the world’s biggest karaoke competition finally made it to china. ironically.

watching these clips makes me miss being in China (or Taiwan)… there’s something about hearing Mandarin as the primary language of a place (even if it’s a box on my screen) that i didn’t realize i missed.

what cracks me up is, if you find some videos of horrible contestants and watch the judge’s comments, you realize that all along, Simon has been talking like every asian mom. asians are AMAZING at criticism. AMAZING. asian-americans who fit my blanket stereotype regularly hear worse things from their moms for getting B’s instead of A’s than cowellman could ever dish for singing poorly. the only difference is, Simon gives praise too once in a while.

i’m definitely thankful for mom’s vigilance and discipline.. it made failure and a life of ruin nearly impossible, at least while i was under her watch.. and, if i should ever try out for american idol, my face will not crumple on national television when simon pees on my dreams.

so, human trafficking. still an issue that makes me mad.

an economist article about it – an updated report by the state dept just went out, detailing the current horrors of trafficking around the world. as usual, it lists the guilty countries by tiers, with 3 being the worst. and, as the economist duly points out, the US is not on this list. ‘cos we’re … above judgment, somehow.

NYTimes compilation of human trafficking articles – yeah, so, trafficking happens in the US too.

the Kristof article about how we should follow the Swedish model of combating sex trafficking is interesting. basically, targeting supply isn’t working, legalizing prostitution doesn’t work because it makes the place where it’s legalized some kinda sex industry mecca, not necessarily any safer than if it were all underground in the first place. (see: Amsterdam). Swedes were criminalizing the customers instead, which seems to sort of work.

yeah. i mean, think about why this is a problem in the first place, why it even exists. because horny men want exotic, young pussy. and they are willing to pay. as long as there is demand -somewhere-, it’s still going to exist.

1. you can’t trust anyone – not the police (frequently complicit in trafficking, in certain countries), govt officials, even the biggest proponents of harsher sex industry laws (eliot spitzer?!?!). some of the loudest male feminists (on any scale) have the weirdest most messed up views of women (or worse, are lying poser feminists).

2. the girls can be trafficked wherever. cost is not really an issue, you just make them pay you back with the money of the customers themselves. how is this any different from, say, amazon.com. as long as there is a customer somewhere who wants something, the response of the increasingly globalized world is, “if you have money, you can have it.”

so basically… for a problem that by definition is indifferent to national borders, ANY localized response is going to be insufficient. legalization in one country makes it a flourishing hot spot. criminalization of demand in another country only makes people look for it elsewhere.

and the US sucks for not putting itself on the list.