, but they will be, eventually, if prostituion continues to be expanded as a legitimate way to earn a living.

Hey, there's a new career field - specializing in the business end of the sex trade for 10 percent off the top. And let's not forget the investment opportunities provided by a chain of franchised high-end bordellos. Or is that just legalized pimping?

If This Don't Take the Cake

We're told that during Hitler's last few days  the question , "Where's Wenck?" echoed and re-echoed through the Fuhrerbunker under the devastated streets of Berlin. It was only when the question was answered that his 'army'  wasn't  any longer in existence that all hope was lost.

 In 1973, just before Watergate finished him, Nixon 'sold' the invasion of Cambodia as the ultimate winning strategy. We know now that, in return for a load of sequestered communist supplies,  the real outcome was the destabilization and ensuing destruction of Cambodia by the, until then impotent, Khmer Rouge. In that same war, the 1975 invasion of Laos by the South Vietnamese forces put paid to any chance they had of resisting the communists. A year later South Vietnam was consigned to the dustbin of history. When things get bad, the wacky get worse.

And so it continues in NATO's gallant fight to free the Libyans from the grasp of the guy they've been 'forced' to let rule them for almost 50 years. It's such a tough old fight with only the bomb plans left over from the Reagan era, that NATO is seeking the help of anybody willing. And so we have this fantastic tale:

"How social media users are helping NATO fight Gadhafi in Libya"

 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-mideast/how-social-media-users-are-helping-nato-fight-gadhafi-in-libya/article2060965/

One Graham Smith , writing in the otherwise sober Globe and Mail newspaper, comes out with this rather outlandish tale of how some granny's twitter intercepts are helping to plot targets for NATO airstrikes. How some equally uninformed ice cream store employee in Arizona was responsible for shutting down Ghaddafi's private oil revenue source - all from some simple Google searches. If Smith's right, he might just have discovered the secret formula for overcoming world terror - the power of the ''common Joe''. No longer working in armaments plants , the common North American Joe, or Josephine, can apply their Internet talents toward gleaning intel. Something that, apparently, the greatest force for good on earth hasn't the time or resources to do. Maybe a national campaign is in order.

 
If every 'Netizen' in the freedom-loving countries on earth would put aside their porn sites, P2P activities, hold on to the email or stop cruising for puppy portraits for one hour and concentrate on finding the facts for the forces of freedom, glorioski, we could really impress those jihadis and tie military intelligence in knots after two hours. Force the defeatists to provide our soldiers with some decent data processing software to sort through all the clues for the TRUTH.

 
Say, there's a word you don't hear much these days when the news is as manufactured as the first story I ever wrote about a 'parade'. Like that particular fiction, there is always a loss of focus, mine was 'clowns' in the parade, Smith's is the fiction that the military actually care about what they don't know and that  they'd care about what any civilian thinks - unless, perhaps, she's spitting on them.

 
You gotta admit, though, the story's almost as good as a 'cakewalk' piece.

To the Shores of Tripoli

Sometime in the next month or so, Little Stevie Wonder, the preemeer of Canada will be asking his parliamentary cronies to 'have patience' while he extends Canada's role in leading the forces of freedom against the world's current tyrant in Libya. I imagine the patience part will have more to do with those cronies who think the his government is still spending like a drunk on a payday spree, for it couldn't have much to do with the transmogrification of the 'time to fall' period, vis a vis Mr. Ghaddafi,  from a matter of  days to months. If nothing else, 'Stay the Course' is a mantra Steve apparently learned in utero.

And how are things in sunny Libya these days? Well it depends on who you're reading,  but none of it is that 'light at the end of the chunnel'  horsewallop.  Positively speaking, the rebels (now that couldn't be the best word for legitimate forces of freedom) keep on keeping on, lately toward Tripoli, or holding-off the onslaught of Ghaddafi's minions elsewhere. The first desert boots are on the ground - on the feet of some private 'security' personnel, there to offer 'training' to the ragtag rebel forces. "Leadership" would definitely be faster, but, perhaps, too expensive and might not sit well with the Libyans. The French and Brits have decided that deploying attack helicopters is warranted, to do a 'blue knight' and winkle the evildoing armour out of city allies and bazaars. Lately, the rebels are complaining that Ghaddafi is hiding all his 'good stuff' in or near mosques and hospitals and, only to-day, in the ruins of some of those reminders of Roman glory that dot the Mediterranean seashore. If grandpas 'had to' bomb Pompeii to winkle out the panzers, great-grandkids Bubba and Harold wouldn't think more than once about 'restructuring' Leptis Magna or Sabratha. NATO "isn't ruling anything out", even some world  heritage destruction would be Ghaddafi's fault.

On the negative side, things don't seem to be changing fast enough to have Ghaddafi get the 'willies' and go away. A bombing 'uptick' last week seemed aimed at removing more sand from bunker sites, or blasting Muammar's tent to shreds than it did actually 'awing' anybody. The NATO 'campaign' seems to be on summer holiday. It appears that the bombing might be more of a joke than anything else, if what the Toronto Star's Rosie 'the Riveter' DiManno is reporting from behind the lines, the Gahaddafites seem to be laughing it up! So it's either they're not taking NATO all that seriously, or they're doing the 'Berlin bunker thing' on a demi-national scale in a sort of latter-day gotterdammerung party - without the artillery.

Our dear friends in America seem to be willing, if not actually encouraging, NATO to take over the whole thing and leave them out of it.  If it's to be believed, the US has a very light footprint in Libya, some CIA spooks and US-based patriots trying to set up a cogent 'government' and find out who the 'bad guys' from AQ might be to head off any applecart-upsetting when mission becomes successful. That should have been easy, for Ghaddafi had most of them in jail, but the rebels released them.



So, right now, the Libyan thing is a 'non-war', in many places it's not even a media event - like in Canada or the US. It soon won't be an African event either, if NATO succeeds in getting satellite access blocked for Libya's government TV stations. One would have thunk that would have been right up there on the first day target list. Apparently not. They let Ghaddafi go on "lying" and "using propaganda against them", to show how 'free' everything is?

And that's a good thing for Stevie Harper's Government are getting ready for their hard-earned summer break which will see him ruling as the national autocrat until they reconvene around Thanksgiving Day (in Canada that's at the beginning of October) to extend our Libyan 'mission' to Christmas.

The House of Commons , yesterday, "unanimously"  (but with "vigorous" debate and a threat that such wouldn't happen in future) approved the extension of Canada's 'mission civilatrice' to the poor benighted Lbyan people. It also took the rather unique step of recognizing a non-group of 'rebels' as the legitimate national government. I don't even think the Commies recognized the Viet Cong as the legitimate government of anything before they won. But Canada points to a proud tradition of support for 'governments-in-exile' during WW2 ( what would they have been otherwise?),  Jean Bertrand Aristide in exile 1 (before the USA convinced us that he was really just an asshole-in-disguise and we joined in the UN-sponsored 'regime change' in that benighted nation.). I believe we even 'recognized' Pol Pot at one time.

That bit of hypocrisy is further diminished by the pusillanimous thumbsucking and political pettifoggery that holds up what we are doing trying to kill Ghaddafi  as some sort of moral exercise the Libyans really need. If we are so noble, why the restrictions? Why only $60 million and why only three months? Why aren't we  loading the invasion barges with unemployed lumberjacks and making plans for Syria, Yemen, Darfur or Bahrain, too? There are a ton of  places the UN has a responsibility for us to protect.