I am writing this rant while I have time to kill. I am actually writing this at about 4pm on Wednesday, but I probably won't post it till later on this evening.
I got forwarded recently a petition. The petition is a woman's rights petition, and was sent to me (and a zillion other folks) by my RA I had in Fall 2000. She is involved in MASSPIIRG and all sorts of other do-gooder things. Basically, this petition spoke about how women in Afghanistan are treated like shit.. how the Taliban forced them to cover their faces and were not allowed to work or they would be beaten/stoned to death/whatever else they did.
So, this petition is going around.. just about every signature on the list was female. Presumably it is going around mainly to other women. Men probably wouldn't understand, so why bother sending to us, right? Well, I don't know if that is true, but I am basically feeling that yes, it sucks that these women are treated like this.. and they treat men badly over there too (required beards and such). They are restricting what people can do, and that probably sucks a lot for the people over there.
But I really don't see how it is anybody's job over here in the 1st world, thousands of miles away, to change that. I really disagree with the interfering with other people's beliefs, whether right or wrong. I don't mean that the US should let the extremists and terrorists continue to brood over things, but half the reason they are so angry with teh US is because the US interferes.
The main idea I got from that petition was that they were against the Taliban forcing women to cover their faces. I don't think they should change their opinion, and I think it is more than fine for them to discuss this atrocity amongst themselves, but it's like they want to go into Afghanistan, and reverse the rule and force all women to show their faces. That is equally wrong in some ways. You can't impose the idea of free choice on people who don't know what to do with that choice. You can't just go into a country, tell them to become democratic, and start selling them Abercrombie.
I think that the UN should step in and let the country work out it's own solution that fit's their own needs, not the ideals of countries far away.
Anyway, I don't really know much about what is going on over there.. so probably a lot of what I said wouldn't work.. my basic point is that I think peopel should stop fucking sending out petitions for things. I really don't get what the fuck that petition can do. And stop sending money to the 'starving' people in Mozambique or Somolia.. they don't get that money or medicine or food. I guess people don't like feeling helpless when they see Sally Struthers (that her name) showcasing a few emaciated children in order to raise money, so they give money. I think the real reason people give money is that they hope that Sally will get so fat and/or rich that they'll stop airing the commercials. But no, the money you send in goes to finance more commercials.
That reminds me of a story about that. Some company that saw one of these commercials where the folks are using holes in teh ground to shit in, decided to put a septic system in a village. As soon as the system was installed, the company was all proud, and left that village alone with their nice new system. Some other folks went back to that village a while later and found that people were still shitting in holes in teh ground. The septic system had not been maintained, and the now full septic tanks made the village even more of a fucking mess than it was before.
Bah.