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Archive for March, 2012

Fictional Interlude: Penelope

Posted in Fiction, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2012| 41 Comments »

Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles first appeared as a series of short stories published in the late 1940s; in the fictional “future history” depicted therein American economic strength and technological prowess grew rapidly in the second half of the century, but society slid into increasing fascism and repression.  In this world the ‘60s brought no civil rights movement, but rather a stifling political correctness that enshrined “rational” thought and resulted in the brutal censorship of imaginative fiction.  After the first explorations in 2000, humans descended upon Mars by the thousands from 2001-2005, dotting the red landscape with towns and farms; Bradbury wrote, “The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke.  And from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat the strange world into a shape that was familiar to the eye…” Many who came were poor or oppressed, including black Americans in search of a world of their own.  But in November of 2005 there was a mass exodus back to Earth in support of a nuclear war, leaving only a few scattered individuals and small settlements behind. 

Years after The Martian Chronicles was published, Robert Heinlein proposed that since the universe is infinite, every world of fiction describes an actual parallel reality.  In this story, I imagine an episode from my own life in the world depicted by Bradbury, the world’s greatest living writer of fantasy…

“It’s time to go.”

“I told you, I’m not going.”

“Maggie, you can’t stay here; the whole town is going.  And if you change your mind later, there isn’t another rocket within driving distance; most of the others have already left.”

“I don’t live in town, and you should know by now I don’t change my mind once it’s made up.”

Bill sighed a sigh that came all the way from his shoes, and fidgeted with the brim of the hat in his hands; I watched warily against the possibility of his attempting to physically force me to his truck, and congratulated myself on having had the foresight to place my shotgun within easy reach behind the door.

“Damn it all, woman, if you aren’t the stubbornest…what you got worth staying here for?  Your husband’s already gone.”

“Against his will, and even if I went with you I wouldn’t be able to see him on Earth.  When he eventually gets free, he’ll come looking for me here.”

“Is that the only reason you’re staying?”

“Even if it were, it’s Earth that has nothing for me; everything I have I’ve built here in the last three years.  Even my business is illegal there.”

“It’s not like you’re gonna have many customers here, either,” he spat sarcastically.

“It’s not like I’m going to need many, with all the bill collectors gone.  And even though I won’t have any field hands any more, I reckon there’s enough food stored in town to keep me alive for decades.”

“You could get a different job on Earth; you’re the smartest person I ever met.”

“What different job?  I was trained as a librarian, and that’s an obsolete profession in a world where books are banned.”

“Not all books are banned!”

“No, only the ones worth reading.  I was eight years old when they had the Great Burning, and I’ve watched the number of banned genres, the penalties for being caught with them, and the powers of the Moral Climate Monitors growing ever since.  When I was twenty-eight the burning crew came to destroy the library where I worked after they discovered we were keeping a secret collection, but we were tipped off and had time to hide the books elsewhere.  After I came to Mars, I got in touch with the underground and they’ve smuggled tons of contraband here, where it isn’t illegal yet…and never will be if I have anything to say about it.”

“You mean you’re staying because of a lot of stupid books full of nonsense and fairy tales?” he asked, genuinely incredulous.

“Somebody has to guard our cultural legacy against fanatics, control freaks and the people like you who don’t have the spine to stand up to them.  Especially if you all incinerate yourselves in an atomic war.”

He lunged forward to grapple me, but I anticipated it, grabbed the shotgun and had it leveled at him before he closed half the distance.  “You won’t shoot me,” he scoffed.

“Try me.”

With a mix of anger and exasperation he exclaimed, “How long do you think you can wait here alone?”

“Penelope waited twenty years for Odysseus.”

“Who are they, more storybook characters?”

“Something like that,” I answered quietly.  “Now, please get out of my house.”

He crammed his hat back onto his head and stalked out the door, turning at the bottom of the porch steps to yell, “I hope the Martians get you, you crazy whore!”  Then he climbed into his pickup and roared off down the drive, leaving a huge cloud of red dust in his wake.

I didn’t even wait until he was out of sight, but went for the satchel hidden in my storm cellar, adding a few perishable food items to the things already in it.  I made sure my cat and livestock had enough food and water for a few days, shouldered the satchel, picked up the gun and walked out the back door, calling my dogs to follow.  By the time Bill returned with a posse to “rescue” me against my will, I had already reached the secret sanctuary I had prepared several weeks ago, when talk of returning to Earth began.  I figured they might look as long as 24 hours before giving up, so I made sure I had enough provisions for a week just to be on the safe side.

Apparently, they had enough respect for my competence to recognize that they wouldn’t find me if I didn’t want to be found, at least not in the available time with the few men they could spare for the search.  Early the next morning I was awakened by the sound of thunder, and I watched as the rocket rose swiftly on a pillar of flame, carrying the prodigals back to the world that, in the end, they had never really left.  I figured I’d wait until late afternoon to go home, and after breakfast I opened up a volume of Homer to pass the time, mentally preparing myself for what I knew was apt to be a long, lonely vigil.

One Year Ago Tuesday

That was the day last March’s fictional interlude was published, and considering its premise I thought it most appropriate I call your attention to it today rather than two days from now.

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That Was the Week That Was (#10)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 10, 2012| 9 Comments »

Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.  –  Paulo Freire

One new item, ten updates and two meta-updates.

The President’s Nanny

On Tuesday the AP published the terribly sad story of Evie, a transgender woman who was little “Barry” Obama’s nanny when his family lived in Indonesia from 1969-1971.  “When the family left…things started going downhill.  She moved in with a boyfriend…three years later…she became a sex worker…soldiers often…loaded them into trucks, and brought them to a field where they were kicked, hit and otherwise abused.”  After one especially brutal raid in 1985 in which a friend was beaten to death, Evie went back to dressing as a man, found solace in religion and now at 66 “says she’s just waiting to die.”  She only recently realized that the US president was her old charge, and says she’s proud:  “Now when people call me scum…I can just say:  ‘But I was the nanny for the President of the United States!‘”  The White House had no comment.

Updates

Celebrities (August 20th, 2010)

English football star Louis Saha explains why footballers prefer escorts to amateurs: “…women are the greatest temptation…a young player…can quickly be taken in, seduced by the girl who will cash in with a kiss-and-tell to the newspapers.  So it’s hard to know who to trust and you become paranoid where women are concerned.  Some players therefore prefer to use escorts.”  This confused a writer at Deadspin, who apparently cannot comprehend that an indiscreet whore is soon an unemployed one.

Election Day (November 2nd, 2010)

Though activists have been trying for decades to call attention to the insanity of allowing cops to use condoms as “evidence of prostitution”, and a bill to ban the practice was introduced into the New York state legislature several years ago, the light bulb appears to have just gone on for the mainstream media.  The Daily Kos and The Atlantic both noted that though the asinine policy is widespread, New York is the first state where a legislator had the sense to introduce a bill to prevent it.  Both stories mention that Human Rights Watch will release a report on American “condom possession” policies in July, and both interviewed representatives of the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition,  whose link was recently added to the “Organizations & Allies” box on the right.  NCHRC has also asked me to call attention to their video on sex worker violence prevention, and I’m happy to do so.

License To Rape (November 16th, 2010)

One would expect a publication named Reason to oppose criminalization of sex work, and one would not be disappointed; here’s its coverage of a hooker-raping cop:

A New Mexico state trooper is on paid administrative leave after being arrested…for coercing prostitutes to have sex with him. Timothy Carlson first came to the attention of the Albquerque PD…when they caught him in his car with a prostitute…Why he wasn’t arrested then is a mystery…[after] a nearly year-long investigation…[he was caught]…with a prostitute…[who was] a confidential informant…[she told investigators] Carlson threatened to arrest her if she didn’t sleep with him…[He] faces extortion, bribery, public corruption and rape charges.  Advocates of decriminalizing prostitution often point out that sex workers suffer appalling violence and extortion at the hands of…law enforcement officers…

The story also links several other “isolated” incidents.

Coming and Going (February 10th, 2011)

“Davidson County [Tennessee] Sheriff Dacron Hall…[said] “If you weigh out what happens here – the police time, the arrest, the booking, all of this…what’s the net effect?…the criminalization of this process is very expensive,” he said.  “I’m just not sure it can’t be done in other ways.”  If you think county streetwalker stings are expensive, how about this?  “…[The case against] Anna Gristina was…built from a five-year-long investigation by a Manhattan district attorney’s office unit…[involving] hundreds of hours of surveillance…Minors were involved in some of the encounters Gristina arranged, the prosecutor said…”  Of course they had to add the bit about minors (which is almost certainly a lie) to avoid the inevitable questions like why the hell the average New Yorker should approve of this multi-year, multimillion dollar boondoggle.

Backlash (March 22nd, 2011)

It’s truly sad that actions of American cops in the three previous items are nearly indistinguishable from those of South African cops:

…Cape Town sex [workers say]…it was a regular occurrence for police to herd together sex workers at night and strip them naked before throwing them into their vans.  They would then take photos to “identify them in case they go missing”.  It was not uncommon for the sex workers to be pepper-sprayed, even on their private parts…In a recent study conducted by the Women’s Legal Centre (WLC), 12 percent of Cape Town’s sex workers reported having been raped by police, 46 percent threatened by police, and 28 percent forced into sexual favours by police…National police spokesman Vishnu Naidoo said…“It (sex work) is a crime…In the handling of these cases, it’s often misconstrued as harassment”…

Well, Naidoo’s statement certainly clears that up!  The police are allowed to beat, rape and pepper-spray prostitutes, so it’s “official handling” rather than harassment, and that makes it OK.

Mind Reading (June 1st, 2011)

More on the suit against Utah’s “acting sexy” law:

A federal judge excused Salt Lake City’s police chief from a lawsuit filed by escort services…Utah’s attorney general remains a defendant.  Utah law…[was amended] last year…to include any person who performs acts such as exposing or touching themselves…[which] the escort services argued…[criminalizes stripping]…Andrew McCullough, who is representing [the services]…said [an] escort already has been arrested under the amended law…[after] an undercover officer “tried everything he could…[to trick her, then] arrested her anyway…for touching herself…”  State lawyers argued that people can be charged…only if they use those gestures as a sign they’re willing to engage in sex for money…

It takes a special mixture of balls and stupidity to defend unconstitutional laws with tautology.

Where Are the Protests? (December 3rd, 2011)

“Hello, Mr. Kristof; we thought you’d like to report on a trafficked slave who was held right here in New York!  What’s that?  No, there was no sex involved…Mr. Kristof?  Hello?  Hellooooo…?”

A wealthy New York woman is facing criminal charges…[for] keeping an illegal immigrant as an indentured servant and forcing her to live in a closet for nearly six years.  Documents posted on the Smoking Gun allege that Annie George, 39, and her now-deceased husband, Mathai Kolath George, hired an illegal immigrant [identied as V.M.] from the Indian state of Kerala…[promising her] about $1,000 a month in wages to…care [for] the Georges’ four young children [and perform] household duties in the mansion…instead…V.M. received 85 cents an hour, working 17-hour days, seven days a week, over the 67 months she was kept inside the George residence…Annie George…[faces] charges of encouraging and inducing an illegal alien to reside in the U.S…

So a middle-class independent escort with a six-figure income is a “trafficked slave”, but a woman lured from India under false pretenses, paid starvation wages and locked in a closet at night is an “indentured servant” in a “forced labor situation”.  Furthermore, the escort’s legal husband could be imprisoned for decades and robbed of everything he owns for the “crime” of “human trafficking”, but someone who actually held someone captive is only charged with “encouraging an illegal alien”.  Nice.

Scapegoats (January 26th, 2012)

The Daily Mail published mug shots of the three “conspirators”, but had to settle for a stock photo of the “victim”:

A husband, his wife and her lover have been charged with conspiracy to commit bestiality after using Craigslist to find a dog for the wife to have sex with.  Shane Walker and his wife Sarah Dae, who describe themselves as swingers in an open marriage, were arrested [with her lover Robert Aucker] after an undercover sting operation…The two men were to watch while Sarah Dae had sex with the dog…Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio…wrote to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster after the arrest of two people for using the website to solicit dogs for sex.  Arpaio asked for closer monitoring of the site, but said after the latest arrest:  “I remain extremely disappointed in the leadership at Craigslist.com for refusing to do what they can to stop this.  While they aren’t doing anything to stop it, I will continue to enforce all animal cruelty laws.”

This is the same sheriff who didn’t bother to investigate over 400 sex crimes  reported to his office, including 32 child molestations (some of the victims as young as 2).  But I’m sure the parents of those molested kids will agree that it’s much more important for the sheriff’s office to pester businessmen and set up elaborate “sting” operations in order to perform the vital state function of preventing dogs from screwing air hostesses…oops, I mean “enforcing animal cruelty laws”.

Good News, Bad News (February 18th, 2012)

American politicians, afflicted as they are with Puritanism and a medieval “law and order” mentality, can almost be forgiven for their incredible stupidity on prostitution issues.  But Western Australia has several examples of successful legal models right next door, yet has descended into “trafficking hysteria” and may even succumb to the Swedish disease, as explained in this email from a WA politician:

…the Government’s proposed legislation will…greatly reduce the legality and visibility of prostitution…[via] the ‘Swedish model’ of targeting clients and brothel owners…If we actually wish to tackle trafficking in Western Australia, then this bill is our best hope…Any other approach will only serve to increase the elements of organized crime in prostitution and only perpetuate many more victims…

New South Wales and Queensland beg to differ about “any other approach” increasing “organized crime”…

A Whore in Church (January 10th, 2012)

Reverend Lia Scholl has advocated for sex workers for more than 10 years and is currently on the board of the Red Umbrella Project in New York.  She recently wrote an excellent essay entitled “Church and Sex Work”  which argues that churchgoers should not merely refrain from fighting prostitution or trying to rescue prostitutes, but should actively welcome sex workers in their community.  Please read it in its entirety; we definitely need more people like Reverend Lia!

Metaupdates

Acting and Activism in June Updates (Part Two) (June 3rd, 2011)

The bizarre competition between various jurisdictions claiming to be the most important source, destination or route for “human trafficking” has a new entrant, which insists that it’s all three simultaneously:

…“The 2011 Trafficking in Persons report notes that Zimbabwe is a source, transit and destination for human trafficking…” said [International Organisation for Migration (IOM) spokeswoman Folen Murapa]…[she] said although the magnitude…was difficult to ascertain due to the clandestine nature of the phenomenon, government recognised the problem and is currently in the process of tabling…a bill…Murapa said anyone could be a victim of trafficking regardless of nationality, sex, age and profession…

Everybody panic!  You never know when those “traffickers” will jump out of a tree and traffick you away somewhere, but by golly a law will stop it dead.  And though we haven’t seen any evidence of it, a bunch of foreign politicians on the other side of the planet wrote it in a report, so it must be true!

A Moral Cancer in That Was the Week That Was (#3) (February 11th, 2012)

Not only is cheese not really bad for you…

…[A new study]…found those who regularly have dairy products such as milk, cheese and yoghurt score better in tests of mental ability than people who never, or rarely, consume dairy products.  It follows another US study…[which] found that older people with higher levels of beneficial fats in their blood had less brain shrinkage typical of the Alzheimer’s disease…our mental functions depend heavily on a good supply of fat.  Our brain is composed of 60 percent fat. The brain cells are insulated by sheaths of myelin composed of 75 percent fat…[which] needs to be replaced constantly…

One Year Ago Today

“Check Your Premises” examines the nonsense which arises from following the underlying premises of “consensual crime” laws to their logical conclusions.

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The Profumo Affair

Posted in History, tagged , , , , , , on March 9, 2012| 33 Comments »

What are whores about?  –  Nigel Birch

Six years ago today Brigadier John Dennis Profumo, 5th Baron Profumo, CBE, died at the age of 91.  To most outside the Commonwealth, his name is probably somewhat obscure; but older British readers and those familiar with the history of the Cold War will remember him as the central figure in the Profumo Affair, a sex scandal which broke 49 years ago this month and played a large part in toppling the government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan.  The affair was for over three decades (at least until Monica Lewinsky) practically the definition of a political scandal, and inspired a number of books, plays and movies, most recently the 1989 film Scandal (in which Profumo was portrayed by Ian McKellen).

Despite his Italian name and title, “Jack” Profumo was wholly English (his family immigrated in the mid-19th century and his father was born in London).  He received his commission in July of 1939 and distinguished himself in North Africa, Italy and Normandy, winning an OBE and the American Bronze Star and eventually retiring with the rank of Brigadier.  From 1940-1945 he was also the Tory MP for Kettering, and after the war became active in politics, rising through a number of posts throughout the 1950s to the position of Secretary of State for War in 1960.  He was married (in 1954) to actress Valerie Hobson, who was quite devoted and had even left the stage for him.  To all appearances, he was destined for great things…until he unwisely became involved with a call girl named Christine Keeler.

He met her in July of 1961 at a house party given by Lord Astor; also in attendance were his wife and Dr. Stephen Ward, a prominent osteopath who treated many powerful politicians.  Ward also had a sideline; he was, to put it bluntly, a pimp.  Oh, not the sort who thinks he owns girls and takes their money, but rather the more genteel type who charges otherwise-independent girls “finder’s fees” for arranging dates for them with his wealthy and important clients.  Keeler, needless to say, was one of the girls he worked with, and when he saw how Profumo looked at her he wasted no time in introducing them.  Had Keeler been a true professional we might never have heard more, but she wasn’t; she was really more of a swinging ‘60s party girl who took money to finance her lifestyle, and she had no qualms about getting emotionally involved with her clients and other men.  Her relationship with Profumo soon grew from a professional one into an actual affair, and for the first four months of 1962 she was his mistress; in a ghostwritten 2001 autobiography she claimed to have had an abortion after becoming pregnant by him.  Even that probably wouldn’t have mattered had the attention of MI5 not been attracted by the fact that another of her regular clients was the Soviet naval attaché, Evegeny Ivanov.

Though Profumo was disliked by several highly-placed individuals in the spy organization, it was not in the best interests of national security to reveal anything yet…especially since the Secretary was also a personal friend of the young Queen Elizabeth II.  But the chaos that was Keeler’s life eventually dictated otherwise; in December of 1962, her current boyfriend  (a Jamaican drug dealer named “Lucky” Gordon) got into a knife-fight with her former boyfriend Johnny Edgecombe, and despite the fact that it seems Keeler was the one who drew Edgecombe into the altercation she refused to help him combat an assault charge resulting from his wounding Gordon.  All this drama obviously attracted the attention of the press, and though the rumor of Profumo’s involvement with her quickly spread nobody could yet prove anything.

Meanwhile, John Lewis (the Labour MP for Bolton) suspected that Dr. Ward had seduced his wife, and so had him investigated; he discovered he was wrong on that account, but in the process found out about Profumo’s fling with Keeler.  A few weeks after the press took interest in her sordid affairs, Lewis shared his information with at least two other politicians; by February Bob Kerby (Tory MP for Arundel and Shoreham and a former MI6 man) got ahold of a copy of a letter Profumo had indiscreetly written Keeler a year before, and which she was now trying to sell in Fleet Street to raise money for her legal difficulties.  Kerby passed that letter to veteran journalist Andrew Roth, who published it in his Westminster Confidential newsletter in March of 1963…at which point the crumpet hit the fan.  The Prime Minister demanded Roth be deprived of his press pass, Profumo threatened him with a libel suit and (as Roth put it) a “whitewash concocted overnight” by highly-placed Conservatives was read aloud in the House of Commons.  Profumo famously stated that “There was no impropriety whatsoever in my acquaintanceship with Miss Keeler,” prompting outspoken MP Nigel Birch to respond with the question which forms my epigram.

Portrait of Christine Keeler by Lewis Morley, May 1963

The djinni, however, was out of the bottle; controversy raged in the press all through the spring and the Lord Chancellor threatened Profumo with an investigation.  Finally the embattled politician confessed everything to his wife while they were on holiday in Venice, and she immediately affirmed her loyalty to him and insisted they return at once to face the music.  On June 5th Profumo admitted his lies and resigned all his positions; an enraged Macmillan wanted to humiliate and punish him, but Her Majesty intervened and asked he be allowed to resign.  Ward was arrested soon afterward and prosecuted for “living on the avails”, and during the trial received numerous death-threats from powerful men who feared he would expose them.  When he knew he would be convicted he committed suicide via overdose of sleeping pills on July 30th, slipping into a coma and dying on August 3rd, 1963.  The government’s official report on the Profumo Affair was released on September 25th, and Macmillan (who had recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer) resigned immediately afterward.  A year later, the Tories lost the general election to Labour under Harold Wilson.

Christine Keeler soon vanished into obscurity, emerging almost 20 years later to author a number of accounts of the affair throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s, each slightly different from the one before.  Profumo was independently wealthy due to his family’s insurance business, but a few months after his resignation he started volunteering at Toynbee Hall in London’s East End, initially by washing dishes (not cleaning toilets as Wikipedia claims) and later as a fund-raiser.  The support of his wife Valerie never wavered, and eventually he redeemed himself in the eyes of others as well; in 1975 he received a CBE for his decade of unremitting effort on behalf of Toynbee Hall, and in 1982 he became the charity’s chairman (and later its president).  In 1995 he was seated at Her Majesty’s right hand for Margaret Thatcher’s 70th birthday party, signaling that he had at last been wholly absolved of his sins.  Valerie died on November 13th, 1998 and Profumo followed her a little over seven years later, never having truly forgiven himself; as his friend Jim Thomson, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, once said, “No one judges Jack Profumo more harshly than he does himself…he says he has never known a day since it happened when he has not felt real shame”.  But perhaps a more fitting epitaph was once provided by his wife: “It isn’t what happens to a man, it’s what he does with it that matters.”

One Year Ago Today

“March Updates” reports on efforts in New York to ban the use of condoms as evidence, Gail Dines’ ludicrous porn alarmism, the expansion of CNN’s war on whores, and Russian news agencies using the claims of trafficking fetishists in anti-US propaganda.

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Above the Law

Posted in Current Events, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 8, 2012| 41 Comments »

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.  –  H.L. Mencken

In yesterday’s column I linked a New York Times article about streetwalkers  which was offensive on so many levels it practically constitutes a case study.  One especially repellent statement: “In a separate case underscoring the ubiquity of streetwalking, a 32-year-old Pennsylvania man was arrested on Feb. 6 after impersonating a police officer to extort sex from prostitutes…”  The veriest ass under the sun could recognize that the reason a rapist could pull this off was due to prostitutes’ fear of cops; it has nothing to do with the ubiquity of streetwalkers, and everything to do with the ubiquity of cops who use their power to extort sex from women.  Though the Times reporter appears to be in denial about it, virtually nobody else is; that’s why it isn’t surprising that a Toronto man came up with the same idea at virtually the same time.  Nor do perverts in “authority” limit their victimization to whores:

…A Dallas woman says TSA agents repeatedly asked her to step back into a body scanning machine at DFW International Airport. “I feel like I was totally exposed,” said Ellen Terrell…“They wanted a nice good look”…[when] she tried to leave [the scanner, a] female agent stopped her…[and] sent her back a second time and even a third.  But that wasn’t good enough.  After the third time, Terrell says even the agent seemed frustrated with her co-workers in the other room.  “She’s talking into her microphone and she says, ‘Guys, it is not blurry, I’m letting her go.  Come on out’”…

… “I think it’s sexual harassment if you’re run through there a third or fourth time,“ responded Texas State Representative Lon Burnam of Fort Worth.  “And this is not the first time I have heard about it,” said Burnam…CBS 11 News dug through more than 500 records of TSA complaints and found a pattern of women who believe that there was nothing random about the way they were selected for extra screening…“It just makes me wonder what’s going on.  Are they doing this all over the country?  They’re missing their focus,” said Charlie Terrell…

I beg to differ, Mr. Terrell; they’re not missing their focus at all.  The primary purpose of the TSA is to train Americans to submit to any indignity inflicted by an “authority”, no matter how invasive and arbitrary.  And given that most Americans still meekly submit like sheep, and many even make excuses for grotesque violations of their rights that would’ve provoked their grandparents to armed rebellion, I’d say it’s working perfectly.

But while the TSA seems content (for the moment) to ogle and grope, the same can’t be said for local police:

Pittsburgh police Chief Nate Harper said he is looking for additional women who might have been bribed by a city police officer who was charged…with telling three women he could spare them and their acquaintances trouble with the law in exchange for sexual favors.  Officer Adam Skweres, 34, was arrested…[for] crimes stemming from three incidents, two of which date to 2008…[in which he offered to intervene with “Child Protective Services”, cancel a traffic ticket and release a woman’s boyfriend from arrest in exchange for oral sex]…”The behavior of this individual is very disturbing and should not be viewed as a reflection of the conduct of the good and honorable men and women who serve on the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police,” Chief Harper said…


No, of course not, Chief Harper; we know “good and honorable” Pittsburgh cops are only allowed to rape whores, not “real” women.  And Skweres is indeed a rapist; a fourth victim has come forward saying she submitted to his demands after he threatened her with his gun.  But while Skweres made his demands openly, some British cops created fake identities, seduced women into thinking they were having real relationships, got them pregnant and then vanished without any concern about having to pay child support…because they were acting with the tacit approval of Whitehall:

Two undercover police officers secretly fathered children with political campaigners they had been sent to spy on and later disappeared completely from the lives of their offspring, the Guardian [revealed]…In both cases, the children have grown up not knowing that their biological fathers – whom they have not seen in decades – were police officers who had adopted fake identities to infiltrate activist groups.  Both men have concealed their true identities from the children’s mothers for many years.  One of the spies was Bob Lambert, who has already admitted that he tricked a second woman into having a long-term relationship with him, as part of an intricate attempt to bolster his credibility as a committed campaigner.  The second police spy followed the progress of his child and the child’s mother by reading confidential police reports which tracked the mother’s political activities and life.  The disclosures are likely to intensify the controversy over the long-running police operation to infiltrate and sabotage protest groups.

Police chiefs claim that undercover officers are strictly forbidden from having sexual relationships with the activists they are spying on, describing the situations as “grossly unprofessional” and “morally wrong”.  But that claim has been undermined as many of the officers who have been unmasked have admitted to, or have been accused of, having sex with the targets of their surveillance.  Last month  eight women who say they were duped into forming long-term intimate relationships of up to nine years with five undercover policemen started unprecedented legal action.  They say they have suffered immense emotional trauma and pain over the relationships, which spanned the period from 1987 to 2010.  Until now it was not known that police had secretly fathered children while living undercover.  One of them is Lambert, who adopted a fake persona to infiltrate animal rights and environmental groups in the 1980s.  After he was unmasked in October, he admitted that as “Bob Robinson” he had conned an innocent woman into having an 18-month relationship with him, apparently so that he could convince activists he was a real person.  She is one of the women taking the legal action against police chiefs…

The story goes on to say that the cop who spied on his victim and child via police surveillance reports was “haunted” by his deeds.  Cry me a river.  These men, and all cops who use their position to extort or trick sex from women, are nothing but sexual predators who conceal their exploitative behavior under the guise of law.

One Year Ago Today

“Mardi Gras” provides a whore’s-eye view of the holiday, which fell much later last year than this.

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Worms in the Apple

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 7, 2012| 15 Comments »

Whilst we want cities as the centres where the best things are found, cities degrade us by magnifying trifles.  –  Ralph Waldo Emerson

People from large cities often imagine themselves to be more cosmopolitan and well-informed than those from rural areas, and in the days before mass communication it was almost certainly true; even our word “urbane” reflects that perception.  But radio began to undermine the distinction, television killed it and the internet buried it, and nowadays I sometimes find that the opposite is true; people from small towns and rural areas, perhaps believing to some degree in the stereotype themselves, are often less certain about their prejudices and preconceptions than those secure in their big-city sophistication.  In other words, disinformation and myths are believed everywhere equally, but people from big cities are sometimes more sure of those beliefs while those from less “urbane” locales are often more prepared to concede their ignorance.

I realize that this will be a controversial premise, and indeed I have no evidence for it other than my own observations formed from living in both rural and urban areas and from dealing online with people who live in all sorts of places all over the world.  But I certainly see it in the way “authorities” in American cities, particularly those in New York, have seized on “human trafficking” mythology, combined it with the tired old “pimps and hos” narrative, and held onto it with all the dogged disregard for facts of a backwoods preacher.  Here’s a recent example from the New York Daily News; note the lurid, masturbatory detail and the obligatory “prostitution is not a victimless crime”, which prohibitionist “authorities” now repeat like some kind of Nicene Creed:

…state senator…Jose Peralta – with the strong backing of Queens District Attorney Richard Brown and women’s advocates – has introduced legislation to re-classify sex trafficking as a violent felony and increase the minimum jail sentence to 5 years.  “We have to attack prostitution at all levels,” said Peralta, a Democrat whose district includes a prostitution-laden stretch of Roosevelt Avenue in western Queens.  Currently, most sex trafficking offenses are considered non-violent felonies with minimum sentences of 1-3 years.  “People think that prostitution is a victimless crime – it is not,” Peralta said.  “The mental torture and physical abuse that these women go through, being forced to have sex with someone, is definitely a violent crime,” Peralta said…“We see [this] as an important step in going after the predators who prey on troubled young women and force them to perform numerous sexual acts for money and to turn over all the cash proceeds to them,” Brown said…

It’s not like these people don’t have access to the truth; not only are there a number of prominent sex worker rights organizations and individual advocates in New York, but also a recent study by the city’s own John Jay College of Criminal Justice which disproved every assumption upon which these politicians’ statements rest.  Nor can they claim ignorance of the study’s contents:

“I remember going to a meeting in Manhattan where they had a lot of prosecutors there whose job was to prosecute pimps,” [study author Ric] Curtis recalls.  ”They were sort of complaining about the fact that their offices were very well staffed but their workload was — not very daunting, let’s say.  They had a couple cases, and at every meeting you go to, they’d pull out the cherry-picked case of this pimp they had busted, and they’d tell the same story at every meeting.  They too were bothered by the fact that they couldn’t find any pimps, any girls.  So I come along and say, ‘I found 300 kids’ — they’re all perky — but then I say, ‘I’m sorry, but only 10 percent had pimps.’  It was like a fart in church.  Because basically I was saying their office was a waste of time and money.”

And the “Fourth Estate”, whose social function is, in part, to keep politicians honest?  They’re just as bad:

…Amid all the successes in New York City’s lengthy fight to drive down crime, street prostitution represents a stubborn exception.  Though the police deploy various stings and strategies to clean up neighborhoods, prostitution-related arrests in the city continue to be logged at a fairly steady clip…Market forces and the Internet have pushed some sex work off the street, to where clients with more time and more money go…Into this breach — and others like it — have come police officers, targeting spots where local precinct commanders and other officers have seen or heard of prostitution building up…over three days last month, [NYPD] made 195 arrests and seized 55 vehicles in what police officials called Operation Losing Proposition…officers [now] focus not on supply but on demand, by arresting the clients…This [started] after [police commissioner Raymond] Kelly took part in a series of meetings, beginning last year, with advocates from Europe and others aiming “for a fairer approach to prostitution”… Mr. Kelly eventually met with prostitutes, listening to their accounts, and then created a Human Trafficking Squad to target johns.  Some advocates for prostitutes noted that 10 prostitutes were included in the mid-January arrests, which sends a mixed message.  Others, including one former call girl, said it was wrong to focus on johns because it could make those clients more nervous and less likely to share the kind of personal information prostitutes rely on to ensure their safety.  “It is not a sound policy,” said Audacia Ray, 31, director of the Red Umbrella Project, a nonprofit group that assists prostitutes, who believes the street trade will never fade.  “I don’t think we’ll see a big drop in prostitution because of these arrests”…

Does the reporter bother to examine police claims, to question the motive behind stealing men’s cars, or to challenge the statement that arresting one party to an illegal transaction but not the other is somehow “fair”?  Does he consider for one moment that the reason prostitution hasn’t decreased along with “other” crimes is that it isn’t actually a crime in the sense of a transgression against others?  Of course not, and if Audacia told him the “prostitutes” to whose accounts the police commissioner listened were hand-picked by the Swedish Model proponents he still doesn’t get it; she told me he even asked her when she’d been a streetwalker, as though it were a stage we all go through or something.  This last seems like an article of faith for many New York “authorities”; journalists, cops and even academics often behave as though they’re absolutely convinced that prior to the advent of the internet, nearly all prostitution was street-based, and that escort services and brothels were invented in the Big Apple less than two decades ago.  This isn’t to say that idea isn’t prevalent elsewhere; as we’ve frequently discussed it most certainly is, often with ludicrous results.   It’s just that the prominence of New York City, and the fact that many of the largest media establishments are based there, allows the appalling ignorance of its officials and journalists to be prominently displayed to the entire world.

One Year Ago Today

In “Actual Working Knowledge”, another New York Times reporter displays his appalling ignorance about a different area of sex work.

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Thou Shalt Not

Posted in Current Events, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 6, 2012| 21 Comments »

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.  –  H.L. Mencken

As I wrote in “Change a Few Words”, “all prohibitionism is the same.  Oh, they’ll throw out all sorts of bogus reasons such as “morality”, “decency”, “health”, “public order”, “national security” and of course “the children”, but in reality they’re all based in one thing:  a busybody desire to control the private behaviors of others because they make individual prohibitionists uncomfortable.”  The most dangerous prohibitionists, however, are those who oppose no particular behavior or thing, but rather the very freedom of choice itself; these wannabe world-emperors demand control of everything and everyone they can see or know about.  They are motivated by a deep mental illness some refer to as Anti-Life, the unnatural and perverted need to see all free will extinguished everywhere.  Fortunately, they’re in the minority, so they can’t reveal their naked desire to rule the universe without being locked up as the madmen they are; instead they have to disguise it as a more typically-human obsession with something like “morality”, “safety” or “health”.  But unfortunately, most people aren’t skeptical or perceptive enough to see through the excuses to the underlying lust for power, and therefore accept the rationalizations at face value.

One tried-and-true way to frighten the hoi-polloi out of undesirable behavior, whether you’re an archetypal sky-god or just a little tin one, is to threaten them with plagues.  One year ago today I reported on an attempt to scare people out of having oral sex by claiming it causes cancer, but since there was neither widespread panic nor politicians vowing to “do something”, I guess the crypto-moralists felt compelled to try again:

A new study showing an estimated 7% of American teens and adults carry the human papillomavirus in their mouths may help health experts finally understand why rates of mouth and throat cancer have been climbing for nearly 25 years…The findings indicate that the virus is not likely to spread through kissing or casual contact and that most cases of oral HPV can be traced to oral sex, which many Americans mistakenly view as a safe practice…A survey released last year…found that about 90% of adults have had oral sex, along with 27% of 15-year-old boys and 23% of 15-year-old girls.  “I don’t think people think of oral sex in the same way they do with traditional intercourse,” said Fred Wyand, director of the HPV Resource Center…”Sometimes younger people engage in oral sex so they don’t have to worry about pregnancy.  They may not even make the link between oral sex and STDs.”

…Most oral HPV infections are harmless, and oral cancers are still relatively uncommon.  But given the new information, doctors should encourage their patients to use protection during oral sex, Dr. Hans Schlecht…wrote in an editorial accompanying the study…HPV is best known as the cause of cervical cancer, which kills 4,220 women in the U.S. each year…The virus can also cause vulvar, anal, penile and various head and neck cancers.  A study published in October…traced more than 70% of new cases of oral cancers to HPV infection, putting it ahead of tobacco use as the leading cause…an estimated 80% of Americans have contracted the virus…It usually produces no symptoms and is typically cleared from the body through natural processes…the overall prevalence of oral HPV was 6.9% — far less than the rate of genital HPV infection in reproductive-age women, which can be as high as 42% among women in their 20s…Among people who had more than 20 sexual partners, the prevalence of oral HPV was 20%.  But the researchers found it in fewer than 1% of people who said they were virgins and in fewer than 4% of people who said they had never performed oral sex…

The sky is falling!  Everybody panic! 7% of people have a common virus that we have a vaccine for and might, maybe lead to a comparatively rare type of cancer that kills 0.0027% of Americans a year.  Call the Marines!  Criminalize oral sex!  Well, what if I told you that 100% of people are exposed almost every day to radiation that can cause a form of cancer which kills over 0.003% of Americans a year?  It’s called “sunlight”.  Fortunately, we don’t yet have the technology to attempt a ban on that. fake diabetes ad

Busybodies aren’t only against sex, though; they also oppose what the average man considers the second-greatest pleasure in life and the average woman considers the greatest:  food.  Since people have a distressing tendency to drop dead when “authorities” stop them from eating entirely, it’s a bit harder to control than sex.  But that doesn’t stop the professional busybodies from trying, even if they have to lie to do so:

Mayor Bloomberg’s New York City health department has come in for repeated criticism…for crusading against salty and fattening foods through ad campaigns that manipulate viewer reactions in ways that border on the misleading and deceptive (“What can we get away with?” famously asked one official).  They’re at it again.  On January 9, Gotham’s for-your-own-good crew unveiled a new ad warning “Portions have grown.  So has Type 2 diabetes, which can lead to amputations,” dramatically illustrated with a photo of an obese man with a stump where his leg had been.  But as the New York Times reports, city officials “did not let on that the man shown — whose photo came from a company that supplies stock images to advertising firms and others — was not an amputee and may not have had diabetes.”  Instead, they just Photoshopped his leg off, which certainly got the effect they were looking for…

Even the basic claim that yummy food leads to obesity and diabetes is suspect; a growing body of evidence suggests it isn’t the food, but the containers it comes in:

…Exposure to even minuscule amounts of synthesized substances…can scramble hormone signals…[tricking] fat cells into taking in more fat or [misleading] the pancreas into secreting excess insulin…Among the most ubiquitous…of these…endocrine disruptors is bisphenol A, better known as BPA…a common ingredient in plastics and food-can linings.  “When you eat something with BPA, it’s like telling your organs that you are eating more than you are really eating,” says Angel Nadal, a BPA expert at the Miguel Hernandez University in Spain…the chemical triggers the release of almost double the insulin actually needed to break down food.  High insulin levels can desensitize the body to the hormone over time, which in some people may then lead to weight gain and Type 2 diabetes…An estimated 90 percent of people in developed countries have [dangerously high levels of] BPA circulating in their blood…due…to exposures from leaching food packages…cash register receipts, dental sealants and toilet paper…

But banning a harmful chemical isn’t satisfying for control freaks, so we get this sort of insanity instead:

Sugar is so toxic it should be controlled like alcohol, according to new report that goes so far as to suggest setting an age limit of 17 years to buy soda pop.  It points to sugar as a culprit behind many of the world’s major killers — heart disease, cancer and diabetes…A little sugar “is not a problem, but a lot kills — slowly,” says the report…by Dr. Robert Lustig, a [longtime anti-sugar alarmist]…and two U.S. colleagues specializing in health policy…”If international bodies are truly concerned about public health, they must consider limiting fructose — and its main delivery vehicles, the added sugars HFCS and sucrose — which pose dangers to individuals and to society as a whole,” they say.  “We recognize that societal intervention to reduce the supply and demand for sugar faces an uphill political battle against a powerful sugar lobby…and will require active engagement from all stakeholders”…The report suggests governments introduce zoning rules to control the number of fast-food outlets and convenience stores in low-income communities and around schools.  “Another option would be to limit sales during school operation, or to designate an age limit (such as 17) for the purchase of drinks with added sugar, particularly soda”…

Because “health experts” always know what’s best for everybody, especially those stupid poor folks, and as we know “end demand” laws work so well to program the masses…oops, I mean “educate” them.  Luckily, most people recognize Lustig’s ilk for the lunatics they are, but stupid, unenforceable laws against consensual behavior get enacted all the time:

The Philippines Senate has passed a bill penalizing cybersex…defined as people engaged in “the willful engagement, maintenance, control, or operation, directly or indirectly, of any lascivious exhibition of sexual organs or sexual activity, with the aid of a computer system.”  Violators can be imprisoned for 6-12 years, or fined between $4,500 and $23,000…

I’ll bet you feel safer knowing that while you sleep, self-appointed guardians of health and morality all over the world are working hard to protect you from blow jobs, soda and dirty talk.

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The Immunity Syndrome

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2012| 29 Comments »

They told me I was everything.  ‘Tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.  –  William Shakespeare, King Lear (IV, vi)

Adults in Western countries often say that teenagers think they’re immortal and invulnerable, and to some degree that’s true.  Really, how could it be otherwise?  They have the energy and optimism of youth, their bodies are generally as healthy as they’re ever going to be and very few of them have seen a peer die.  And unless they grew up in extreme poverty, they generally haven’t been ground down by the world and developed the permanent mental stoop that most adults have, the attitude Thoreau referred to as “quiet desperation”.  Young men are generally far more eager to go to war than are experienced campaigners, and young women far more likely to take the sort of risks that make their mothers cringe.  Add to that raging hormones and inexperience, and it’s not remotely surprising that teens have the highest STD rate of any demographic group (35% of all cases in the US), or that a small percentage of teenage girls end up pregnant when they absolutely did not want to be.

But does it have to be that way?  Certainly their inexperience is a major factor; people of any age who aren’t used to something (sex included) are more apt to make mistakes than those with plenty of experience.  And the fact that cognitive skills continue to develop until the mid-20s probably has something to do with it as well.  But if you look at the first paragraph above again, you’ll see that several of those factors can be summed up in a single word: ignorance.  The most important reason adolescents get in trouble over sex is that they don’t really understand that bad things can happen to them, nor how to reduce the chances of negative outcomes.  And the primary reason they don’t understand is that adults not only refuse to explain it to them, but in many cases actively block access to sex information…or even worse, actually lie to adolescents about it.  And the most egregious of these lies, such as “sex is better if neither of you knows what you’re doing on your wedding night”, are so patently false that they cause teens to doubt everything else adults are telling them – including the things that are true.

The teenage birth rate in the US is 34.3 births per 1000 girls aged 15 to 19, down from a 20th century high of 61.8 in 1991.  Proponents of “abstinence-only sex education” claim the credit for this, since that fad started in 1992 and became popular in 1996.  But when one considers that the present figure is still far greater than that of any other industrialized nation, in fact fully eight times the rate in the Netherlands, any rational person is forced to conclude that maybe keeping kids ignorant of sex isn’t exactly the best way of preparing them for life, and that perhaps we should worry more about protecting their health and futures than their imaginary “innocence”.  This becomes even more clear when one reads interviews with teen mothers in which they express shocking ignorance of the mechanics of menstruation and conception, and often state that they believed they were somehow immune to pregnancy.  The same goes for STDs; American teenagers seem completely unaware that they’re in the highest-risk group for infection and proceed as though their “love” will create a magical shield protecting them from all disease (and possibly pregnancy as well).

The reason for the drop, if you ask me, isn’t the increasing tendency of adults to try to “protect” teens by keeping them in ignorance, but rather the increasing inability of adults to keep them in ignorance, thanks to the internet (which has grown as teen pregnancy rates have dropped).  But it’s still not remotely enough; even if proper sex-education programs were implemented from coast to coast tomorrow our STD and teen pregnancy rates still probably wouldn’t drop to those of Europe due to our deep cultural weirdness about sex; we are, after all, the only Western country in which sex work is so thoroughly equated with pathology and criminality.  In other words, mere sex education isn’t enough; learning about biological mechanisms and potential problems is only half the picture.  Few of the people reading this were as thoroughly supervised and spied on as modern teens are, and governments in a number of countries (especially the US) want to increase that so as to keep them from discovering any information about sex other than what “authorities” choose to provide.  Not that this can ever be effective, any more than bans on prostitution or drugs are.  But just as drug criminalization leads inevitably to dangerously impure substances, and just as criminalization of prostitution allows sleazy characters to thrive on both the service and customer sides of the business, so does suppression of information reduce the quality of that which gets past the ban.  A recent op-ed by Michelle Griffin in the Brisbane Times proposes that we do the exact opposite and actually encourage teens to read porn (the operative word here being “read”); since they’re thinking about it anyway and can see crappy internet porn at the click of a mouse, access to non-clinical descriptions of sexuality will help to educate them just as Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden helped to educate Griffin (and me), discovering Dad’s stash of Playboy educated many young boys and watching farm animals educated kids for the past 10,000 years.

I have absolutely no hope that this sensible attitude will catch on in the United States any time soon; if the manufactured “controversy” over birth control and abortion is any indication, this country is moving backward rather than forward.  But we’d best do something soon; though HIV may soon be preventable, gonorrhea is rapidly becoming immune to all antibiotics, and a third of all infections are in teenagers.  People used to say (and some still apparently believe) that rape was worse than death; in a world of incurable venereal diseases, American parents will soon have to decide if preserving their kids’ so-called “innocence” is more important than preserving their lives.

One Year Ago Today

“Godwin’s Law” discusses the ways people use and misuse the familiar internet principle, and argues that sometimes Nazi analogies are entirely appropriate.

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That Was the Week That Was (#9)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 4, 2012| 24 Comments »

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.  –  Mahatma Gandhi

One obituary, ten updates and four meta-updates from the past week.

R.I.P. Miss Edna

I’m glad she outlived Zindler by almost five years, after having the last laugh on him in the court of public opinion for almost four decades.

Edna Milton Chadwell [84], the last madam of the Chicken Ranch, an infamous La Grange brothel which inspired a ZZ Top song, a Broadway hit and a movie starring Burt Reynolds and  Dolly Parton…died in Phoenix…on Feb. 25 of complications from injuries she received in a car wreck last October.  The Chicken Ranch…was the oldest continuously operating brothel in the nation when it closed in August 1973, following an expose by KTRK consumer reporter Marvin Zindler…Chadwell…[later] moved to Phoenix, where she lived in relative obscurity until she died…

The full article gives a lot more detail about Miss Edna’s life and management style and tells how The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas came to be.

Updates

Bits and Pieces (Part Two) (December 10th, 2010)

Politicians are well-known for being two-faced, but on the issue of internet censorship American politicians have raised duplicity to an art form.  For the past several years we’ve been subjected to their sanctimonious lectures about internet censorship in countries like China, while they…conspire to shut down Wikileaks via denial-of-service attacks, pressure on companies such as Amazon, Paypal, Visa and Mastercard and a campaign to crucify its founder Assange with what looks suspiciously like a “honey trap”.

When I wrote that I didn’t know the half of it, but my instincts (as usual) were good:

United States prosecutors have drawn up secret charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to a confidential internal email obtained from a private US intelligence company, Stratfor…In the [January 26th, 2011] email…the company’s vice-president…Fred Burton…wrote: “We have a sealed indictment on Assange”…The news…comes as the WikiLeaks founder awaits a British Supreme Court decision on his appeal against extradition to Sweden…[which] Assange…fears…will open the way for his extradition to the US on possible espionage or conspiracy charges…US army private Bradley Manning was last week committed to face court martial for 22 alleged offences including ”aiding the enemy” by leaking classified US documents…Stratfor “senior watch officer” Chris Farnham…referred to a conversation with a family friend who he said knew one of the Swedish women who have accused Mr Assange of sexual assault, and added that “there is absolutely nothing behind it other than prosecutors that are looking to make a name for themselves”…

Creating Criminals (January 15th, 2011)

Since American politicians insist on making it difficult (sometimes nigh-impossible) to obtain pseudoephedrine legally, I thought I’d help out by sharing the method for making the hard-to-get drug from readily-available methamphetamine.  If sinus sufferers are defined as criminals anyway, we may as well be uncongested, headache-free criminals.

Dirty Whores (June 24th, 2011)

Yet another example of why the incidence of STDs in promiscuous non-prostitutes is up to 160x that in escorts: “…[a new] study revealed…that young women with lower GPAs and more [binge drinking] used condoms less and less frequently over time…”

Secret Squirrel (July 16th, 2011)

Here’s yet another creepy gadget for spying on spouses; this one is apparently intended for polygamous relationships (we’re told it enables one to “watch them”, “track them” and “catch them”), but I presume it would also work if one only wanted to spy on one person.  As I said about the semen snooping service, “if you have that little trust for your wife, your relationship is doomed so you might as well save the money and just break up.”

Bootlickers (July 20th, 2011)

Remember the “bikini baristas” who were accused of “prostitution”, and the indignant letter from the woman who called the coffee bars “slut stands” that hurt “children” because “the ol [sic] man can’t keep his eyes to himself or his hands off himself?!”  Well, Italy has ignorant prudes just like her:

Busty brunette Laura, 34…has dominated newspapers and TV chat shows after pictures of her dressed in her revealing clothes appeared on the internet…Men have flocked to her bar…so much…that…wives and girlfriends in the town…have banned their partners from going…One said:  “It is outrageous and should not be allowed.  This town is quiet and respectable now we are known across the whole country because of the little amount of clothing this barmaid is wearing to serve drinks…”

One Size Fits All (August 9th, 2011)

I guess these folks didn’t get the memo that arranged marriages are also considered “human trafficking” now: “…[Fifteen] young girls in Wadia village near Palanpur are getting ready for a mass marriage…For the first time, the girls will not be forced into the flesh trade.  Wadia is known as the village of prostitutes in Gujarat.  The…marriage…is scheduled on March 11…” Artificial lines between prostitution and other types of female behavior are drawn everywhere, and the Indians seem just as bad at it as Americans are.

Elephant in the Parlor (October 23rd, 2011)

I can’t vouch for this 2007 story (which I somehow missed before), but I do know the lady:

A former New Orleans prostitute…has said David Vitter was a regular customer in 1999…In an interview…[with] Hustler…Wendy Yow Ellis…said she…[saw] Vitter…[regularly] for several months…”I could not wear any perfume, body lotions, not even take a shower,” Ellis said. “Because he did not want any scent on him whatsoever…” Vitter would [even] take his used condoms with him.  Vitter has acknowledged being a customer of Pamela Martin & Associates, a Washington, D.C., escort service…[Ellis] and Jeanette Maier, who…[ran] a brothel on Canal Street, then said that Vitter had also used their services…[after a while she told him her real name] “…and he said, ‘Oh, my God.'”  That was the last time they met for sex…Vitter’s wife is named Wendy.  Before that, Ellis said, she had used the name Leah…

Forward and Backward (November 22nd, 2011)

The DA of Washington, D.C. admits that “prostitution-free zones” are unconstitutional, but Florida cops never let a little thing like that stop them:

…anyone convicted in Hillsborough County of three or more prostitution charges can be prohibited from a 6½ square-mile area …called the “prostitution exclusion zone”…that long has been known for prostitution…and while police already…impound vehicles when a prostitution or drug arrest is made, the council agreed in December to raise the cost of reclaiming the vehicle to $500.  The new exclusion zone is neither a law nor a city ordinance…it’s a rule that judges can include as a condition of probation for anyone convicted of felony prostitution…

Yes, consensual sex between adults can be a felony in Florida.  Surely you aren’t surprised?

The Prudish Giant (December 28th, 2011)

Apparently, Paypal has entered a “biggest busybody” competition with Google:

…On…February 18, PayPal began threatening indie book publishers and distributors with immediate deactivation of the businesses’ accounts if they did not remove books containing …specific sexual fantasies that PayPal does not approve of…Of course, [this]…would devastate these businesses and all of their authors (not just the erotic writers) overnight…PayPal has a monopoly on the market of online payment processing.  There are few alternatives, though none that are widely used by online shoppers…the [banned themes include BDSM, incest and] pseudo-incest (including “daddy” fantasies, step-family)…fantasies about non-consensual sex or rape, bestiality (widened to include non-human fantasy creatures)…[including] shape-shifters – if the shape-shifters were to have sex in their non-human forms…

The More the Better (January 9th, 2012)

No sooner was this article about a stripper mom published in Redbook than a pompous pearl-clutcher named Penny Nance felt compelled to spew this sick bigotry out on the Fox News site, claiming (among other absurdities) that “the strip club industry has painful ramifications on society and leads to pornography  addiction, gangs, drug use and sex trafficking — just to name a few.”  I’m glad when people make such ridiculous statements, though, because they’re right about one thing: “Cultural acceptance of pornography, stripping, and prostitution is growing day by day.”  And when our descendants look back at this time period, articles like this will allow them to clearly identify people like Nance as the delusional fanatics they are.

Metaupdates

January Updates in February Updates (February 13th, 2011)

The ersatz plastic surgeon who accidentally killed a young Englishwoman with black-market butt injections may have been caught:

…Padge Victoria Windslowe, 42, was arrested Wednesday night as she prepared to host a “pumping party” where she was to illegally inject clients…She faces charges including aggravated assault and deceptive practices after…an exotic dancer…suffered serious lung problems after an injection… Windslowe…was being held on $10 million bail…[and] is a “person of interest” in the death of the 20-year-old London woman who last year received injections at a hotel near Philadelphia International Airport…

Where Are the Victims? in November Updates (Part Two) (November 3rd, 2011)

“Considering the economic and social collapse of Detroit (which has lost 60% of its population in the last 30 years), one would think its ‘authorities’ would have better things to do than persecute hookers.”  But  since the cops disagree, the people of Detroit now have to fend for themselves:  “…Justifiable homicide in [Detroit] shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year…the local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average.  Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force…are fighting back…on their own…”  I might point out that not too long ago nearly everyone had this sensible attitude, and it was only after the majority grew too lazy and timid to protect themselves that the police departments with which we are now oppressed were allowed to grow to their present dangerous size, power and level of armament.

Gorged With Meaning in First Updates of the Year (Part Two) (January 4th, 2012)

Another British article bemoaning the fact that women use sex to make a living:

An increasing portion of students in the United Kingdom looking for a way to pay for their tuition are turning to prostitution…the problem may be particularly acute among medical students, who generally go to school longer, accrue more debt and have less time for paid employment, according to the paper by Jodi Dixon, who is studying at the University of Birmingham.  Dixon pointed to a study of about 300 British university students, in which 10 percent reported knowing a student who had worked as a prostitute or escort in 2010.  That’s up from about 6 percent in 2006, and 4 percent in 2000, Dixon said, a rise that coincided with an increase in college tuition fees…While the ethical implications of soon-to-be doctors working as prostitutes are unclear, “what is unacceptable is a student being forced into prostitution out of financial desperation,” Dixon said…

Waaaah, waaaah, boo hoo hoo.  It’s “unacceptable” to be forced into sex work out of financial desperation, but not to be forced into waitressing or au pair work or any other job that makes a whole lot less?  And if you think its “unethical” for medical professionals to have ever done sex work, I’ve got some really bad news for you…

Sales Pitch in We’re Not Done Yet (January 28th, 2012)

Proponents of the Swedish Model insist that there are no brothels in Sweden  and that their law makes “sex trafficking” virtually impossible:

Six men are set to be charged…on suspicions of operating a…human trafficking operation which brought young women from Romania to Sweden to sell sex.  According to prosecutors, the trafficking ring is one of the largest of its kind ever uncovered in Sweden…Last year in Gothenburg, 255 men were reported and fined for buying sex, a number which led local police to…the discovery of the…trafficking ring…Exactly how many women were selling sex on the streets in Sweden remains unclear, however.

Well, at least there weren’t any government officials involved with this one.

One Year Ago Today

“He Said, She Said” is yet another example of why it’s really stupid for men to get involved in BDSM games with emotionally unstable women.

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Only Rights Can Stop the Wrongs

Posted in Current Events, Perception, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 3, 2012| 19 Comments »

The prostitute is the scapegoat for everyone’s sins, and few people care whether she is justly treated or not.  Good people have spent thousands of pounds in efforts to reform her, poets have written about her, essayists and orators have made her the subject of some of their most striking rhetoric; perhaps no class of people has been so much abused, and alternatively sentimentalized over as prostitutes have been but one thing they have never yet had, and that is simple legal justice.  –  Alison Neilans

Today is International Sex Workers’ Rights Day, which started in 2001 as a huge sex worker festival (with an estimated 25,000 attendees) organized in Calcutta by the Indian sex worker rights group Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee.  Prohibitionist groups tried to pressure the government to revoke their permit, but DMSC prevailed and the following year decided to celebrate their victory by establishing the event as an annual one.  As I wrote in my column of one year ago today,

Perhaps its Asian origin has slowed the day’s “catching on” in Europe and the Americas, but in the light of the current trafficking hysteria and the growing problem of American “rescue” organizations in Asia, I think it’s time to remedy that.  Whores and regular readers of this column are acutely aware of the paternalistic attitude taken toward prostitutes by governments, soi-disant feminists and many others, and it’s no secret that many Westerners still have very colonial, “white man’s burden” ideas about Asia; imagine then the incredible paternalism to which Asian sex workers are subjected by American busybodies!  I therefore think it’s a FANTASTIC idea to popularize a sex worker rights day which began in India; its very existence is a repudiation of much of the propaganda which trafficking fetishists foist upon the ignorant public.

As I’ve written in the past, American cultural imperialism in Asia is still very much a fact; despite our loathsome record on civil rights the US State Department presumes to judge other countries on their response to so-called “human trafficking”, based on secret criteria which obviously include classifying all foreign sex workers in a given country as “trafficked persons”.  The annual “Trafficking in Persons Report” results in cuts in foreign aid to countries which don’t suppress their prostitutes brutally enough to please their American overlords, and therefore provokes mass arrests and mass deportations in the countries so targeted.  Nor are these operations instigated only by governments; wealthy NGOs, enabled by money from big corporations looking for a tax dodge, from empty-headed celebrities in search of good publicity, and from clueless Americans desperate to “do something”, invade Asian countries and abduct prostitutes, forcing them into “rehabilitation”  which consists largely of imprisonment under inhumane conditions and brainwashing them to perform menial labor for grueling 72-hour weeks at one-tenth of their former income.  When the women escape from “rescue centers” or protest, they are said to be suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome” and their children are abducted and given away.

Nor is this sort of violence restricted to Asia; local US police agencies, often financed by wealthy prohibitionists like Swanee Hunt, routinely use prostitution as an excuse for mass arrests, robbery and grotesque intimidation tactics:

Tania Ouaknine is convinced the police are watching her.  She’s not paranoid — it says as much on the red sign painted along the side on the hulking armored truck that’s been parked in front of her eight-room Parisian Motel for several days:  “Warning:  You are under video surveillance”…From the front bumper of the menacing vehicle, another sign taunts:  “Whatcha gonna do when we come for you?”…[it’s loaded with] surveillance equipment…and [decorated]…with [Fort Lauderdale, Florida] police emblems…[which they] leave…parked in front of trouble spots…”They say I am running a whorehouse,” said the 60-year-old innkeeper…[who has] been the subject of an undercover operation targeting prostitution starting in September.  Ouaknine was arrested on Oct. 28 on three counts of renting rooms to prostitutes for $20 an hour…She says she’s doing nothing illegal.  “They’ve tried everything to shut me down and have failed,” she said.  “Now they bring this truck to intimidate me and my customers.”  Some neighbors surrounding the Parisian Motel say the truck is another form of constant police harassment.  On a recent afternoon, Leo Cooper watched as two undercover…[cops molested] a group of men gathered at the corner.  Within minutes, one of the men ran away.  A second man was charged with loitering.  “This is what happens here every day.  We can’t sit outside without being harassed,” said Cooper…

This is why sex worker rights should concern everyone, even those who aren’t prostitutes, don’t know any prostitutes, have never hired a prostitute and don’t give a damn about the human rights of strangers:  prostitution, especially as it’s viewed through the lens of “human trafficking” myth and “end demand” propaganda, is simply the latest excuse employed by governments in their campaign to control everything and everyone.  The 2005 re-authorization of the so-called “Violence Against Women Act”…

…permitted the collection and indefinite retention of DNA from, as the Center for Constitutional Rights understood at the time, “anyone arrested for any crime whether or not they are convicted, any non-U.S. citizen detained or stopped by federal authorities for any reason, and everyone in federal prison.”

Using this, Swanee Hunt (through her “Demand Abolition” organization) is now pushing for collection and retention of DNA from every man cops can accuse of patronizing a sex worker…which given the low standards of “suspicion” favored by police, means essentially any male found by cops in certain neighborhoods or in the company of a woman to whom he isn’t married.  While fanaticism-blinded neofeminists cheer, the war on “violence against women” (and by extension prostitution, which is defined as exactly that by neofeminists) is used to justify the same kind of egregious civil rights violations as those resulting from the “wars” on drugs and terrorism.

I think I can safely speak for virtually all sex workers when I say that we don’t want to be passive tools used by governments and NGOs as the excuse for tyranny; we simply want to be left alone to live our lives like anyone else, with the same rights, privileges, duties and legal protections as people in every other profession.  We are not children, moral imbeciles or victims (except of governments, cops and NGOs), and we do not require “rescue”, “rehabilitation” or special laws to “protect” us from our clients, boyfriends, employers or families to a greater degree than other citizens.  And we certainly don’t need others to speak for us no matter how much they insist we do.  Almost a year ago, Elena Jeffreys published an article entitled “It’s Time to Fund Sex Worker NGOs” and I wholeheartedly agree; furthermore, I would argue that it’s long past time to defund “rescue” organizations and all the others who presume to speak for sex workers while excluding us from the discussion.  How can someone who hates a given group and opposes everything its members want be considered a valid representative of that group?  It would be like allowing MADD and Carrie Nation’s Anti-Saloon League to represent distilleries and bar owners.  The very idea is absurd; yet that’s exactly what governments do, even in some countries where our trade isn’t criminal.  Millions of people claim to care about the welfare of prostitutes, yet contribute to groups who advocate that we be marginalized, criminalized, censored, hounded, persecuted, registered, confined, stripped of our rights, robbed of our livelihoods and enslaved…all because they don’t like what we do for a living.  It’s a lot like contributing to the KKK because you claim to be concerned about minorities.

If you actually care about the rights of women, or want to look like you do; if you’re opposed to imperialism and police brutality; if you support the right of people to earn a living in the jobs of their choice, and to organize for better work conditions; or even if you just want to protect yourself from yet another head of the ever-growing hydra of government surveillance, you should consider supporting the cause of sex worker rights.  Fight prohibitionist propaganda, speak out for decriminalization, contribute to sex worker organizations, vote against candidates who espouse prohibitionist rhetoric, and oppose local efforts to increase criminal penalties against whores and/or our clients.  And if anyone asks why you care, please feel free to quote from this essay or just hand them a copy.  Sex worker rights are human rights, and laws or procedures that harm sex workers harm everyone.

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Metaupdates

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 2, 2012| 23 Comments »

A priest, a rabbi and a leprechaun walk into a bar.  The leprechaun looks around and says, “Begorrah, I’m in the wrong joke!”

The prefix “meta” means “after” or “beyond”, sometimes in the sense of a recursive function; for example, “metacognition” means “thinking about thinking” and a “meta-joke” is a joke about jokes.  A “metaupdate” is therefore an update of another update, in this case items which have appeared in previous update columns.  I’m going to organize these in chronological order of the updates, rather than the order of the original columns the updates reference.

Think of the Children! in Further Developments (November 18th, 2011)

Child Cultists apparently believe that sexually-active adults emit invisible “sex rays”, and that if any of that sex wasn’t entirely vanilla the intensity of those “sex rays” increases exponentially and never, ever fades away.  Therefore no such person, no matter how long ago she committed these dreaded acts, can ever again be allowed with 10 meters of children lest her pervy emanations induce the dreaded “premature sexualization”, which might {Gasp!} cause innocent children to have sexual thoughts or feelings at some point before the magical Advent of Shazam at exactly midnight on their 18th birthdays.

That was in reference to outcry over former porn star Sasha Grey’s presuming to actually read to children in a volunteer program.  Though she was initially accepted by administrators, they now seem to believe that sex rays can even contaminate the money handled by harlots, and magically seep from bank accounts into educational programs, thence to schools and into the brains of poor, innocent little soap-bubble urchins:

…being deep in the red isn’t deterring one [educational] group from publicly rejecting money [from]…former adult film star Sasha Grey…Although she retired…last April, one of Grey’s scenes is featured [apparently without Grey’s consent] in adult film “Anal Artists,” set to debut this week…In support of her “recent efforts to expose children to the world of literature,” Assence Films will donate a portion of the film’s proceeds to the National Education Association’s Read Across America program…But…NEA officials said…”Sasha Grey is not affiliated with the…program nor has she been invited or endorsed…to read at any…events, and NEA will not accept any proceeds from…any of her films”…Howard Levine of Exile Distribution …[said this] is discriminatory.  “Anyone that’s supporting reading and helping kids and donating money to their cause should be accepted…they’re trying to be politically correct”…

I’ve got news for the NEA; if money which has paid for sex work is “contaminated” then every child in the country is already affected, because the money earned by sex workers of all types flows into local economies just like everyone else’s does.  It is virtually a statistical certainty that some of the money you’ve given your kids this month as allowance or whatever was paid to a sex worker at some point between leaving the mint and ending up in your hands.  If our money is “dirty”, then every church and school in the world is hopelessly polluted by our “sin” because they’re all supported by money we’ve handled or even directly contributed.

A Moral Cancer in That Was the Week That Was (#2) (February 5th, 2012)

Actually, this is a double meta-update; remember the “bacon causes cancer” scare story?  Well, it turns out that it was not only inconclusive, but promoted by a radical animal rights group of the same ilk as the PCRM, which I discussed in That Was the Week That Was (#3):

Link between eating processed meat [such as bacon or sausages] and pancreatic cancer in Swedish research is bogus and paid for by animal rights groups…But the…World Cancer Research Fund suggested the link may be down to obesity…Prof Susanna Larsson, who conducted the study at the Karolinska Institute, [said] links to…cancers [other than bowel cancer] were “quite controversial”…

As JunkScience.com pointed out, “This is a meta-analysis of 11 studies, none of which…link processed meat-eating with pancreatic cancer.  So 11 x 0 = zero.”

The Camel’s Nose in That Was the Week That Was (#5) (February 18th, 2012)

The disgusting saga of Mark Berndt, the third-grade teacher who fed his semen to children for years and documented it with photos, just keeps getting worse.  The original story broke on January 11th, then on February 3rd a second teacher from the same school was arrested:

…The arrest of Miramonte Elementary School [second-grade] teacher Martin Bernard Springer, 49, came three days after L.A. prosecutors accused former teacher Mark Berndt of bizarre acts in his classroom …The allegations against Springer…come from two students he allegedly touched improperly within the last three years…Springer was ordered out of his classroom Thursday morning…Authorities are looking for other potential victims in both cases as well as past episodes of possible misconduct…Supt. John Deasy said he wants to fire Springer as soon as next Tuesday, when the Board of Education will discuss the case in closed session…At the same meeting, Deasy said, he also will urge the board to fire Hamilton High music teacher Vance Miller…[after] two former students, now adults…accused Miller of having sexual relationships with them…

By Monday, the district had decided on a scorched-earth policy instead:

…Los Angeles school officials said they will temporarily replace the entire staff of an elementary school…where two teachers have been accused of lewd acts…Supt. John Deasy announced the action at a tense public meeting…in which…parents chanted “cover-up!” and accused the school system of failing to protect their children…More than a quarter of the students enrolled at Miramonte didn’t show up Monday as parents kept them home…Officials emphasized that no other educators at the school are under suspicion but that a bold act was needed…Many, maybe all, of the current Miramonte staff will be returned to the school eventually…In the interim, their places will be filled by teachers and other workers on a rehiring list.  The Miramonte staff will continue to be paid…Once students return, each will be interviewed by the district, and a psychiatric social worker will be present in every classroom, Deasy said…

So much for not traumatizing the kids.  I can’t even begin to imagine how much a social worker in every classroom will cost, but obviously the district has plenty of money:

The Los Angeles Unified School District paid Mark Berndt…$40,000 to drop the challenge to his dismissal last year.  The payout consisted of four months of back salary plus reimbursement for the cost of health benefits.  Berndt was fired by the Board of Education in February 2011…but…fought to keep his job…until he settled with the school system and resigned in June…counsel David Holmquist [said]…”We were told we could not do any investigation” to avoid interfering with a law enforcement probe…”We didn’t have any evidence, and we couldn’t put on any witnesses.  We didn’t have anything to successfully defend a challenge.”

The cops are still being proprietary about the whole thing, and on the 18th told the parents to butt out:

The investigation into a former third-grade teacher…could be hampered by the flood of civil cases related to the scandal and public statements made by alleged victims, according to Los Angeles County sheriff’s detectives…Since the charges were announced, civil attorneys say they are representing more than 60 victims…Earlier this week two alleged victims appeared with their attorney on the “Dr. Phil” television show.  “The lawyers are making it that much more difficult,” [said] William McSweeney, chief of detectives…”It is going to raise issues of credibility.”  The civil attorneys have made claims about Berndt that are not contained in the original charges, including some accusations…that Berndt fed the alleged victims cookies with his semen on them…Detectives are still investigating and are urging families to contact the Sheriff’s Department before seeking private counsel.

I’m glad the cops get to see how it feels to have outsiders interfering with their work for a change.

One Year Ago Today (Meta-edition)

“Thinking with the Wrong Head”  discussed Chris Lee, the congressman who stupidly documented his indiscretions with photos.  Well, here’s another example of the same syndrome, this time from Arizona:

…well-known border hawk Sheriff Paul Babeu, who’s now running for Congress in Arizona, was…[accused by] a Mexican immigrant who said he dated the sheriff for years and was threatened with deportation if he ever told anyone about their romance. The Phoenix New Times…broke the story on its website…complete with text messages…[and] compromising photos…reminiscent of recent sex scandals that ended the careers of Congressmen Anthony Weiner and Chris Lee…The New Times identified the accuser only by his first name, José…he met Babeu through the dating website gay.com in 2006…Babeu was a police officer in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler at the time and was elected as sheriff of Pinal County in late 2008… José volunteered for Babeu’s campaign, maintaining his websites and social media accounts…They were apparently together during Babeu’s fast rise to becoming a national figure in the fight against illegal immigration…[but] their relationship went sour…when [José] began to suspect that Babeu was using a website for casual hookups…

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