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A WHOLE NOW TWIST
The Sinulator, a vibrating device operated over the Internet that permits thrusting movements (typically, by a male) at one computer to be mimicked by an insertable wand (typically, for use of a female) at another computer. For less excitable people, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University recently developed The Hug, which allows one user (perhaps a grandparent) to squeeze a velour-covered, human-shaped pillow connected to a wireless phone and have that squeeze received (perhaps by a far-away grandchild) on his or her own human-shaped pillow, as if delivered by the grandparent in person. The pillow will also speak in the sender's voice and warm itself up appropriately. [New York Times, 11-11-04]
A whole new twist on ‘Computer Dating.’ 
It was just a matter of time before the average ‘computer widow’ would find her husband copulating with the monitor. Your Pentium 4 is now a prick teaser. Your Dell a dyke. Your Mac always ‘on its back’. Is this taking Cyber sex too far? What about if you get a sexually transmitted computer virus? (H.umping I.nternet V.irus) Who would have thought that our computers would be sex objects? A source of shameful and technological gratification. A tool for mechanical masturbation? Who cleans the keyboard afterwards? Is it the same person that cleans the poles in lap-dancing joints?
I see black clouds of discontent on the horizon. Divorces will become rife between normally happy and sexually fulfilled couples.
“I’m leaving you Monica.”
“Who is she?”
“It’s the kid’s computer, I’ve been uploading her for sometime now, from my hard drive.”
“I hope she is used to your broadband, then.”
“Whaddyamean?”
“Well, you are four times quicker than the windowcleaner.”
Man and machine
Worse case scenario.
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Please tell me that computers will not start framing the doorway in baby doll nightie’s and playfully wear fishnets on the speakers. Will they start menstruating? (Well, the mouse is very handy). When the screen freezes, is that a ‘No,’ or a ‘Come on’?. Will your system try to control, alter and delete you? Is re-booting the same as wearing a Durex? Are the ‘Gigolo type’, male computers going to show you a huge pair of tits every time there is a navigational error? Will ‘spamming’ become a sexual offence? Will one enjoy more ram than another? Is a rarely used ‘floppy’ due, to being too Microsoft? From now on, will I look forward to my laptop going down on me?
There is nothing sexy about computers. Only the other day I went to the seaside and had my fortune told by a computer. As the woman punched in my data, it crashed. But I’m still here. My head didn’t fall off. I am not plagued by demons. I still can maintain an erection without a flatscreen. Computers are a necessary evil. We can’t live without them, that is scary enough, let alone fondling them to orgasm. What’s next?
A women being watched by her boyfriend ‘Opening Windows’
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Silly Billy Gates
He has just been made an English Knight of the Realm for his services to charity. He has his own charity now “The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.” It offers financial grants to deserved global health organisation. For example Microsoft gave 4 billion dollars to the World Health organisation. Not from his own personal wealth and amassed fortune. He might have to break into a bill for that.
Here is a quote from the aims of the foundation:
“We are committed to significantly increasing the high school graduation rate for all students and increasing the percentage of students who graduate prepared for college. Learn more about our work with partners across the nation to support the creation of high-quality high schools, the development of high-performing school districts, and the advancement of sensible state-level education policies.”
That’s rich, Mr Gates. Well, I know you already are, but such altruism from a drop out? One can only assume you feel the need to encourage youngsters to follow through with their education and not make the same mistakes as yourself. I’m sure you spend most nights with your head in your hands, wailing, “Where did I go wrong?” Forgive me if I gloat. Yes, you should feel guilty about having your obscene wealth. Yes, you should have graduated and found or pursued a career in fashion or hairdressing. Become a joiner or social worker. If you spent more time on your hair you would get far more respect from today’s students.
Is this the real criminal? 
The following comment from http://newdemocracyworld.org/billion.htm may seem like sour grapes and undiluted envy, but also, an unbroken thread of thought provoking truth perhaps?
“They say rich people like Bill Gates deserve all their money because they make it by producing things people want. But Bill Gates didn't produce useful software. He acquired a monopoly ownership of software created by many other people, and fixed it so that part of the purchase price of every computer went into his pocket. Gates actually prevents better software from being produced.
They say it's important to have rich people because they give money to philanthropy. In fact, rich people prevent social resources from being used to solve the real problems in the world, like hunger. Their philanthropy projects are self-serving public relations gimmicks. Philip Morris Tobacco Company, for example, is throwing some money at homes for battered women in Boston and advertising on the radio how "concerned" they are for women's health! Bill Gates made the news recently with his donations of money to fight diseases like AIDS in poor nations. His reason, however, is to avert social upheavals and revolution, not to make a more equal world. The CIA is so afraid of what people in Africa—who are dying because pharmaceutical companies won't provide AIDS drugs to poor people—may do, that they have declared AIDS a "national security threat."
The truth is that rich people are just hogs and they don't solve problems, they create them. They need people in the third world to be desperately poor and insecure because otherwise who would work in all their sweatshops? They need people in the U.S. to be economically insecure because otherwise who would put up with the long hours and stress and dictatorial control that the corporations impose on employees? And they need to pit people against each other to control them because otherwise people would make the world very different than what rich people want it to be. Our biggest problems are caused by the things rich people do to get rich and the things they do to prevent regular people from making this a more equal and democratic world.”
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As I see it, Nike are the biggest hypocrites. They want to stop racism on the football pitch by getting fans to part with £10 and wear a simple wristband. The fact that Nike uses the third world producing most of their products as the world’s leading leisurewear industry giant, makes me think of how sarcastic I can be now.
Providing jobs for the poor so they don’t have to become child prostitutes? What a positive career move for an 11 year old Indonesian? I bet they get a free pair of trainers too. You know, I often see fat Western bastards in training shoes when the most exercise they get is opening the refrigerator. I then, think of the exploited and abused children across the world that are making ‘designer’ clothes for kids in wealthier countries who would rather not work and do drugs instead. Yes, more stereotypes and sweeping generalizations from me but don’t tar me the same brush.
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How ridiculous thin people look in Nike products.
How silly obese people look in Nike products.
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It’s ludicrous that ‘globalists’ who sit in their expensive houses and powerful cards don’t think once of the suffering they cause to millions of underprivileged children.
Comments By Trisha Reimers (a woman)
“More than 50% of US garments are made in sweatshops. The vast majority (up to 90%) of sweatshop workers are women. In Australia, there are more than 300,000 outworkers. These outworkers are paid a few dollars an hour, or a pitiful amount per piece, while companies like Nike, Ralph Lauren and Disney rake in the mega-profits.
When people think of sweatshops, the image that comes to mind are dark, cramped and dirty places out of a Dickens novel. Sweatshops aren't supposed to exist in this globalised world, and certainly not in “the lucky country”, where there's supposedly equality for all and you get a fair day's pay for a fair day's work.
The reality is that there are sweatshops operating in Australia, and hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to work in conditions that are not only illegal, but inhumane. Twelve-hour shifts, sexual harassment, wages of $1.70 an hour (there have been cases of workers in the US receiving 6 cents an hour!) and unhygienic working conditions are what a lot of outworkers face.
Sweatshops exist in a range of guises. Hundreds of dark and cramped single rooms where a single worker works for 15 hours a day do exist, but sweatshops can also involve dozens or even hundreds of workers. The conditions remain the same. Generally, a sweatshop can be distinguished by what the business does or doesn't do. If it doesn't comply with national minimum wages or it doesn't provide benefits like sick leave or maternity leave for its workers, but it does have compulsory overtime and uses child labour, you've found a sweatshop.
Outworkers are predominantly women from migrant backgrounds. Many speak little or no English, so can't easily find another job. This means that they are vulnerable to highly exploitative employers, particularly if the workers are undocumented (“illegal”) workers and bosses can threaten to turn workers in to the authorities if they don't accept what is offered.
Isolation means that sweatshop workers are often unaware of their rights, and have little or no contact with unions. The Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia (TCFUA) has been campaigning to raise awareness about sweatshop labour, and attempting to make contact with outworkers to inform them of their rights.
So why do sweatshops continue to exist? The simple fact is that for big corporations, profit comes first. Sometimes clothing, shoes or other products can be produced most cheaply in a sweatshop in a Third World country, where there are lower (or no) health and safety standards, low minimum wages and restrictions on the workers' rights to free speech and association. This has been the case for decades in Indonesia, where Nike and other Western capitalists operate.
Nike employs around 120,000 Indonesian workers, and pays them about $2.50 a day. Indonesian unions and labour groups have estimated that $4.25 is a basic liveable wage in Indonesia, but Nike and other corporations continue to find it very profitable to sell shoes for $100 or even $200 when they were produced for five dollars.
Corporations choose carefully which Third World country they will invade — whoops, invest in — next. Repressive governments can be more profitable than democratic ones, because repressive governments and their militaries keep unions and radical workers in line.”
But sometimes corporations want to produce “locally”. When companies want to proclaim that something is “Australian-made”, they have no qualms about setting up sweatshops or employing outworkers and paying the worker who make the product as little as 2% of what it is sold for.
The point is, wherever a sweatshop is in the world, it remains a sweatshop, and workers are exploited whatever their nationality, unions are sidelined or repressed whatever the country and it's up to us to support the struggles of the workers who are fighting for their rights.
The anti-corporate movement that has stretched from the “Battle of Seattle” to S11 to M1 has taken up the issues of sweatshop labour as part of its struggle for global justice. As long as it is profitable to exploit people in sweatshops, corporations will do it because under this system, profit always comes before people and the environment.
What can we do about sweatshop labour?
·You can check out the links your university has to corporations like Nike or Microsoft. More and more universities are funded by corporate sponsors. Activists should run campaigns against this on campus.
·Become more informed about the issue. The campaign against sweatshop labour is growing world-wide and lots of organisations are researching details of sweatshop labour. Good sources of information are the newspaper Green Left Weekly at <http://www.greenleft.org.au>, internet sites like Fairwear's at <http://vic.uca.org.au/fairwear> or the US site of the Feminists Against Sweatshops at <http://www.feminist.org/other/sweatshops.html>. You can also contact the TCFUA to find out what they're doing in your area.
Resistance believes that we need to not only reject the existing system, but to fight and build a new one, a system that puts people's needs and environmental sustainability before profits for a wealthy few. It has always been the struggles that have involved large numbers of mobilised people that have won in the past, whether it was the 8-hour day, the vote for women, or the fight to save the Franklin Dam in Tasmania.
Why don't you become a part of the struggle for a world without sweatshop labour?
This is how it works.
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Footwear companies have two basic options in the manufacturing of their products, they can both own and operate the factories that produce their products, or subcontract their products out to secondary manufacturers. These facilities can be located either domestically or internationally, and both present a myriad of positives and negatives. Firms that produce domestically benefit from ease of monitoring, skilled workforce, government stability, job creation, and well understood labour rules, while suffering from the relatively high wages required in the U.S. as compared to developing countries. By manufacturing products overseas, in particular in third world economies, tremendous efficiencies are gained in the form of reduced wages, but are countered by the increased difficulty of monitoring the quality of their products and the actual working conditions in the factories.
To properly review the manufacturing in the footwear industry, it is necessary to first gain an understanding of the dominant leaders in the marketplace. The industry is currently experiencing hyper competition, led by six main firms – Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Fila, Converse, and New Balance (see exhibit 1), with nearly $7 billion in revenues domestically. Nike is the industry leader, with a 47% market share, followed by Reebok, a distant second at 16%, and Adidas at 6% This category is facing decreasing demand and the rising popularity of alternative footwear, resulting in more pressure than ever before to achieve high gross margins through effective global sourcing practices.
Have things changed at all? Not really.
1905 Sweat shop
2005 Sweat shop
So, the next time you shop for a ‘SWEAT shirt’ and find one in the sale at half price, spare a thought for the third world family that could be fed for a week on your purse saving.
Meanwhile, regarding the Sinulator, my advice is to steer clear of any loose conduct with your computer. Don’t be teased by ‘drop down menus’, or ‘pop-ups’. Have some self respect. Computers have never been that ‘easy’ anyway.
This is a picture of woman sleeping with her computer. It’s pretty disgusting isn’t it?
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