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We get letters (updated)
Ryan, the founder of Concientious Traveller, discovered the first piece I wrote.
He takes exceptions, and saw fit to send them to me. (you really ought to go and see the responses he's sent me)
He's offended that I said this was a scam, and asks what my problem is with his enterprise.
Ok, here are my specific problems: it's an insane idea which can never work; a mad enterprise which will, if actually undertaken, be lucky to end no more badly than a bunch of people in prison in someplace unpleasant.
That's the short version.
The long version.
What he is proposing is illegal. It's kidnapping people. To make it worse it's then taking them to some other place and making them prisoners of a different sort. They won't be refugees. They won't legally be allowed to go anyplace (except, pehaps, the place from whence they were stolen away). They will be at the mercy of those who stole them. It may be with the best of intentions, but that's what he proposes.
He claims to want to turn these girls into some sort of political players, people who will go home and reform the places from whence they came.
Not. Gonna. Happen.
When asked about getting passports for them (so they may attend university) the it goes like this:
Q: "But just because they are accepted to a university in Europe or the US doesn't mean that they'll be allowed to take up permanent residence. (How do you even propose to establish these children's identities, get birth certificates, passports etc., that will allow them to travel?)"
A: I never said they would. Now your asking very detailed information and it's not going to be answered, one as I don't deal with this part and secondly as this is not for public forums.
Not inspiring.
If he manages to kidnap some girls, they will be, at best (if all the madcap schemes work), like Ahmad Chalabi, seen as puppets for someone else's interest. At worst, they will go home, preach his brand of world reformation, and be locked up/killed, for being a threat to the gov't/society.
I'd love to see places like Burma become better places. Does anyone think I know enough about the situation to collect a bunch of "sex slaves" from Burma, take them to an island, where I've brought some others from Thailand, Laos, the Dominican Republic, etc, train them all; in, I assume, the same philosophical underpinnings of how the word ought to be (that's why I chose Plato's "Philosopher King" analogy, and they will be able to go home, to a society they were never fully a part of, and take over? All the while running a nature preserve and breeding up endangered animals to repopulate in the wild (I really like that touch, it gets the warm-fuzzie sorts of the "save the planet" sorts to buy into this).
No.
His responses elsewhere (this has become so my father tells me, a huge discussion at CouchSurfing because he's trying to recruit people to help him market Concientious Traveller, by selling them on the "altruistic" works of the subsidaries which will change the world by kidnapping children in the sex trade and brainwashing them into political missionaries for his utopic vision of a future world) don't make me feel any better about this.
Which was the other stuff, packed in there, which disturbing me.
What about the white girls in the same boat. There are women in, Japan Israel, Korea, and, I am sure, a few more places, who were lured with offers of jobs, and then forced into being prostitutes. I don't see mention of this.
I think it's because they are adults. Because they aren't likely to be pliable enough to be brainwashed into thinking they are going to be the salvation of the world.
I don't think it's concious version of the "White Man's Burden" and going out to help the poor, backwards Orientals join the civilised world, but that does seem to be part of the driving mindset.
I don't like the sex trade. I think the commodification of people is horrid. Going off on a vigilante raid to kidnap them, and then, "rehabilitate" them, much less training them to be advocates of his agenda, well... No.
That's at least as bad.
He takes exceptions, and saw fit to send them to me. (you really ought to go and see the responses he's sent me)
He's offended that I said this was a scam, and asks what my problem is with his enterprise.
Ok, here are my specific problems: it's an insane idea which can never work; a mad enterprise which will, if actually undertaken, be lucky to end no more badly than a bunch of people in prison in someplace unpleasant.
That's the short version.
The long version.
What he is proposing is illegal. It's kidnapping people. To make it worse it's then taking them to some other place and making them prisoners of a different sort. They won't be refugees. They won't legally be allowed to go anyplace (except, pehaps, the place from whence they were stolen away). They will be at the mercy of those who stole them. It may be with the best of intentions, but that's what he proposes.
He claims to want to turn these girls into some sort of political players, people who will go home and reform the places from whence they came.
Not. Gonna. Happen.
When asked about getting passports for them (so they may attend university) the it goes like this:
Q: "But just because they are accepted to a university in Europe or the US doesn't mean that they'll be allowed to take up permanent residence. (How do you even propose to establish these children's identities, get birth certificates, passports etc., that will allow them to travel?)"
A: I never said they would. Now your asking very detailed information and it's not going to be answered, one as I don't deal with this part and secondly as this is not for public forums.
Not inspiring.
If he manages to kidnap some girls, they will be, at best (if all the madcap schemes work), like Ahmad Chalabi, seen as puppets for someone else's interest. At worst, they will go home, preach his brand of world reformation, and be locked up/killed, for being a threat to the gov't/society.
I'd love to see places like Burma become better places. Does anyone think I know enough about the situation to collect a bunch of "sex slaves" from Burma, take them to an island, where I've brought some others from Thailand, Laos, the Dominican Republic, etc, train them all; in, I assume, the same philosophical underpinnings of how the word ought to be (that's why I chose Plato's "Philosopher King" analogy, and they will be able to go home, to a society they were never fully a part of, and take over? All the while running a nature preserve and breeding up endangered animals to repopulate in the wild (I really like that touch, it gets the warm-fuzzie sorts of the "save the planet" sorts to buy into this).
No.
His responses elsewhere (this has become so my father tells me, a huge discussion at CouchSurfing because he's trying to recruit people to help him market Concientious Traveller, by selling them on the "altruistic" works of the subsidaries which will change the world by kidnapping children in the sex trade and brainwashing them into political missionaries for his utopic vision of a future world) don't make me feel any better about this.
Which was the other stuff, packed in there, which disturbing me.
What about the white girls in the same boat. There are women in, Japan Israel, Korea, and, I am sure, a few more places, who were lured with offers of jobs, and then forced into being prostitutes. I don't see mention of this.
I think it's because they are adults. Because they aren't likely to be pliable enough to be brainwashed into thinking they are going to be the salvation of the world.
I don't think it's concious version of the "White Man's Burden" and going out to help the poor, backwards Orientals join the civilised world, but that does seem to be part of the driving mindset.
I don't like the sex trade. I think the commodification of people is horrid. Going off on a vigilante raid to kidnap them, and then, "rehabilitate" them, much less training them to be advocates of his agenda, well... No.
That's at least as bad.
Re: Founder Response
(Anonymous) 2007-07-07 03:39 am (UTC)(link)You don't? How about the other whores? And since you're not concerning yourself with the boys... what about the boy whores? You're only going to rescue girls from single-sex rural brothels with no adult prostitutes? Brothels with no neighbouring houses, nobody walking down the street, no one delivering supplies, no one paid to do the laundry, no newly engaged bloke who was brought by a couple of friends as a joke, no kids hanging around hoping to earn money from running errands or... Brothels generally don't exist in isolation.
2. Will Blood Rose engage in violence, remember these people rape young girls, 2.1 why would you even care about this? 2.2 Maybe.
And raping young girls is wrong and nasty and bad. But so is GBH and murder. Why do I care about people being murdered? Well, I suspect that people with a very black and white sense of right and wrong, and whose first resort is to violence, are not the best caretakers of vulnerable and disturbed children.
3. You need to know more about what these girls want and liasie, means being inside to find out, poseing as a customer, but not doing anything and simply taking all precaustions for theri safe rescue.
And of course customers regularly pay for girls and don't use them, so you won't stand out at all. What if the girl in question doesn't want to be rescued? What if she finds what she's doing to be unpleasant but prefers to remain in her own country rather than going off with strange men who kill people? Why should she trust your agent? Why wouldn't she tell the brothel owner what you discuss? If she hasn't been indentured into prostitution as payment on a loan to her family but was abducted into slavery... why would she believe she'd end up anywhere but another, possibly more unpleasant, brothel?
4. Leaflets - YOu are speaking about rasing awareness of the sex trade. What exactly does that do? 95% of the business is local peopple. Leaflets will simply make pedophiles more cautious.
Maybe I should make that clearer, the fact that in my backwater town I get sent a leaflet to raise my awareness of the issues means that they're not exactly being ignored. Awareness leads to legislation, leads to people reporting suspicious activity, leads to prosecutions. Or... awareness leads to understanding of the complex problems, possibly to the kind of commitment of resources necessary to achieve cultural changes. Or perhaps it shames those in power into imposing and/or enforcing legislation and international treaties etc...
What exactly does abducting a hundred child prostitutes do? There's no shortage of children to take their places. And your plans for the future of these girls appear as simplistic as those for the rescue. Yes, you can take them to an island paradise (although I suspect this is a Western male concept of paradise and is going to involve the older girls doing a lot of household chores) but they're going to continue to be seriously damaged human beings... and you don't sound as if you're prepared for them to not want to do what you tell them, or to be 'bad' in other ways. And on an island where the only males will be in positions of authority over them, how on earth are they going to frex learn to cope with and express their developing sexuality? They're never going to be in a position of equality or superiority to a man. They're not going to have any male peers to experiment with, or to learn relationship building with. You're removing them from any contact with normal society... heck they're not even going to learn how to shop... What future life does that prepare them for?