Facebook allows sexually exploitative pages to stay up.

Oaky, so Facebook deletes and bans pictures of women breastfeeding, or of mastectomy scars/cover-ups, yet leaves up pages promoting rape, violence against women, pictures of nearly-naked breasts that aren't breastfeeding and show more skin than the breastfeeding pictures, and this page, that's dedicated to one of India's largest red-light districts, which is well-known for being made up mostly of underage girls and sex-trafficking victims. It has EXPLICIT photos of blowjobs and sex. Some photos have been up since before 2012.

And Facebook refuses to take it down.

Here's the Tumblr post and screencaps. Reblog the hell out of this, my friends, and report it to Facebook like crazy. My friends and I are reporting it as "I don't think should be on Facebook" and then "Sexually explicit content."

http://thehistoryoftheladder.tumblr.com/post/52181800196/this-is-the-response-i-received-from-facebook


Update #1: Here's an article on the website Jezebel and the author's Tweet about it.

http://powderroom.jezebel.com/nsfw-facebook-says-that-page-trafficking-women-doesnt-511363941

https://twitter.com/SlayBelle/status/342119323546050561


Update #2: Jezebel ran the above story on their front page, and it got into the Daily Dot.

Minutes later, the page was deleted.

However, at least two other pages advertising Sonagachi are still up, albeit with less explicit photos. That doesn't change the fact that many of the women and underage girls in Sonagachi are sex-trafficking victims, and I'm pretty sure "advertizing prostitutes - willing or not" is a major violation of Facebook's TOS.

If only they had pictures of some of them breast-feeding. >.<

An open letter to Mike Huckabee.

Mike Huckabee, rumoured to be the Republican Party's main Presidential candidate in 2012, has made inane and idiotic (is that redundant? Close, but no) remarks about Natalie Portman's pregnancy.

For those who don't know, Ms. Portman, who is 29 years old, an Academy Award-winning actress, and a Harvard graduate with a B.A. in psychology (obtained during the filming of the three Star Wars prequels), and who's had a 4.0 GPA since grade school, is pregnant by her partner and fiance, Benjamin Millipied.

Mr. Huckabee slammed single mothers in general, calling them "very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care." He neglected to comment on single fathers, or men who abandon the women they've knocked up, as if it's only women who have a hand in getting pregnant.

A Family Crises.

Steve

Before I converted, I briefly dated a very intelligent, thoughtful, open-minded man who happened to be a convert to Judaism.  I forget his Jewish name, but his birth-name was Steve.  We broke up for reasons unrelated to either of our religious beliefs (I was pagan or agnostic at the time; can't remember which).

Throughout our relationship, Steve was very adamant about there being a huge difference between Israeli Jews and Zionism, and the rest of the world's Jewry.  He tried to go over and volunteer in the IDF every year,  but he was still very firm in that Zionism did not equal Judaism, and once told me that Jews aren't even supposed to set foot on the Holy Land until the Messiah comes, and that even if Moses himself (peace be upon him) were chasing him, all Steve would do would be to go into Israel and Moses wouldn't be able to follow him.  Steve was upset about the Israeli-Palestinian BS, but he still respected and understood that not every Jew and every Muslim hated each other.  He knew that it was a mainly political mess that was using religion to further its cause.  Steve was also the one who told me that the word "Messiah" is talking about a political leader, not the spiritual leader that most Christians hold it to mean.

The first rule of Restaurant of Awesome: STOP FIGHTING.

Here's another update, then I'm going to write a bit about my new drivers license.

Thursday I noticed that I'd been put on Sundays from 5-9 pm for some reason, this week and next.  Huh.  Totally screws with my role-playing schedule, but oh, well.  I can't remember anything of note happening.

Friday, on my way to Family Night at the masjid, Gina-Bean calls me.  She says she's got food poisoning or something and wants me to cover her shift, but Ricardo said I'd called off that night.  I was like, "Lolwut, heck no, I didn't call off."  So I called Ricardo and told him so, and that I was taking Gina-Bean's shift.  Ricardo went of on me writing a note asking for the 23rd & 24th off, and I was all, "Uhm, Ricardo?  It's the 29th."  It was actually the 30th, but my point still stands.  Called Gina back, and it turns out that when I'd written a note saying, "May I please have the 23rd & 24th off, blahblahblah," earlier this month, my extremely intelligent managers, as well as Gina, had confused "May" as is "polite request" with "May" as in "The month between April and June."  Which explains why I didn't get that weekend off, but I'd forgotten I have a Saturday class, so it was good I didn't go to the retreat I wanted to go to.  It also turns out that I've honestly been doing an awesome job, not just bragging about doing an awesome job, and my extra Sunday shift is the tangible reward for that.

Thursdays were exciting for a while.

So, on the 4th I stayed late to give my co-worker, G-Bean, a ride home. Around 5 I wandered into Walgreen's to kill time and buy a couple things. Two girls were there, looking grumpy, so I ignored them with a smile and headed to the back of the store to get my shtoof, when ...

All of a sudden I hear yelling and cursing and one of the girls yelling something about "You stole my phone, call the cops, would you hit a girl?" and so on, and then a crash of what I learned later was baskets being knocked over. I stayed in the back and looked over, and the manager was ushering out two guys and two girls. Oaky, fine, emergency dealt with ...

Until I hear, "Get the customer and get in the back" as the manager comes power-walking down the aisle. I'm ushered into the back room, where I learn that Girl A had lost her cell phone, and when her friend called it, the guy who picked up said he'd bought it just then off of Craig's List, and if they met at Walgreen's and she gave him $50, he'd give it back (legally, if you purchase stolen property, you can't charge the owners for returning it, btw). He and his friend showed up and he wouldn't give it back, and he and Girl A got into a fistfight over it. When the manager got them outside, the guy whipped out a shotgun.

Hence, I chilled with the Walgreen's employees for almost an hour as the cops were called and came over, and let their dogs sniff around the store. Thrilling.

A week later, the 11th (the day before I took Shahada!), two big groups came in. One of them was a young lady and her friends, and the young lady was exercising her right to wear as little as she pleased. In the second group, a young man exercised his right to comment on the young lady's lack of clothing, at which point she and her friends got pissy (and rightfully so - lack of clothing doesn't mean you can disrespect someone). It escalated, as these things do. I was divvying up a check for a table when I heard the shouting and looked over, and immediately rolled my eyes and stalked over, getting right in the middle of it and pushing people away from each other, yelling for them to calm down or leave, grabbing a raised chair from a guy twice, and generally being a pissed-off waitress. Don't you dare start a fight while I'm working! Note: Don't get into the middle of fights. It's dangerous. The cops arrived and exercised their right to pimp-slap people around and hauled off the young lady and her friends. I heard later that she might have been 17, as well. Out past curfew, in a fight, possibly drunk ... right.

The most memorable line from that fight:

Girl: "If my boyfriend was here, you'd be flat on the ground!"
Guy: "If your boyfriend were here, I'd punch him in the mouth!"

Threatening people with hypothetical situations just makes everyone else laugh at you. Just sayin'.

Anyway, I was bummed that the next two Thursdays were uneventful.