Beijing Escorts: SXSW: World Premieres in Documentaries Competition
The 2010 SXSW Film Festival, scheduled for March 12 to 24 in Austin, Texas, will feature eight documentaries in competition, and each is a world premiere. The eight were selected from 741 submissions. In alphabetical order, the documentaries in competition are:
Beijing Taxi – Director Miao Wang follows three Beijing cabbies as they carry their fare through a city in the throes of transition and modernization.
Camp Victory, Afghanistan – For three years, director Carol Dysinger focused on the formation of the Afghan National Army by following its new officers, and the US National Guardsmen who were there to mentor them/
The Canal Street Madam – Following the FBI raid on her infamous New Orleans brothel and her ensuing legal difficulties and social stigma, Jeanette Maier struggles to create a new life for herself. Director Cameron Yates is there to document the process.
See the full article from “Documentaries.About.com (blog)”
Beijing Escorts: China Safari
Almost no rock is left unturned in Serge Michel and Michel Beuret’s exposé of China’s increasing presence in African countries. The motive behind the heavyweight nation’s burgeoning infrastructural achievements across the poverty-stricken country is explored by the two writers-slash-journalists in a wild, cross-continental ride from Beijing to Brazzaville, from Algiers to Khartoum. A China Safari, indeed!
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In the sunny safari, Chinese workers toil 24/7. They nonchalantly dig around landmines, acquiescent in the fact that their deaths will result in hefty compensations for their families, who they see once every two years. They are forbidden to touch African women — such conduct will result in immediate firings and deportation — and there are apparently not enough Chinese prostitutes to go around. Kidnappings and deaths by bands of rebels are everyday realities. Acrimonious sentiments abound as the Chinese are labeled inhumane in their treatment of local workers and domestic dogs while Africans are seen as “lazy.”
See the full article from “China Post”
Beijing Adult Entertainment: Gao Zhisheng and China’s question
Gao Zhisheng’s true fate remains to be established. But his principled stance and refusal to be crushed has at least shone some light into one of the darkest areas of the Chinese state’s operations: its system of “black jails” – semi-legal, underground detention-centres where vexatious petitioners who have travelled to Beijing from the provinces are incarcerated by contractors and “dealt with”. The roughness of the treatment meted out in these institutions is designed to intimidate citizens in search of voice and redress, and highlight the risks of such insolence to anyone (such as their neighbours at home) with similar ideas.
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A Pew Research survey conducted in 2008 found that 86% of Chinese were satisfied with the way things are going in their country. More detailed questions based on ground-level sentiment tend to give different results. A survey of public trust by Xiaokang magazine in 2009 revealed that local-government officials were less trusted than prostitutes. True, central-government officials were rated slightly higher, but trust in them had declined in successive years.
See the full article from “MorungExpress”
Beijing Adult Entertainment: Jail stands for bogus director for pimping
By Zhang Yan
An appeal court upheld the 10-year sentence of a man who opened a film studio to trick movie hopefuls into prostitution.
The appeal took place at the Beijing No 1 Intermediate Court yesterday. Hu Weidong, 49, from Henan province, manipulated more than 10 girls searching for acting roles, including underage Beijing twins known as “Baobao and Azi,” to have sex with him, his assistants and wealthy clients, as part of their role in his studio.
In October, Hu was convicted of organizing prostitution and sentenced to 10 years, with an additional fine of 100,000 yuan by Haidian district court.
At the time, he vowed immediately to appeal.
His two assistants, Meng Qingbo and Sun Qiao, were also convicted of aiding prostitution and organizing promiscuity.
Meng was sentenced to seven years with a fine of 20,000 yuan, and Sun was given three years with the same fine, at Haidian court last October.
See the full article from “AsiaOne”
Beijing Adult Entertainment: Winter Olympics on slippery slope after Vancouver crackdown on homeless
David Eby, the executive director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, said: “I don’t feel that there is any question among most people who have been following the homeless issue in Vancouver that this act is targeted at giving police a tool to remove homeless people from high-visibility tourist areas.”
Although proposed bylaws against sitting or lying on the pavement were rejected, he thought there would be further attempts to displace the homeless.
For three decades, the port has been a magnet for sex workers driven out of wealthier neighbourhoods, addicts and people released from mental wards shut in the 1990s. Methamphetamine and crack-cocaine users shoot up on the street yards from a police station. A relatively moderate climate and the concentration of needle exchange, safe injection sites and sex worker drop-in centres are further draws.
See the full article from “The Guardian”
Beijing Adult Entertainment: The Yes Men reveal the truth of Davos’ World Economic Forum
… What you won’t hear in Davos is anything about the structural factors at the root of global poverty,” said Beth Portello, who produced The End of Poverty?. “Poverty is created: it’s the byproduct of centuries of exploitation of human and natural resources maintained into modern times by unfair trade, tax and land policies, and odious debt.”
“Unlike the lip-service solutions from Davos, the proposals on our fake WEF site would actually end poverty,” said Diaz. “We’re going to do everything we can to make them happen. The film is just the beginning.”
“Poverty isn’t an accident, and it won’t end by accident, either,” added Portello.
In a dramatic bit of irony, it was revealed that the fake Queen Elizabeth II was played by boy actor James O’Keefe, who was recently arrested for feloniously attempting to tamper with the phone line of U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, not long after being honored by House Republicans for his “ACORN pimp” role last year.
See the full article from “Tikkun”
Beijing Adult Entertainment: Vancouver Prepares To Become Center of World’s Sex Life
The prices on intimate services in Vancouver will grow considerably too. Hard-working females can make tens of thousands of dollars in only two Olympic weeks. Nigh clubs, massage parlors, striptease bars, etc also hire additional personnel for the Winter Olympics.
See the full article from “Pravda”
Beijing Strip Clubs: Vancouver’s Olympic Craigslist: From hot dogs to hot heads
More than 1,000 Olympic housing options have been listed since Feb. 1. They range from $25,000 penthouse digs to a $100-per-night stay with a host whose pets’ names reflect their owner’s interest in the Knights of the Round Table.
Some are looking to profit from the Games by appealing to entrepreneurs.
A “mint condition” mini-bus is still on the Craigslist market, as is a “damn near mint condition” hot dog cart. The $28,000 bus is licensed to provide tours and limo service while the $7,500 cart might be a welcome sight for hungry event-goers outside a SkyTrain station.
Other locals are looking to profit by being entrepreneurs themselves.
A recent piece appeared on The Vancouver Sun’s Web site describing the Olympic effect on the city’s adult industry. Needless to say in a country where prostitution is technically legal and a city known for its strip clubs and escort services, Craigslist advertises for plenty of “adult gigs” during the Games.
See the full article from “ChicagoNow (blog)”
Beijing Escorts: “A reluctant refuge for Myanmar folk”
… There are so many Chinese in Mandalay, at least half the population now,” said Myanmar jade trader Ye Kaw, speaking in the flawless Mandarin he has picked up after many years living in Ruili, China’s main trading post with its southern neighbor.
“We hate them,” he added, when asked how residents of his home town look upon the Chinese migrants, looking fearfully around to see if any of his customers had heard him. “But we have to come here. There is no future for me at home.”
Ruili — its name comes from a word in the local Dai language meaning “a jade green place enshrouded in mist” — is home to a large population from Myanmar, some legal, and others sneaking across a porous border to sell vegetables, trinkets, or sex.
Sitting on the far southwestern tip of Yunnan province, Ruili was once notorious in China for its gambling, prostitution, smuggling, drugs, and general lawlessness during the 1990s when border trade really began taking off.
See the full article from “BusinessWorld Online”
Beijing Escorts: Church fears rise in human trafficking
A study commissioned by the provincial government and the Vancouver Police Department concluded in a 2009 report that forecasts of massive human-trafficking connected to prostitution at the 2004 Athens Olympics and 2006 soccer World Cup in Germany were wrong.
“In relation to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, public statements have been made which project an alarming increase in this human trafficking,” the report says. “These claims are inconsistent with the evidence . . . that trafficking and mega-events are not linked.”
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“If there’s a demand for paid sex, then supply is going to be created,” says Michelle Miller, executive director of Resist Exploitation Embrace Dignity, an anti-prostitution group.
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Those who have been publicly predicting increased trafficking have actually lured many prostitutes to Vancouver for the Olympics, says Suzie Davis, an advocate for sex workers.
See the full article from “The Province”