What more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more … a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. – Thomas Jefferson
All my usual news sources were constipated by the election this week; interesting events were still there, but were blocked from emerging into daylight by the huge, malodorous mass that is the American political process. As soon as that filthy mess was done with, the rest started to flow normally again; unfortunately, that meant I had to scramble a bit to compose today’s column and yesterday’s TW3, and that I’ll probably have too many items for next week. Had I wanted to fill this column with boring election stories I could easily have done so, but I deemed only three worthy of inclusion.
I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both. – Thomas Babington, Lord Macaulay
At last the madness is over, and the world is relieved of the poison Americans vomit out everywhere in advance of our presidential elections. The pretense that one fascist is somehow superior to the other is of no concern to this column, but ballot initiatives in Colorado, Washington and California are. Let’s start with the good news: possession and use of small amounts of marijuana have been decriminalized in Colorado and Washington, and Coloradans are allowed to cultivate up to six plants and give away weed as long as no money is exchanged. State authorities have been granted plenty of time (8 months in Colorado and 13 in Washington) to draft and adopt regulations for commercial cultivation and sale, and though the federal ban still stands it’s going to be rather difficult for the feds to enforce that, considering that 99% of all marijuana arrests are committed by state and local police (who in those two states will now be forbidden to act).
But while the forces of prohibitionism lost a little power over 12 million people, they gained a great deal over 38 million. Not only did Michael Weinstein’s crusade to turn porn movies into creepy goggle-and-glove festooned condom commercials succeed, but also the horrific Proposition 35 passed by a landslide due to its dishonest portrayal as an “anti-human trafficking” measure. The law defines a “‘commercial sex act’ as one that…occurs on account of anything of value being given or received by any person… ‘anything of value’…[could] include…dinner…a movie…a drink…” and defines coercion so broadly that a wide spectrum of previously non-criminal behaviors (including begging or buying a woman a drink) falls under it. Parents, adult children, roommates, spouses and landlords of prostitutes could all be charged with “pimping”, which along with “coerced commercial sex” is defined as “human trafficking”; million-dollar fines, decades-long prison sentences and lifelong “sex offender” registration are the penalties for the new “crime”. Furthermore, it demands that those condemned to this registry turn over all internet screen names, passwords and other “identifiers” to the police so they can be continually spied upon, forever (though this one narrow portion of the law has already been challenged by the ACLU and EFF). Finally (and most incredibly), the registration and its attendant surveillance are retroactive to 1944, so a 90-year-old woman convicted of “pandering” in the last days of World War II for assisting a hooker friend could be forced to register as a “dangerous sex offender” (with all that entails).
Tomorrow is the 237th anniversary of the founding of the United States Marine Corps, and is observed by Marines as the Corps’ “birthday”. Military men have been among the best clients of whores since men first started going to war, and that will always be so despite the recent efforts of evil-minded prudes to change it. You can read my personal and professional thoughts on the subject from two years ago at the link above, and from last year also. And if you know a Marine, he’s sure to appreciate a “Happy Birthday!” tomorrow.
“Sex addiction” seems positively reasonable compared to the notion of an escort service that “wasn’t prostitution or anything”:
…Jennifer…was hooked on heroin in her early twenties…but straight after she left rehab, a new problem began to emerge. “I’m not really sure how it happened, but I started to work for an escort service…It wasn’t prostitution or anything, but what drew me to this particular company was the fact that all I had to do was go on dates with men…lots of men.” Jennifer says she didn’t sleep with her clients, but that working as an escort made her feel the same “high” that drugs had given her, because of all the attention she received. At the same time, she also became obsessed with constantly posting provocative pictures of herself on her Facebook page…After a year of this…Jennifer…quit working as an escort and [sought] counseling. She was told she was “addicted” to male attention…While the American Psychiatric Association doesn’t classify Jennifer’s condition as an addiction, some mental health professionals say they regularly encounter behavior like this in recovering addicts…Cindy Grassin…emphasizes that an obsession with or addiction to male attention is different from a sex addiction…
Actually, they’re exactly the same: obsessions which quacks mislabel as “addictions” to capitalize on a fad.
Prostitution stories involving Florida cops would be hilarious if their moronic shenanigans didn’t hurt real women: “The alleged illicit activities…not far from Walt Disney World…came as a surprise to some central Floridians. ‘That’s crazy…because people are coming here for fun,’ said…Tamika Stevens.” If Tamika thinks sex isn’t fun, I suggest she seek a competent therapist. “‘Every time we’ve been here it’s been as safe as anything,’ said visitor Wayne Aston. Law enforcement officials said they want to try to keep it safe. And to help do so, they are cracking down on prostitution.” Because we’re dangerous criminals! One never knows when a hooker will burn a kid with a flashbang grenade, or taser a pregnant woman, or machine-gun a bystander in the back…oh, wait, that’s cops.
Though brothels are illegal in the UK, the city of Edinburgh has long tolerated prostitution in saunas as a way of reducing streetwalking. But when the licenses of 13 of the 15 saunas came up for renewal recently, protests were filed by busybody prohibitionists spouting idiocy such as “…The buying and selling of vulnerable women…is not a private matter…it harms us all.” Fortunately, the city council did the right thing and renewed the licenses anyway:
Twelve saunas in Edinburgh were…granted…licences by councillors, despite…one [man’s]…campaign against them. Michael Anthony, 59…left the City Chambers in protest…He had earlier accused police…of turning a blind eye to criminal activity…[but] police officers at the meeting said they had no grounds to object. Ten of the licences were granted and two were continued, because of ongoing police investigations, and will be reviewed within six months. Until then they will continue trading…Scotpep, a campaign group supporting sex workers, welcomed the decision…However, Jenny Kemp, co-ordinator of Zero Tolerance, said: “We are appalled by this decision. Sexual exploitation is a huge problem in Edinburgh and saunas are a key place where that…happens.”
“Long gas station lines and empty gas pumps have plagued drivers across New York and New Jersey since [tropical] storm Sandy slammed into the East Coast last Monday, leaving a gas shortage across the region…now it seems…Men have been taking to the personals on Craigslist, trading gasoline for sex…” To the credulous mind of the modern “reporter”, a few clueless idiots trying to get laid for about $20 of goods is “People trading gas for sex on Craigslist.”
…Jackie Samuel…is a professional cuddler…[who] turned to snuggling with strangers to help pay for her studies and provide for her young son…her college has threatened to expel her – while others have called her a prostitute…She said: “I think I was born knowing how to snuggle. Snuggling is healthy, spiritual and fun…Some of my older clients, their wives have passed away, and they just need someone to be with, like someone to experience touch with. Some of the younger clients are between relationships, some are in problematic relationships, and some people are just really curious and they come to just find out what it’s going to be like”…clients…are banned from touching parts of her body covered by underwear, which she wears under pyjamas. The business has done so well she has even hired another snuggling professional, Colleen…[who] has joined Jackie on two occasions in what they have termed a “double cuddle”…
Ireland’s Turn Off the Red Light (TORL) campaign…already enjoys having their own letters widely published in…Irish newspapers, whilst sex worker letters are almost always ignored, but they want more…so…the Irish Feminist Network (IFN) reached out in a mailshot…calling for volunteer “letter writers”, only actually they meant shills. “TORL will provide the letter – all you have to do is put your name and contact details to the end of it”…
…a police officer in Texas burst [Rebecca Van Hooser’s] breast implant by using excessive force when he arrested her during a traffic stop. Pantego Officer Eric Alvarez pulled [her] over…for a headlight violation [then] discovered a warrant for her arrest for an unpaid speeding ticket…”She gets out of the car, [Alvarez] grabs her, throws her against the car…kick…spreads her legs and…yanks [her arms] very hard behind her back,” [said] her attorney, Susan Hutchison…Van Hooser is suing the Pantego Police Department for the Oct. 28, 2011, incident, which…caused her right implant to split and leak fluid into her body. “She’s screaming in pain, and his response is, ‘This isn’t supposed to be comfortable,'” Hutchison added…
…workers at one company that helped to collect ethically raised chickens were apparently themselves victims of human trafficking and beatings…its…license [was] revoked…after allegations that it kept workers in debt bondage, among a series of other claims…roughly 29 Lithuanian men…said that they had been told that these would be well-paid jobs…but earned…less than $150 a week…
Dutch “authorities” seem determined to destroy their historic tolerance by outlawing more aspects of sex work and then feigning surprise when the number of illegal whores increases (translated with Google’s help):
…police allege…that there is illegal labor and prostitution in many Chinese massage parlors…there were “signs of sexual acts” in two of the four Chinese massage parlors in Amsterdam…Twenty staff were checked by the police. Two employees were illegally employed, one was illegally residing in the Netherlands and in one case there were “indications of exploitation”…None of the salons proved adequate records of cash transactions. About 75 of the 300 massage businesses in Amsterdam are believed to be “happy-ending” establishments…and police concentrated on Chinese parlors in particular because of alleged “signs” that forced women are employed in them…
Nine (of Feminist Ire) looks at the willful blindness of “Rhoda Grant MSP…the latest public figure to have jumped on the criminalisation bandwagon” by promoting the Swedish Model; Nine writes that “The proposal, based on a lack of understanding of what the sex industry is actually like, has been put together by someone who doesn’t want to learn about it. The consultation paper draws from unethical research and selectively uses small-scale studies on specific sectors of the sex industry to define sex work as a whole…” That’s why it’s important for as many sex workers and allies as possible, even those who don’t live in Scotland, to add their voices to the process.
Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds. – Susan Sontag
Westerners, mired as they so often are in black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking, often have difficulty understanding syncretism, the tendency for deities, religious practices or even entire religions to combine into new forms; they can’t imagine how a person could be, say, a Christian and a pagan at the same time. Faced with religions like Voodoo or goddesses like Santa Muerte, the typical response of a Christian or Muslim is to brand such beliefs “heresy” or even “devil worship”; even most secular Westerners tend to think of their political faiths in the same way, as comprehensive systems that must be embraced completely or rejected totally, with no allowance for drift or fusion. But while the Occidental mind tends to think of religion as a checklist, the Oriental mind tends to view it as a buffet from which each individual can pick and choose whichever elements of each faith appeal to him. Chinese people traditionally practiced a mixture of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism; the Japanese mixed Buddhism with Shinto; my Vietnamese manicurist in New Orleans attended an Asian Catholic Church but displayed a crucifix, a picture of the Blessed Mother and a shrine to the Buddha in her shop. And the Islam practiced in Java, syncretized with a mixture of Buddhism, Hinduism and the native Kejawen belief system, would probably be quite shocking to orthodox believers living much closer to Mecca (both physically and psychologically). I recently discovered a fascinating article about how this fusion has combined with two other practices – ancient sacred prostitution and modern capitalism – to create the unique observances of Gunung Kemukus, a shrine in central Java.
…Every 35 days, the Friday of the Gregorian calendar intersects with Pon, one of the five days of the ancient Javanese lunar calendar. Its eve is an auspicious date at Gunung Kemukus…[site of a] ritual [which] can guarantee success in business, usually for those at or near the bottom of the ladder…Pilgrims mostly come from Indonesia’s Javanese-speaking core, but some travel days across the massive archipelago to get here…First, prayers and offerings must be made at the grave of Pangeran Samodro and Nyai Ontrowulan…[then] pilgrims must wash themselves at…[a] sacred spring…then they must find a sex partner…of the opposite sex…[to whom they are not married]…Many people believe the ritual only works if you return at seven consecutive, 35-day intervals, either the night before Friday intersects with Pon, or when it crosses with another Javanese day, Kliwon…
…Pangeran Samodro was [the prince of] Demak, a [16th-century] Muslim sultanate [which was one of the successor-states of the recently-fallen Majapahit Empire. He had]…an affair with…Nyai Ontrowulan, [one of his father’s wives,] and the two were forced to flee. They were staying on Gunung Kemukus when they were found…[in the act by the father’s soldiers,] killed, and buried together in the one hole…[the legend arose] that whoever [finishes] their sex act will receive blessings from Nyai Ontrowulan…local government and religious authorities promote a G-rated version of the story, with the prince cast as a devoted proselytiser of Islam…but…no one is…trying to shut the ritual down…scores of traders [sell] aphrodisiacs, food, novelties, miracle cures and kitchen appliances…[while] shacks [offer] drinks, karaoke, prostitutes and rooms for sex. There are multiple tolls to get in, and businesses are levied a daily charge. With between 6,000 and 8,000 pilgrims arriving on the busiest nights…it’s…big money…for the local community and…government…about half of the women who show up are commercial sex workers. Another 25 percent are “part-timers”…who…accept money if it’s on offer. The 1980s was when…sex workers, as well as other businesses, started moving into the area…[and] also when the local government decided to spread its own cleaned-up version of the ritual — while at the same time profiting from sex-seeking pilgrims…Since the 1998 fall of the Suharto regime, religiously-minded authorities have cracked down on many legal red-light districts…[but] Gunung Kemukus…has come to be seen as a safe place…
Neither the ritual itself nor the way the local government unofficially protects it while officially disavowing it are any surprise to me; government officials in every land and time have always been among the greatest patrons of and parasites upon harlots. What I find especially interesting, though, is how religiously-connected prostitution, which is persecuted in both traditional and modern forms in other countries, has survived here by changing its form; and also how religion, which in some places is used as an excuse for persecuting whores, is in Java used as an excuse for protecting them.
They tell tall tales in Texas!
They love to stretch the truth.
They have an appetite for hype;
They learn it in their youth.
They tell tall tales in Texas!
They lie so easily.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell the tales
From true reality. – Sharon Warner
The tall tale is an old and venerable tradition in folklore which is chiefly characterized by exaggeration; the art of the “whopper” lies in telling a ridiculous story so convincingly that the more gullible members of one’s audience may actually fall for it. This is what chiefly distinguishes it from the three other major forms of folklore: fabliaux and jokes are understood by both teller and listener to be fiction; fairy tales are accepted literally by children and symbolically by adults; and legends are believed both by teller and listener. The tall tale is most common among largely-male groups on the frontiers of civilization, and can be understood at least in part as a game or contest; the teller is in a way intellectually “wrestling” with his listeners, trying to defeat their skepticism with his yarn-spinning ability. But just as there’s a huge moral difference between horseplay and physical assault, so there is a vast gulf between tales of Pecos Bill and the outrageous lies Texas politicians and cops routinely tell; the former are good-natured and intended to amuse, while the latter are serious attempts to exert harmful control over unwilling victims. Obviously, politicians and cops everywhere are well-known for their habitual practice of deceit, but in most places they at least try to make their lies believable; in Texas, however, they seem to enjoy stretching the truth far past the breaking point, as if to test just how much the credulous public will allow them to get away with.
Austin police are partnering with local non-profits to fight an expected rise in human trafficking during Formula 1 weekend. It’s a crime that grows anytime Austin has an influx of visitors…[police are] unsure how many trafficking victims they will rescue during F1, but the department is preparing for a busy week. “It could be one victim. It could be 200,” said APD Victim Services Supervisor Dolores Laparte-Litton. Human trafficking is also known as modern day slavery, underage prostitution and sexual exploitation. Four out of five victims are U.S. citizens. Up to 300,000 girls between 11 and 17 are lured into the sex industry every single year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice…Sex trafficking was a huge problem at the Super Bowl in Dallas in 2011. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott called it the single largest human trafficking event in the United States.
In case you don’t recall, the total extent of this “huge problem” was one wannabe pimp who was inspired by the hype. But neither blatant falsehood nor demographic absurdities can stop those tall-tale-tellin’ Texans, who apparently also compete to see who can tie the largest number of moral panics together in one yarn:
…Police in Texas today are warning that girls are being lured into prostitution by gang members trolling their social media profiles. According to San Antonio Police Detective George Segura, gangs look for girls on Facebook who are showing off a bit too much skin, and are possibly seeking attention. Gang members then approach the girls on Facebook, befriend them, and convince them to meet up in person. No one is too young to be exploited — police say girls as young as 12 are being recruited. The sex trade is big business for gangs…[who] “can easily make hundred [sic] of thousands of dollars per girl, per year”…
So let’s see, we’ve got white slavery, the internet and gangs, and this hat trick is then embellished with slut-shaming, the old “average age of entry” myth and the relatively new “all whores dependably make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year” one. This stuff is as absurd as Davy Crockett’s killing a bear when he was three years old or Bigfoot Wallace defeating forty-two Comanches with hickory nuts; no adult brain in proper working order could believe such rubbish. Unfortunately, “common sense” is an oxymoron, and the average person is generally willing to accept any tale, no matter how ludicrous, as long as it’s told by someone with a title.
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honored in the breach than the observance. – William Shakespeare, Hamlet (I, iv)
In the United States, today is Election Day. We’ve been putting up with partisan idiocy for over a year now, and for the past few months it’s become intolerable: normal election years are bad enough, but presidential election years are a kind of evil circus which turns even normal people who pay too much attention to it into raving lunatics. And the worst part of it? Despite the mindless glorification of their own candidate and equally-mindless vilification of the other, the modern US presidential elections have about as much impact on the future of the country as choosing a new color of paint for one’s house. Don’t believe me? Then please explain why every president going back to Reagan, no matter what his campaign rhetoric, mostly continued the policies of his predecessor once he got in the White House. My husband says he imagines that on the evening of inauguration day, the new president goes into the Oval Office alone and meets with a mysterious old man in a gray suit who puts a binder on his desk and explains for the next six hours or so exactly how things are going to be.
While I don’t necessarily believe that’s literally true, it is correct in principle because this country is not run by elected officials, but by an entrenched bureaucracy. The “progressive” philosophy of the late 19th century held that ordinary people could not be trusted to run our own lives; instead, we should be governed by “experts” who would determine what was best for us. As this mentality took hold over the next few decades, burgeoning federal and state bureaucracies insinuated or forced their way into areas of life which had throughout human history been considered private and personal. Since the people could not be trusted to choose those who would run these rapidly-multiplying bureaus (and by the 1930s there were far too many of them to elect anyhow), they were hired and progressed upward by supposed “merit”, much like the military. And like the military, they stayed in place when the elected officials changed. As the federal government metastasized after World War II, the number, reach and power of these positions dramatically increased; then, as anti-discrimination and other employee protection laws multiplied, the career bureaucrats in those positions became virtually impossible to fire. The final tipping point came sometime during the Reagan administration, not because of anything he did but simply as the end result of the interactions of layer upon layer of contradictory, vague, ill-considered legislation, regulation, guidelines and official procedures. Sometime in the 1980s, the unelected bureaucracy assumed the real power in Washington, not through a conscious act but merely because neither ruling party is willing (nor probably even able) to take the drastic steps necessary to shut it down, chop it into pieces and destroy every last cell of it with fire so as to prevent its regeneration. It will continue to grow until it collapses of its own weight or consumes all available resources, at which point it will perish and take the current system of government with it.
This is the main reason I don’t vote. In a republic, the electorate chooses representatives to act on its behalf; by participating in the system, each voter agrees to abide by the results of the process and tacitly acknowledges that the leaders so elected (and by extension the underlings they appoint and the bureaucrats those underlings hire, including police) have legitimate authority over them. People love to say, “if you don’t vote, you have no right to complain,” but this is completely backwards: it is the voters who have no right to complain, because by signing on to this devil’s bargain they agree to be bound by it. Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason explained it this way:
…In his 1851 book Social Statics, the English radical Herbert Spencer neatly describes the rhetorical jujitsu surrounding voting, consent, and complaint, then demolishes the argument. Say a man votes and his candidate wins. The voter is then “understood to have assented” to the acts of his representative. But what if he voted for the other guy? Well, then, the argument goes, “by taking part in such an election, he tacitly agreed to abide by the decision of the majority.” And what if he abstained? “Why then he cannot justly complain…seeing that he made no protest…Curiously enough, it seems that he gave his consent in whatever way he acted—whether he said yes, whether he said no, or whether he remained neuter! A rather awkward doctrine this.” Indeed.
The chance of any candidate whose views come within 46 parsecs of mine being nominated to the presidency by either faction of the duopoly is so close to zero as to be mathematically indistinguishable from it, and the chance of a third-party candidate being elected in our current system isn’t much higher. Furthermore, even if such a candidate were to be elected to the presidency, the Republicrats wouldn’t allow him to accomplish anything. My vote is therefore not merely worthless, but assigned a negative value; it is worth more to me uncast, as a protest against the current system and as a symbolic rejection of the “authorities” produced by that system. For me, voting has become a custom more honored in the breach than the observance.
Once in Persia reigned a King,
Who upon his signet ring
Graved a maxim true and wise,
Which, if held before his eyes,
Gave him counsel, at a glance,
Fit for every change or chance:
Solemn words, and these are they:
“Even this shall pass away!” – Theodore Tilton
It has been my custom every Guy Fawkes Day (that’s November 5th for those of you outside the Commonwealth) to call for a rededication of the holiday from a time to burn rebels in effigy to a time to burn tyrants in effigy instead. As I pointed out the first time and repeated the second,
Governments need to be reminded (at least annually if not constantly) that they only hold power by the sufferance of all the people, not merely the majority, and that the overthrow of any government by a disgruntled minority is always a possibility. I would like to see most if not all politicians and their minions paying for their power and privilege by being forced to live in a constant state of nervous anxiety; maybe then fewer would choose that path and more would concern themselves with keeping all the citizenry happy rather than merely pleasing barely enough of the population to keep themselves in office.
Though the United States stopped observing the holiday after 1776, I think it might be especially meaningful here, considering that Election Day is always the first Tuesday in November and thus must fall within four days of the 5th (this time around, it’s tomorrow). It would be a good thing for newly-elected or soon-to-be-elected politicians to know that all across the country thousands were burning their images on bonfires, with all the threat that implies; those who believe such rituals would have no power would do well to consider how nervous politicians get when one of them is shot, or the lengths to which they will go to protect themselves from criticism.
Modern people tend to dismiss rituals as relics of the superstitious past, thus demonstrating not only a poor understanding of group psychology but also a startling lack of introspection. Any good anthropologist could give you dozens of examples of completely secular rituals which nonetheless have enormous power; the voting ritual is one (try saying “I never vote, it’s a waste of time” to a casual group and watch the irrational reactions; more on that tomorrow). Another is the annual holiday frenzy which stretches from the end of this month until Christmas; despite the claims of conservative Christians, it has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus and never really did. The lack of group rituals can also have deleterious effects on society; as I explained last Thursday, I think the main reason our culture has become afraid of its own collective shadow is that we no longer trouble to remind ourselves that all things must pass, and therefore ruin our lives in a vain attempt to avoid death.
That column addressed individual fears of personal death, but that isn’t the whole of the problem by a long shot; Western cultures in general, and the US in particular, have become so obsessed with the end of Our Way of Life, that we’re willing to discard everything good about it to avoid that end. Just as parents who fear the remote chance of their children being abducted establish a mini-police state which destroys everything they remember fondly about their own childhoods, so have Western countries fearing the changes brought by technology, immigration, new ideas and the information explosion established real police states which are rapidly destroying everything that made Western culture great. Countries which once accepted immigrants with open arms now brand them “criminals” or pretend they’re “victims” brought thither against their wills. Countries which once enshrined the rights of individuals in their legal codes now enact restriction upon restriction against speech, assembly, privacy, property, dress, food choices, business practices and even thought itself. In the United States, once the world’s greatest proponent of the freedom of expression, we’re now seeing a dramatic increase in both official and unofficial attempts at censorship, and even journalists and law professors advocating laws against free speech. The excuse tyrants use for all this is “safety” and “security”, and the reason the people accept it is fear.
The fear of cultural or national death is just as futile and unproductive as that of personal death because it is equally inevitable. All things die: organisms, species, habitats, cities, empires, worlds, stars and even the universe itself. It is literally impossible to stop the process; entropy increases, and the only way to slow that in one area is to speed it up somewhere else. For any given society, what that means is that governments fall, mores loosen, customs change, the genetic profiles of populations shift and the sum total of knowledge increases; the society ages and eventually dies, to be replaced by others just as individual humans are replaced by our descendants. Like a human, a culture is not judged after its passing by when it died, but by how it lived; its legacy is defined by what it achieved, how it interacted with other cultures and how it treated its people…and if most of the Western nations keep on our present path, I sincerely doubt the opinion of posterity will be a positive one.
Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny; for no power that is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them. – John Milton
It’s really too bad there weren’t more good Halloween-themed links this week; though I’ve featured a few over the past month only three of these are seasonally-appropriate, and the second video only accomplishes that by stretching a point in a corny (though amusing) fashion. Now, if the zombie planet orbited Wolf 359, Aldebaran or one of the Hyades I might have a different opinion…ah, well. The science/horror connection is much more interestingly explored in the link just above it, which you won’t appreciate without reading Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu” first. I reckon the holiday was overshadowed by a freakishly-large, freakishly-late tropical storm freakishly making first landfall in the media center of the world, plus the impending American presidential election; my opinion on the latter is expressed perfectly by the little girl in the first video, which came to my attention via Radley Balko (who also contributed the links down to it). Those between the videos were contributed by Jacob Sullum, Jesse Walker, Popehat, Grace (two links) and Mike Siegel (two links).
Meanwhile, the US dumps zillions into inefficient wind farms, solar energy boondoggles, environmentally-destructive ethanol schemes…
…fundamentalist Islamists, though…shut out of power in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco, nonetheless manage to promote their…agendas — often taking the law into their own hands, and in this case threatening…prostitutes and their customers and driving away the only industry in [the town of Ain Leuh]. “The economy is in free fall here,” said Ali Adnane…“The girls rented. They had cash. They bought things”…Exactly what happened…is in dispute. [Campaign leader Mohammed] Aberbach says the Islamists never did anything illegal. The campaign, he said, largely involved demonstrations in the main square. No one threatened anybody or used violence or stood at the entrances to the village demanding identification from men who wanted to enter…But others, including Haddou Zaydi, a member of the town council, say all those things, and more, took place. Sometimes, he said, the Islamists used padlocks to imprison the prostitutes in their houses after a customer had gone in. Then, they called the police…Mourad Boufala…said he was not in favor of prostitution…but…was offended by the Islamists’ methods. “The way they did it was really rough,” he said. “They hit girls…scared them…and…offered them no alternatives”…
Sixteen agencies worked together on a human trafficking and prostitution investigation that led to 27 people being arrested…County Attorney Alan Ostergren said…that agencies across Iowa have participated in these stings lately. He claims that agencies chose Muscatine…because the law enforcement there wanted to investigate the prostitution problem. Investigators took two months to set up the sting…The prostitution charge is an aggravated misdemeanor…[but] Robert Kennedy, 56, of Peoria, Illinois was charged with felony human trafficking…
Even if you believe that prostitution is a “crime” worth persecuting people for, do you really think tying up 16 different organizations for two months – literally thousands of man-hours and many tens of thousands of dollars – is really worth it for 27 misdemeanor arrests, many of which won’t even bring in a fine?
Here’s a short Guardian article on the history of the Contagious Disease Acts, including a rather odd epilogue: Cambridge University continued its own version of the national laws – complete with arrest powers – for ten years after the latter were repealed!
Two women were arrested on suspicion of prostitution after seven rooms were found in a [Moscow] building close to Sretensky Monastery where sexual services were offered from 1,750 roubles (£35) per hour. Father Tikhon, the abbot of the monastery, is said to be a religious counsellor to Mr Putin…There were conflicting reports over the ownership of the brothel, found in one of a chain of mini-hotels called Podushkin…
If you’ve been looking for a meaningful opportunity to speak up for sex worker rights, now’s your chance:
Rhoda Grant MSP believes that “prostitution…is a form of sexual violence against women…[which] is inherently harmful and dehumanizing” and that “the majority of those who are involved in prostitution are unwilling participants.” She is proposing to make it illegal to purchase sex in Scotland…The public consultation on Rhoda Grant’s proposals for a new law to criminalise the purchase of sex is open until 14th December. This is an open consultation – you do not have to be a resident of Scotland or the UK to respond…
That bears repeating: YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE A RESIDENT OF SCOTLAND to reply; responses from sex workers, clients, allies or just those who care about liberty are all welcome. You don’t even need to “out” yourself”:
…the consultation document asks specifically for answers to 8 questions – but you can also just write in with your opinion if you prefer. Your letter will be much more powerful if you can add your own views and experiences, although at Scot-PEP we have prepared some template letters here which you can use as a guideline…or simply print the letters off and sign them. You don’t need to use your real name, for example you can use your work name or an alias to send in your opinion…email your letter to: Rhoda.Grant.msp@scottish.parliament.uk…
Yet another generally-balanced profile of several sex workers, including Audacia Ray of the Red Umbrella Project. Nobody could accuse it of “glamorizing” sex work because it’s a bit too enchanted with the lurid, but it does clearly present the position that “it is patronizing to view all sex workers as victims” and “choosing to become a sex worker is self-determination in its own right.”
…Experts from 11 countries [who] have converged on Sydney…expressed dismay at the NSW government’s proposal to remove decriminalisation of sex work…The Sex Worker Outreach Project (SWOP) has apologised to the international visitors, who have come to Australia looking to pick up tips on best practice…
…witnessing the saviour Gloria [lecturing about]…rescuing hapless victims of ‘prostitution’ trafficked, abject and forever victimized…set me thinking…of what it is about sex work that makes…feminists so deeply uncomfortable…the anti-trafficking lobby maintains that prostitution is violence against women, tantamount to rape and coercion, and requires abolition…in [her] impassioned plea…Ms. Steinem spoke…of her…crusade to rid the world of that heinous crime prostitution, akin to yet far worse than slavery…After all what could be worse than the bodily abuse that is prostitution (“they are inflicted with multiple penetrations, daily”) except possibly only the vicious stranglehold by traffickers…significantly the areas that sex workers identify as most damaging to them like societal opprobrium and police violence did not find any mention in Ms. Steinem’s talk…By compulsorily desexualising the prostitute and rendering her as perpetual victim, the feminist anti-trafficker can then validate her own position as saviour…
…When a Mandarin speaking Siri first arrived in China this summer, she generally responded to the question “Where can I find hookers” by pointing people to a nearby location — usually a bar or a club…but a customer service rep for the company told China Daily that the company has…cut off Siri’s ability to help people find prostitutes, escorts and brothels…
What’s a politician to do when a court ruling protects the civil rights of someone he’s bigoted against? Make a new law overruling the decision, of course!
Hotel and motel owners across [Queensland] will have the right to evict guests they believe are sex workers under new legislation put forward today by Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie. The amendments to the Anti-Discrimination Act will be debated next year and will likely be passed by the LNP-majority Parliament…Queensland Council for Civil Liberties spokesman Terry O’Gorman slammed the move, saying it…targeted a “particular class of people” and enabled arbitrary discrimination on the grounds of personal prejudice, the likes of which was seen during the 70s when some motel owners refused accommodation to indigenous Australians…
We keep explaining that, despite prohibitionist claims, “end demand” campaigns actually hurt sex workers. However, it usually isn’t quite this direct:
…Illinois prostitution law…is among the harshest in the country…any repeat prostitution misdemeanor is eligible to be upgraded to a felony—one of two states allowing such upgrade after a single charge. On paper, sex workers are still not as likely to face felony charges as their patrons, who can be charged with a felony on their first offense…But…analysis of the…data shows that prostitution-related felonies are being levied almost exclusively against sex workers. During the past four years, they made up 97 percent of the 1,266 prostitution-related felony convictions in Cook County. And the number is growing: Felony convictions among sex workers increased by 68 percent between 2008 and 2011…
Justin Sisely, the director who helped [Migliorini]…may face sex trafficking charges…Brazil’s attorney general, Joao Pedro de Saboia Bandeira de Mello Filho, ordered an “urgent investigation,” to look into the auction, which he equated to “people trafficking”…He also said Migliorini, who currently lives in Australia, should have her passport revoked and she should be returned to Brazil for “the exercise of prostitution”…
Pakachere Institute of Health and Development Communication (PIHDC) will launch a national wide Alliance of sex workers in Malawi on November 7, 2012…[to provide] a platform [for] sex workers [to] discuss issues affecting their…lives…Executive Director Simon Sikwese said the alliance is targeting all sex workers across the country and that it is one of the forums aimed at ensuring that sex workers rights are protected…
…Law can be used to protect and promote the human rights of sex workers…and…Legal empowerment of sex worker communities has been shown to be an effective approach in HIV prevention. However, law is often used to criminalise and penalise sex workers, resulting in their exposure to violence and discrimination from society in general, and law enforcement officers and health-care providers in particular. This situation limits access by sex workers to health and social services they need, and increases the risk of HIV for them and their clients…It is imperative to review and reform the current laws, ensuring that sex workers and sex worker organisations are fully and centrally engaged in improving legal environments to safeguard their human rights.
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. – H.L. Mencken
As I’ve pointed out many, many times before, governments look for any excuse they can find to increase their powers and reach, and once those powers are assumed not only are they never renounced, but also never limited only to the stated purpose. A perfect example of this is the “War on Terror”; the special powers granted by the PATRIOT Act were supposed to be used only for fighting “terrorism”, but as of October 2011 had been used only 15 times for that purpose, 122 times for fraud and a staggering 1618 times for drugs. Similarly, though the stated purpose of the TSA’s security theater is to fight terrorism, its actual purpose is to condition Americans “to submit to any indignity inflicted by an ‘authority’, no matter how invasive and arbitrary”; it’s been so wildly successful in that mission, the government has been itching to expand its reach from airports to other means of public transportation. Up to now, railway officials had successfully resisted the imposition of police state checkpoints on train stations, but the government has now succeeded in securing Amtrak’s cooperation by switching the excuse from one which is rapidly declining in popularity (terrorism) to a new and more popular one. This article by Wendy McElroy explains exactly what that new excuse is, but I’ll bet you’ve already guessed:
According to Homeland Security Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has forged “a new partnership” with “the Department of Transportation (DOT) and Amtrak to battle the trafficking of humans.” DHS will train “over 8,000 frontline transportation employees and Amtrak Police Department officers” on how to recognize and report trafficking indicators and suspected traffickers…[these] employees will overtly or covertly examine passengers for the validity of their identification, their level of stress, how they interact, and their conversations. It is so necessary to treat Amtrak customers as criminal suspects because, according to HS Today, an “estimated 100,000 children are trafficked in the sex trade in the United States each year,” with the average age being 11 to 14, and some being as young as 9. This means that passengers — and especially men — traveling with children will be subject to enhanced scrutiny. Perhaps the trained employees will engage children in conversation or demand a statement of their relationship status with the accompanying adults.
The total police state that operates at airports is spreading to train stations — and beyond. HS Today states that the Department of Transportation “is currently training its more than 55,000 employees to identify and report human trafficking.” Even traveling in a car does not exempt people from being treated as criminal suspects. Last year, Tennessee became the first state to partner with DHS to conduct an exercise in which trucks were randomly inspected, complete with drug- and bomb-sniffing dogs…In theory, people may still be free to exercise their constitutional right against unreasonable searches and refuse to comply. In practice, as happens at airports, those who resist will almost certainly be denied the ability to travel and will perhaps be detained for questioning by the police…
So now everyone is assumed to be a terrorist, a drug dealer and a pimp unless he can prove otherwise. It’s for the children! But McElroy has something to say about that as well:
…According to 2010 census data, the number of children…in the United States was 74.2 million…Assuming an even distribution within the 18 age groups from 0–17, there would be roughly 4.12 million children in each group. Accepting the DHS claim that the youngest child trafficked was nine years old — and, so, eliminating younger groups — there would be 37 million vulnerable children. If 100,000 children are trafficked each year, then 1 in every 370 children was a sex-trade victim in 2010. How many people personally know of a child who has been trafficked? How many are acquainted with anyone who personally knows of a trafficked child?
Perhaps the claim includes children who are “imported” en masse from other countries. The 2010 DHS pamphlet entitled “Human Trafficking Indicators” lists its “Anti-Trafficking Successes” (rescued victims), all of whom are foreign-born…Only 85 rescued victims are listed, and the descriptions are anonymous, which precludes verification. Of those listed, 21 are clearly identified as children, 20 of whom were forced to work in hair-braiding salons, while 1 was prostituted. An additional 15 “women and girls” were reported forced into sex work. Even generously assuming that 13 of the 15 “women and girls” were girls, the total of foreign children rescued from sex work was 14…if DHS had examples of more massive raids on child sex dens, I presume they would present them. In short, the statistic of 100,000 children a year seems wildly implausible, unless you expand the definition of trafficking. The DHS…does precisely that; it expands the definition to include every minor involved in commercial sex as “a victim of human trafficking, even without force, fraud or coercion.” Thus, the 8,000 Amtrak employees will have reason to scrutinize children and teenagers even if they are clearly not forced to be with the adults accompanying them…
In other words American teenagers, who are already subject to twice as many restrictions as incarcerated felons, can now look forward to even more restrictions, which will almost certainly include “status checks” (i.e. unwarranted stops without probable cause) once this program expands to the highways as planned. And if you’re an attractive and youthful-looking woman below 30, that will probably include you as well on the grounds that you “look like you might be underage”. For your own good, of course. Nor will it stop there:
…The partnership between DHS and Amtrak allows the government one more avenue of surveillance; it chips one more bit of freedom away from the average person, who is just trying to make it through the day. In the future, when a man boards a train in the company of a minor or a woman, or when he merely looks suspicious, he may be asked where he is going, for how long, and why. What is his relationship to the companion? What is his profession? The companion may be asked whether she feels free to step away from the other passenger. She may be questioned separately and her story compared to the other passenger’s. And heaven help anyone who looks sad, enraged, or stressed out…
Once when my husband and I were travelling through Kentucky, I became violently carsick due to the twisting roads; my husband had to stop the car so I could sit down on the grass in the cold air and attempt to get my head to stop spinning. While I was so engaged, a cop stopped and even after my husband told him I was sick he demanded (not asked, mind you, demanded) that I walk off with him to a distance to talk where my husband couldn’t hear. I told him to go to Hell (yes, I really said that; I get very irrational when I’m motion-sick) and that if he touched me I would throw up all over him. Even so, he still hovered until I literally screamed for him to leave me alone, at which point he seemed to get the hint. This was in 2003, before “trafficking” hysteria had become popular; I presume he thought my husband was beating me in broad daylight on the side of a highway. But it’s an example of what might be in store for every couple in the next few years, no matter what means of transportation they use, if either of them does anything which might conceivably attract the attention of any armed busybody in the vicinity.
Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. – Arthur C. Clarke, 2001
As I wrote yesterday, last night would have been a fine one for trick-or-treating, were most children still allowed to roam unsupervised as we did; unfortunately, our decaying society is far too obsessed with “safety” to let the kids be kids. It’s a peculiar paradox: the Child Cultists enshrine an idealized, romanticized view of childhood “innocence” to the point of trying to force it upon young adults who have long since grown out of it, yet are so frightened of the imaginary haunts their timid souls see in every shadow that they cheat actual children of the joys of childhood.
That self-defeating retreat from the world is especially poignant today, the one our ancestors set aside to remind themselves of the omnipresence and inescapability of death. As I pointed out in last year’s Halloween column, every last one of us will join the departed majority in the briefest of moments (cosmically speaking); fear of death is therefore futile because death is the one inescapable experience of material existence. You will die, and so will I, and there is absolutely nothing any of us can do about it…yet vast numbers are so obsessed with this simple and indisputable fact that they waste much of their time on Earth in a struggle they absolutely cannot win. In a pathetic attempt to stretch their allotted quantity of days just a little further, many are willing to dramatically reduce the quality of the whole. And while it’s certainly their right to use their own lives this way, it is not their right to inflict upon their children a lifetime of paralyzing dread of every activity which might conceivably end in the grave just a little bit sooner than hiding indoors would, no matter how remote the possibility of its occurrence. Such an existence is not living, but vegetation.
“In the midst of life we are in death,” reads the familiar text from the Book of Common Prayer; people used to understand that, and though individual responses to it ranged from the hedonistic to the morbidly religious, practically nobody was in denial about it until a couple of decades ago. What happened? How did we go from understanding this to ignoring it like small children with our hands over our ears shouting, “I CAN’T HEAR YOU BLAHBLAHBLAH”? I think there are several causes, the most prominent of which is Western culture’s increasing urbanization; when one lives on a farm one sees death almost every day, but it’s possible for an urban office worker to go months without seeing any identifiable carcass larger than that of a cockroach. Even most of the meat eaten by modern urbanites doesn’t really look like part of a dead animal; the one exception, chicken, is increasingly encountered in the form of nuggets, chunks or “boneless, skinless breast portions”. Another cause is the fact that our society is a lot less violent than it used to be; people live longer and far fewer are killed by direct action of man or beast than in centuries past. And while that’s a good thing it has a bad side effect: the less familiar a phenomenon, the more likely people are to view it with irrational fear.
Neither of these social changes is likely to be reversed anytime soon (and I hope the second is never reversed), but there is a third cause, no less important than the other two, which we could easily undo if we really wanted to. And that is the disappearance of cultural rituals designed to remind us of exactly what I’ve discussed here. Every culture has rites, celebrations and observances to honor the dead; in Mexico, for example, today is El Dia de los Muertos, from which this column takes its name. But while the Mexicans and many other peoples have continued these traditions to the present day, most people of European descent (including Americans and Australians) have tamed and neutered All Hallows Day until it’s nothing more than another excuse for overindulgence. And though we once understood that an annual dose of controlled fear and mild chaos helped children to cope with the existence of Mortem Imperator Mundi in much the same way vaccines protect them from disease, we have forgotten the former (and many of us the latter as well). In past times, The Day of the Dead was just a formal observance of what most people already recognized, a ceremonial declaration of the omnipresence of death. But now that the more mundane and routine encounters with the Grim Reaper are so much less common for the average Westerner than they were for his grandfather, we need the ritual – in all of its morbid glory – more than ever.
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