Tag Archives: 3rd World

The 2017 Women’s March: A Q&A Guide for Dummies

What rights have been taken away during Trump’s first 24 hours in office?

The ACA is presently being dismantled, meaning millions of Americans will be deprived of health insurance. Of this number, women are uniquely affected. As explained in The New York Times:

Until now, it has been perfectly legal in most states for companies selling individual health policies — for people who do not have group coverage through employers — to engage in “gender rating,” that is, charging women more than men for the same coverage, even for policies that do not include maternity care.

As deeply flawed a system as the ACA is, outright elimination will result in a sudden and fundamentally arbitrary penalization of women on the basis of their sex. The added cost will be especially detrimental to women in or near poverty (besides sucking for everyone in general).

So this is about Obamacare?

Not necessarily. The dismantling of the ACA is merely one of the many issues being protested by the millions of women marching in the US and around the world. Points include (but are not limited to):

  • Gay Rights – As the vice president has openly stated that gay marriage signal “societal collapse“, and has actively legislated the exclusion of gays from the military and a number of other civil rights issues.
  • Public Services – Which have been threatened with reduced funding, if not complete elimination, by high ranking members of the administration.
  • Defense of Racial and Religious Minorities – particularly people of color and Muslims, who have received ample disparagement and hostility from almost everyone within the administration.
  • Environmental Issues – The very existence of which Trump has denied, claiming global warming to be a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.
  • And easily a dozen more…

Bah! These protesters should be grateful for how easy they have it. Now women living in the third world, they experience real oppression. Why isn’t anyone speaking up for them?

imxzs1v Continue reading

Passing Post-Modernism

It’s 2015, readers, and what better way to start off the year that’s just beginning than by railing on an idea that need to end? Yup, we’re talking Postmodernism here.

Not too long ago, I wrote an article giving an overview of Postmodernism, and it nearly killed me. Yours truly tries to make a point of not including my own judgments in these posts and just let folks draw their own conclusions, but this one- gah. Took every ounce of my (limited) restraint not to rip it to pieces and cackle victoriously as I squat over the grave of Jacques Derrida and…

…well I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?

What’s Postmodernism? Continue reading

Re: Do Western Christians Want Martyrs? – Yes, They Do

Yesterday, CWR’s own Kat posted “Do Western Christians Want Martyrs?”, a short post questioning the motivations behind the recent outpouring of Western sympathy for the plight of Iraqi and Syrian Christians, currently being massacred by the forces of the terrorist group formerly known as ISIS. That post prompted the following comment: “[it] seems a bit sick to turn this into a critique of Christians or Christianity… what is it in you that wants to make this a critique of Christian hypocrisy?

Now I don’t think it was Kat’s intention to downplay the genocide in progress in the Levant and it certainly isn’t mine either. So why critique Christians?

Because Christians are guilty.

No, they’re not pulling the triggers or wielding the swords, but the actions of Western Christians have contributed not only to the slaughter of Iraqi and Chaldean believers, but the persecution, suffering, and misery of the church  all across the world. And even as Western Christians switch their profiles to the Arabic letter “nun” for “Nazarene”, the self same people continue to be part of the problem.

Let me show you a picture:

These are the first of the first. The oft-forgotten Christians of Palestine. The descendents of the very first followers of Christ. These people are literally Nazarenes.

Where is their defense? Continue reading

Banning Bossy

I’ve leveled the accusation a few times now that the contemporary feminist movement is latching on to every passing cause célèbre in a desperate bid to maintain relevance. Unwilling to advocate for radical change, an increasingly large number of people are questioning whether or not feminism has run its course, and things like “Ban Bossy” aren’t helping.

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Shame Day: Nike, Coca-Cola, and Nestle

By request, this Shame Day is going to be a triple-feature, with three of the most insidious corporations out there out in the stocks. Now I’m currently boycotting all three of these companies (and have been for some time) and made banning them from campus the priority of my college activism. That’s all just to say that I’ve had a long time to build and hone my venomous rage and hatred of both these companies, so buckle up- this is going to be vicious one.


Let’s start with Nike.

Nike

Even the mildest of the companies many, many offenses is still pretty vile. Take a look at this ad Nike ran back in 2008 for the Beijing Olympics:

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Fame Day: Cambodian Orphans and the Calgary Flood

These are some of the kids at the Place of Rescue orphanage in Cambodia.

The reason I want to talk about these kids is because on June 20th one of my best friends was evacuated from her home in Calgary, B.C. due to extensive flooding.

There was actually a lot of cool stories I began hearing after the flood. Like the time the city asked for a few hundred volunteers to come out and help clean out flooded homes and a few thousand showed up instead.

But the coolest story I heard was actually about those kids at the orphanage in Cambodia.  About six days after my friend was evacuated kids and staff at the place of rescue pulled together and sent a total of $900 to help with flood relief in Calgary. Apparently they had each been given the equivalent of about $12 Canadian money by the Cambodian prime minister’s wife not long before the flooding here in Canada. When they heard about the damages they decided to send some of the money they had been given to help with flood repairs. The reason I find this so exciting is because here in North America we tend to think we don’t actually have any real problems.

And we are constantly told about the horrible things happening overseas and why we should send money to help stop these horrible things from happening.

I’m not saying these horrible things aren’t happening. I’m not saying there isn’t a real need, or even that we shouldn’t send money overseas. All I’m saying is that we need them just as much as they need us. When the discussion of poverty is constantly framed in a way that leads us to believe we have the power to save lives it tends to lead to a bit of a god complex.

Not to mention that it also allows us to forget that often we are part of the problem. According to Blaine Sylvester, director of the Calgary-based Canadian

Foundation Place of Rescue, the kids at the orphanage don’t feel like they are so  poverty stricken that they can’t share with their Canadian friends: “The children may live in spartan conditions and sleep 10 to a house with a house mother, but they’re safe, they’re secure and they’re loved.” While Canada and the States are ranked well below countries like Fiji, Nigeria and Ghana on the Global Happiness Index we still assume North Americans need to teach countries we perceive to be “3rd world” how they ought to live.

But while more and more North Americans begin to suffer from donor fatigue, the kids at Place of Rescue seem more than happy to teach us how to give.