Tiny Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sex workers in Bangladesh, some as young as 12, are putting their health at risk by taking a drug to make themselves fatter so they are more attractive to clients. Their madams feed them steroids also used to make cows gain weight:

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The Mahatma Gandhi Limited Edition 3000 and Mahatma Gandhi Limited Edition 241 [pens] are available for 93,500 dirhams (£7,292.89) and 13,800 dirhams (£1,076.38) respectively:

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Imagine living in a Tesco house, sending your child to a Tesco school, swimming in a Tesco pool and, of course, shopping at the local Tesco superstore. According to the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe), the government’s adviser on architecture and design, this collective monopoly is not an imaginary dystopia. “Tesco Towns” on this model are already being planned across the UK, from Inverness in Scotland to Seaton in Devon:

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It’s the ultimate hole in the wall a money machine that dispenses pure gold. But installed beneath the gold coated ceilings of Abu Dhabi’s Emirates Palace hotel, where royalty and billionaires come for cappuccinos topped with gold flakes, the machine almost seems part of the furniture:

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The Brazilian women’s movement’s applause for the inclusion of sexual and reproductive rights in the draft version of the government’s 3rd National Programme on Human Rights (PNDH 3) has been cut short by the decision to eliminate this controversial issue from the text. The government’s decision to modify the draft programme came after a campaign headed up by the Catholic Church, which went so far as to refer to leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as “Herod” an allusion to the king of Judea who ordered the killing of baby boys in and around Bethlehem after the birth of Jesus Christ, according to the Bible.

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“I’m not being rightwing,” she [Ayaan Hirsi Ali] says. “The people who believe themselves to be on the left, and who defend the agents of Islam in the name of tolerance and culture, are being rightwing. Not just rightwing. Extreme rightwing. I don’t understand how you can be so upset about the Christian right and just ignore the Islamic right. I’m talking about equality.”

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A regiment of eunuchs should be established to guard India’s borders and leading politicians, a state minister suggested on Tuesday, citing their “loyalty and integrity”:

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An Australian woman Monday pleaded guilty to using her 12 yearold daughter as a sex worker. The 41year old woman, who was herself sexually abused when she was a child, has admitted to being the commercial operator of a sexual services business..The court was told that in August last year the woman complained of not having money so she and another man, Gary John Devine, decided to use her daughter as a prostitute

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Half of America has only 2.5% of the wealth

Half of America has only 0.5% of the stocks and bonds

Real average earnings have not increased in 50 years

Taxes get better and better for the rich

If you aren’t in the top 1%, then you’re getting a bum deal

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