We are relieved the Italian journalist was set free. I, personally, was very happy. Iraqis are getting abducted these days by the dozen, but it still says something else about the country when foreigners are abducted. Iraqis have a fierce sense of hospitality that can border on the obnoxious sometimes. When people come to our houses, we insist they have something to drink and then we insist they stay for whatever meal is coming- even if its four hours away. We cringe when journalists and aide workers are abducted because it gives us the sense that we’re bad hosts.
People are always wondering why they abduct journalists, and other innocents. I think its because the lines are all blurred right now. It’s difficult to tell who is who. Who is a journalist, for example, and who is foreign intelligence? Who is a mercenary and who is an aide worker? People are somewhat more reluctant to talk to foreigners than they were at the beginning.
The irony of the situation lay in the fact that Sgrena was probably safer with her abductors than she was with American troops. It didn’t come as a surprise to hear her car was fired at. Was it done on purpose? It’s hard to tell. I can’t think why they would want to execute Giuliana Sgrena and her entourage, but then on the other hand, I can’t think how it could have possibly happened that they managed to fire that many rounds at a car carrying Italian intelligence officers and a journalist (usually they save those rounds for Iraqi families in cars).
There really is no good excuse for what happened. I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out what the Pentagon will say short of an admission that it was either on purpose or that the soldiers who fired at the car were drunk or high on something…
[...]
The event of the week occurred last Wednesday and I was surprised it wasn’t covered by Western press. It’s not that big a deal, but it enraged people in Baghdad and it can also give a better picture of what has been going on with our *heroic* National Guard. There was an explosion on Wednesday in Baghdad and the wounded were all taken to Yarmuk Hospital, one of the larger hospitals in Baghdad. The number of wounded were around 30- most of them National Guard. In the hospital, it was chaos- patients wounded in this latest explosion, patients from other explosions and various patients from gunshot wounds, etc. The doctors were running around everywhere, trying to be in four different places at once.
Apparently, there weren’t enough beds. Many of the wounded were in the hallways and outside of the rooms. The stories vary. One doctor told me that some of the National Guard began screaming at the doctors, telling them to ignore the civilians and tend to the wounds of the Guard. A nurse said that the National Guard who weren’t wounded began pulling civilians out of the beds and replacing them with wounded National Guard. The gist of it is generally the same; the doctors refused the idea of not treating civilians and preferring the National Guard over them and suddenly a fight broke out. The doctors threatened a strike if the National Guard began pulling the civilians out of beds.
The National Guard decided the solution to the crisis would be the following- they’d gather up some of the doctors and nurses and beat them in front of the patients. So several doctors were rounded up and attacked by several National Guard (someone said there was liberal use of electric batons and the butts of some Klashnikovs).
The doctors decided to go on strike.
It’s difficult to consider National Guardsmen as heroes with the image of them beating doctors in white gowns in ones head. It’s difficult to see them as anything other than expendable Iraqis with their main mission being securing areas and cities for Americans.
What it seems policy makers in America don’t get, and what I suspect many Americans themselves *do* get, is that millions of Iraqis feel completely detached from the current people in power. If you don’t have an alliance with one of the political parties (ie under their protection or on their payroll) then it’s difficult to feel any affinity with people like Jaffari, Allawi, Talbani, etc. We watch them on television, tight-lipped and shifty-eyed after a meeting where they quarreled about Kirkuk or Sharia in the constitution and it feels like what I imagine an out-of-body experience should feel like.
In spite of elections, they still feel like puppets. But now, they are high-tech puppets. They were upgraded from your ordinary string puppets to those life-like, battery-powered, talking puppets. It’s almost like we’re doing that whole rotating president thing Bremer did in 2003 all over again. The same faces are getting tedious. The old Iraqi saying sums it up nicely, “Tireed erneb- ukhuth erneb. Tireed ghazal- ukhuth erneb.” The translation for this is, “You want a rabbit? Take a rabbit. You want a deer? Take a rabbit.”
Except we didn’t get any rabbits- we just got an assortment of snakes, weasels and hyenas.
Just as myriad swingers sites allow soccer moms to commit adultery and married men to cheat with impunity, a new British website is helping people to become part-time prostitutes.
Across Britain and Ireland plenty of people are willing to pay for sex -- and plenty more are willing to provide it, but until now it has largely been the domain of professional sex workers.
Britain's AdultWork website is plugging into the growing niche industry of sex-work dilettantes, people who spend a few hours a week in front of a camera, or in bed with a client, to augment their income -- or maybe even just because they like it.
Sex and the internet have a long history. Besides pornography, there are plenty of sites where sex-starved people can hook up. AdultFriendFinder is the world's most popular "no-strings" sex site, with almost 17 million users. Others like Swingers Europe, Naughtynightlife.com and Swinger Zone are far from unpopular.
And there are plenty of specialist sites too: Gaydar and Gay.com for gay hookups, URNotAlone for transsexuals and Alt for bondage and sadomasochism enthusiasts.
But while these sites are just dating forums, AdultWork is an online clearinghouse for sex work.
At present it has almost 3,000 members offering services, and several times that number buying or browsing. In addition to sex, the services on offer include webcam peep shows, homemade movies, phone sex and sex by cell-phone SMS. The site launched in late 2003 but had little immediate impact. It's taken just under two years to rise to prominence.
Users must create a free account to browse the services offered. Users can rate the services they've tried, or even offer their own services. Like eBay, AdultWork takes a cut of all transactions, which are processed through the web bank Nochex.
Indeed, with its ratings honor system, AdultWork is something like an eBay for sex. And sex isn't the only service available through the site. All the secondary occupations supporting it are also listed -- bodyguards, cleaners, receptionists, even web designers.
[...]
One of AdultWork's part-time escorts is Melissa from Belfast. Melissa is an attractive, intelligent and well-read 20-year-old. A full-time student of communications, she is internet- and media-savvy -- a far cry from the clichéd call girl.
"I think what I do is very different to prostitution, well in my head, anyway," she said. "I guess it depends how you codify things -- everyone is a prostitute at some level. We're all willing to whore some aspect of our body or soul for financial or material gains."
For Melissa, escorting is part-time work that provides good money. She insists it's not sordid.
"Prostitution suggests standing on a street corner to feed a drug habit," she said. "I think of myself as a Holly Golightly, Breakfast at Tiffany's kind of call girl.... It's been a bit of a fantasy for me to have this secret life that only I know about."
[...]
The owners of AdultWork, AW Systems, remain a mystery. Despite being aimed at a British and Irish audience, the site is hosted from the Netherlands. Holland's liberal laws allow sex for money to be openly promoted. Ironically, a similar site for the Dutch is a non-starter: Prostitution has already been normalized.
A British Home Office spokeswoman said prostitution is not illegal in the United Kingdom, but solicitation and pimping are -- and that AdultWork is pimping.
"Action would be a matter for the police," she said. "But if such a site was indeed U.K.-based, it could be shut down."
"Anything that gives women more power over their work would help," she said. "Stigmatizing sex, preventing women from being able to work together and so on, those things just make them more vulnerable.... Taking your clothes off doesn't necessarily make something a bad job."
UPDATE: “Melissa” Exposed And while we’re on the subject of ripoffs today: A story on a UK escort site that appeared on Wired News yesterday includes several quotes by “Melissa”, described as “an attractive, intelligent and well-read 20-year-old” from Belfast who’s a “internet- and media-savvy”, a “full-time student of communications, and “a far cry from the clichéd call girl”. But before you get out your credit card and start booking a flight to Northern Ireland, consider the fact that Melissa seems to have “borrowed” the pictures she uses in her profiles on several websites: specifically, and coincidentally, she’s passing off photos of Neon at Burning Angel (whose photo Wired used yesterday to illustrate the article, though it’s since been removed) and Mary and other models from Suicide Girls as her own—and whose different looks she explains with a simple “I’m now longer a brunette…I’ve returned to dazzling blonde!”. “Internet savvy” indeed. (Maybe she was just doing research for a book contract or something?) Caveat emptor, folks!
Not long ago, London resident Christine Tomas received a text message through her cell phone from a stranger who shared her belief that George W. Bush is an alien.
That unlikely moment presaged more texting, about movies, and eventually led to Tomas finding a long-term salsa dancing partner.
Tomas is a heavy user of Playtxt -- a cell-phone service that connects people nearby who have stated similar preferences.
Across the pond, in New York, Diane McGunigle used another service, dodgeball.com, as the lubricant to introduce herself to someone she saw on the subway but had been too bashful to talk to.
"I checked in to dodgeball," she said, and "I got an alert that 'so-and-so has a crush on you, and he is at X bar, go and say hi.'" she said.
So McGunigle went to the bar, and by coincidence, it was the same guy she'd just seen on the subway. Like her, he'd been too shy to make an approach, but not to send a text message.
"I now had a valid and less-frightening excuse to meet him," McGunigle said.
Dodgeball and England's Playtxt are two examples of mobile social-software services, otherwise known by the catchy acronym, MoSoSos.
MoSoSos are the mobile equivalents of online social networks like Friendster and LinkedIn. They help users find old friends, or potential new ones, on the go.
Typically, users set up a profile listing interests, hobbies and romantic availability. They also state what kind of people they'd like to meet. Because the service is tied to a mobile device, it knows when people with similar interests are near each other.
Not surprisingly, MoSoSos are ideal for hooking up young, active professionals tied to their mobile phones or laptops, and they're starting to take off.
[...]
Jambo Networks: Launched at last month's Demo conference, Jambo utilizes Wi-Fi hotspots to connect its members, who join through their university, workplace or affinity group like an alumni association. The service determines if anyone logged onto a hot spot with a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop, PDA or smartphone is a member of the same group. If there's more than one, each person sees the other's profile, which, among other things, highlights similar interests.
Following the MoSoSo model, Jambo facilitates pseudonymous messaging between the two users, who then decide if they want to introduce themselves.
[...]
Plazes: Based in Germany, Plazes revolves around the idea that anyone with a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop can define a "plaze." A plaze is usually a Wi-Fi hot spot. It tells where the user is located and looks for other members nearby.
[...]
"Geographically, mobile messaging is maturing and finding new groups of users beyond the initial curious," said Judith Meskill, a social-networking expert. "People are now beginning to get how amazingly valuable this is to their lives in motion."
But Meskill thinks MoSoSos are a natural fit for universities or groups like the American Cancer Society.
"Passive social-networking services that merely aggregate our friends, and their friends, ad infinitum, eventually lose their luster," said Meskill. "Geographically mobile solutions that help us connect with our affinity groups or friends are infinitely more sticky."
GuessWhatiHeard.com encourages members to “dish” on their ex-friends, flames, business partners and classmates — earning itself the title of “juiciest site to hit the web in years” from “industry experts” (which industry? which experts?). Site founder Kelly Felix says he created the site in response to reviews of Friendster et al as “boring.” Apparently, the proper antidote to boring is gossip!
