Tag: politics
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Silencing and Censorship in the Trans Rights debate. Part 2
Part Two. The transgender debate is increasingly characterised by no-platforming, withdrawal from participation, censorship, bullying, threats, intimidation, silencing, stonewalling and expulsion from groups for those who express dissent from the ‘popular’ transgender narrative. The following Tasmanian case studies outline examples of trans rights crusaders and their ideological supporters apparently acting in a manner inconsistent with…
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Outrage over Oxfam Investigations into Paedophiles, Sexual Misconduct …
Yesterday’s news about NGO Oxfam’s 2011 internal investigation into allegations against some staff over sexual abuse, harassment and illegal use of prostitutes revealed a totally abhorrent culture within some elements of the world-renowned aid organisation. Several staff members who worked with Oxfam in Chad and Haiti between 2006 and 2010 have been dismissed or have…
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Funding Cuts to Scarlet Alliance: Michael Keenan Gets it Right …
I can only congratulate Justice Minister Michael Keenan for not allocating funding to the Scarlet Alliance in the 2017/18 round of funding to NGOs for combating sex trafficking and slavery in Australia. In February, March and April this year I was a co-signatory of a group of concerned womens’ human rights campaigners who wrote to…
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Amnesty International’s Capitulation to Women’s Increasing Poverty and Subordination to Men
“We need to eroticise equality. Prostitution is about buying a body, not mutual pleasure and free choice”, says Gloria Steinem … “The end of prostitution might be a distant ideal, but it is still far better than Amnesty’s grubby collusion with misogyny.” – Julie Bindel Simone Watson, a Survivor of prostitution recalls her experiences at…
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It’s Bad News from New Zealand’s Survivors …
Survivors from the sex trade in New Zealand are speaking out about the tragic failure of decriminalisation aimed at preventing harms to prostituted women and girls from sex buyers and pimps but here in Tasmania Young Labor and many in the Union movement don’t want to hear their voices. The Scarlet Alliance ramped up their…
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Thomas Kent and the Sex Party Propaganda Machine …
Thomas Kent, in recent comments on an article in Overland journal Sex work and silence by Celeste Elizabeth, member of the Women’s Legal Service Board and self proclaimed delinquent, has outed himself as the propagandist for the Sex Party in Australia he is. While Sex trade apologists Elizabeth and Kent continue to attack abolitionists, they…
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Young Labor Didn’t Do its Homework
Tasmanian Labor’s agenda for its conference in Queenstown this weekend has promised an opportunity for ‘robust and spirited debate’. While the decriminalisation of brothels and the legalisation of some illicit drugs are being proposed by two separate branches of the party, the coupling of both proposals is difficult to avoid. A more cynical person would…
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The Reluctance of Tasmanian Authorities …
Consultation Session with Michel Forst, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders – Civil Society Activists, Saturday 8 October 2016 Representatives of the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) Southern Tasmania, Nordic Model Australia Coalition (NorMAC) and Whistleblowers Tasmania attended the civil society activists consultation session in Hobart. M. Forst is visiting Australia as part of…
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Whistleblowers Tasmania Backs Call for Parliamentary Inquiry …
Whistleblowers Tasmania has backed the call by Tessa Anne from the Women’s Liberation Front for a Parliamentary Inquiry into the conduct of the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Robin Banks and Equal Opportunity Tasmania Policy Advisor Leica Wagner. The allegations made by Tessa Anne and reported in The Australian on Saturday 1st October are significant and need to…
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Prostitution – The Global Humanitarian Disaster of the 21C
At a public event held at Parliament House in Hobart, Tasmanian advocate Isla MacGregor delivered a lecture examining Amnesty International’s 2016 policy supporting the full decriminalisation of the sex trade. Speaking alongside survivor advocate Simone Watson of the Nordic Model Australia Coalition, MacGregor questioned whether Amnesty’s approach prioritised the rights of those selling sex or…