Your words and my words are the same, but not our meaning.-Mason Cooley
Though “human trafficking” fetishists love to tout imaginary numbers of “victims”, to declare their own city, state or country a leader in the “trafficking” Olympics, or to claim that legalization or decriminalization “increases trafficking”, the truth is that it is absolutely impossible to produce any meaningful comparison of “trafficking” statistics (when such figures are kept at all) because there is absolutely no agreement on what is meant by the term. Fetishists love to tout the Palermo protocols as though they represented some sort of international standard to which every politician, prosecutor, cop and “rescue” opportunist closely adhered, but nothing could be further from the truth: in reality, “trafficking” means whatever the speaker wants it to mean at that given moment. In “The Lion and the Ox” I catalogued 23 different things I’ve seen called “trafficking”, and examples of the last one (“Anything a prosecutor can shoehorn into the local law, including kidnapping or attempted rape”) are diverse indeed.
It goes without saying, however, that this flexibility is always exercised in the direction of maintaining the status quo or increasing the power of the state. So street prostitution and women working as cashiers qualify as “trafficking” in countries which want to demonize those activities, while fraudulent recruitment, debt bondage, abusive conditions, threatening workers with deportation and worse are described with much milder terms like “encouraging an illegal alien”, especially if the “traffickers” are politically connected. We never hear calls for paving, home health care, convenience stores or sports to be criminalized, and if a government is the “trafficker” it’s all perfectly legal. Unless there’s sex involved, even the custody of children or minor teens can change hands for a price (especially if the kids were born in a different country) without words like “trafficking” or “slavery” being mentioned even in passing, and if young people whose sexuality or other behavior upsets the adults around them are condemned to torture by sadists who profit from mistreating them in the name of “correction”, nobody usually notices until one of the victims dies or their number climbs too high to ignore.
And that brings us to this article in Cracked. Yes, Cracked; as I’ve pointed out before, the second-rate humor magazine turned first-rate humor website has for some time now been turning out articles that are not only dead serious, but also better, more perceptive and more honest journalism than supposedly-straight rags like Huffington Post and the Daily Beast can manage at their best:
When I was 14, I…was [shipped] off to a camp for “troubled” teens in Montana. In short order I learned some terrifying truths about an industry dedicated to taking America’s at-risk youth and fucking them up in the worst way possible. One night in August 2004, I awoke to a man and a woman in my room whom I had never seen before telling me that they were “escorts” and we were going to a place called “wilderness.” I was not allowed to bring any belongings or tell anyone where I was going. I didn’t know what “escorts” and “wilderness” were, and I was terrified. It was like being Liam Neeson’s daughter in Taken, if it had turned out later that Liam Neeson arranged the whole thing
…Kids who resist have been pepper-sprayed and hog-tied…kids can be sent away for drug use, depression, eating disorders…bad grades…not following the family religion, or…being gay. It is an industry that survives on parents’ fear that their kid is “at risk”…
There is a legal process where parents can sign over custody of kids who need residential care…But that same process works for “unruly” teens like me, which meant the company that ran my camp had total legal control over where I went and what I did. Even phone calls…were a privilege I had to earn…a staff member sat next to me the entire time, listening in. If during the call I complained about being unhappy, that was “manipulative behavior,” and they’d end the call…Packages my friends sent were destroyed right in front of me…[kids] die…with some regularity (“untrained staff” and “lack of adequate nourishment” are the leading causes)…a…2006…expose…prompted a congressional inquiry…[which] found thousands of cases of abuse and at least 10 deaths between 1990 and 2004…Congress…proposed a bill to regulate (not even ban) these facilities. After that bill died in committee, they proposed it again the next year. It died again in 2011, and again in 2013…Between 10,000 and 20,000 teens wind up in these programs every year, and they’ll continue to do so. Because even in the 21st century, society is baffled by adolescence and will resort to desperate, horrific measures in hopes of finding a cure…
The feature is well worth reading in its entirety, and worth keeping in mind the next time you hear “authorities” or trafficking fetishists talking about how “pimps” are responsible for teen sex work, and how the best way to “rescue” them is to abduct them and lock them up in “rescue centers” where they can be abused by people who deny their agency and believe the answer to every teen problem is forced conformity.
That is just awful! These hypocrites have the nerve to lecture other people on activities they quite happily mirror 🙁
Of course the capitalists don’t call it trafficking when it’s in their benefit, and when they can ship in cheap or slave labor to undercut local wages. It’s only trafficking when it gives people an alternative to working for them.
Who are the “capitalists”? According to you Socialists – they’re a very small minority of people who supposed have all the wealth in the world and – if they are that small – I don’t see how any terms they use can ever become part of the lexicon for the rest of us mortals – especially when they are too good to associate with us?
These capitalists–I call them super-plutocrats–use most of the One Percent to do their dirty work. The super-plutocrats are the 3-6 tenths of 1% of the top one percent who either personally, or through family owned corporations, foundations, and trusts, are worth more than $100,000,000.00, and who control all major capital through interlocking boards of directors. The One Percent go along because they think if they are good little boys and girls, they might one day get promoted to this elite group.
When pigs fly.
Interesting theory – basically you blame all your shortcomings on this imaginary 1% that are persecuting you and holding you down.
Bill Gates … hmmm … he found a way to bust into that group didn’t he? And without a college degree. 😀
Gotta love conspiracy theories.
LOL – just realized that Rush Limbaugh (also no college degree) has a net worth of almost $400M – that’s gotta sting like a motherfucker to you guys in the occupy movement! 😛
‘All their failings’? I don’t see that in there. It looks like you just made it up.
The existence of enormous winners is hardly evidence that the system is fair. On the contrary, it’s evidence of how broken it is. If the markets had been functioning, he would not have been able to extract that much profit (that efficient markets are not very profitable is bog-standard classical economics)
The richest 85 people in the world are as wealthy as the poorest 3.6 billion.
Why do they need to be quite so rich?
And, is it possible to get to be so rich in a wholly legal and ethical way?
The richest people LOVE hearing rhetoric like this; in fact some of them bankroll those who spread it. You know why? Because they understand legal precedent, and you don’t. They know that any political system which sets the precedent that the state has the power to confiscate will invariably expand that precedent until “rich” applies all the way down to “comfortable”, yet at the same time the richest will be able to afford shelters, dodges and other legal tricks while the “comfortable” can’t. And they will only get more powerful while you lose. It’s happening right now; it’s what has created the situation you’re bemoaning. And the only way to undo it is to remove the ability of any group of people, whether they call themselves “kings” or “nobles” or “the Church” or “the police” or “generals” or “duly elected leaders” or “the people’s representatives” or “Exalted Leader” or “Caesar”, to impose their will on others, no matter what the excuse. And “fairness” and “democracy” have proven to be two of the most dangerous, .perfidious excuses of all, because unlike “holiness” and “divine right” and the others, the peasants have been taught to parrot them in support of policies which keep their faces under the boot.
I’d have said that the super-rich know how to hold onto their wealth; the government etc get their money from those who don’t have that ability—that is most of us.
There is a statistical correlation between wealth inequality and social problems; and there is high inequality in the US. It could be argued that this is associated with the boot camps described here.
And, while the majority of US workers have not seen an increase in their real earnings, those of CEOs have risen 20-30 fold in the last 20-30 years. So you could predict more of the same social problems.
And what the super-rich have forgotten is the lessons of history; one of which is that Empires don’t last forever. Ozymandias, Louis XIV, the Romanofs: and if Mrs Thatcher wasn’t super-rich she was certainly an autocrat. So, when does the next US revolution begin?
So Maggie what is your answer: anarcho-capitalist libertarianism?
Democracy and fairness do work, but only if everyone participates. Reagan and his successors convinced a lot of middle class Americans that by “reducing the size of government,” they could be a bunch of lazy jerks while the super-plutocrats took all of the money and power for themselves. We are at the precipice of a neo-feudal society where might makes right and expediency is the watchword.
If men were angels–as Madison pointed out in The Federalist Papers No. 51–any form of government would work. Human beings are not angels: without an organized system of checks and balances, the strong–whether politically, economically, or socially, or some combination of the three–will rule over the weak, and the only law will be that of expediency.
The closest thing I have ever heard of to a working system of anarcho-capitalist libertarianism was the Luciano-Lansky Crime syndicate of the 1930’s to 50’s. Eliminating government power is not the answer. Diluting it, I believe, is.
Now you’re being absurd. All humans are flawed; every last one will abuse power if given the chance. Therefore the only way to prevent abuse of power is to dramatically curtail the amount ANYONE can exercise over his fellows; Q.E.D.
And how Maggie will you do that when too many employers will take advantage of an employee when the employer knows his employee has a family and there is no other job available? How will you prevent the local bully, all grown up, with a band of thugs around him, from extorting money from shopkeepers in exchange for his not throwing a Molotov cocktail through the front window? How will you stop the local supplier of some commodity from over-charging for that commodity when he has an exclusive contract for the area?
And why oh why, has no country, even a tiny one like Andorra, Lichtenstein, San Marino, Bhutan, the Maldives Is., etc., ever adopted a libertarian system as its form of government?
1) Why oh why do you think that violence is such a wonderful way of keeping things “balanced” that you’re willing to let power-mad lunatics use as much of it as they like instead of advocating meaningful restrictions on governmental power?
2) Why oh why do you quote that ridiculous myth that there’s never been a libertarian country when you are LIVING IN ONE? The US was founded on libertarian principles and has grown slowly away from them, largely because of the loopholes allowed by the areas in which the US and state governments strayed from libertarian principles, such as by allowing slavery.
3) Why oh why can you not comprehend that people who seek power WANT POWER, which is why they don’t set up libertarian governments unless they are forced to? Unfortunately, the mass of men are sheep who only want to be led, and a truly libertarian culture would require people to care for themselves when they’d much rather be led by a strongman.
And upon what basis do you think we were founded on libertarian principles? Please give me the books you’ve been reading that has led you to this conclusion. Because having read Jefferson, Madison, Adams and Franklin, I do not know where you got this idea.
Then either A) you haven’t read them very well, or B) you have no clue what libertarianism means. Go tell some other libertarian that Jefferson and Franklin weren’t classical liberals (which is what libertarians are) and watch his reaction.
Oh, you mean this Jefferson:
“[The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government.” –Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1813. Complete Writings of Thomas Jefferson vol. 19: p.197
or this one;
“A democracy [is] the only pure republic, but impracticable beyond the limits of a town.” –Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1816. Complete Writings of Thomas Jefferson vol. 15: p.:65
Perhaps these two:
“The first principle of republicanism is that the lex majoris partis is the fundamental law of every society of individuals of equal rights; to consider the will of the society enounced by the majority of a single vote as sacred as if unanimous is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt. This law once disregarded, no other remains but that of force, which ends necessarily in military despotism.” –Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, 1817. Complete Writings of Thomas Jefferson vol. 15: p.:127
“If the measures which have been pursued are approved by the majority, it is the duty of the minority to acquiesce and conform.” –Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1811. Complete Writings of Thomas Jefferson vol. 13: p.:51
Finally, this one:
“Egoism [selfishness–RJG], in a broader sense, has been… presented as the source of moral action. It has been said that we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, bind up the wounds of the man beaten by thieves, pour oil and wine into them, set him on our own beast and bring him to the inn, because we receive ourselves pleasure from these acts… These good acts give us pleasure, but how happens it that they give us pleasure? Because nature hath implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses… The Creator would indeed have been a bungling artist had he intended man for a social animal without planting in him social dispositions. It is true they are not planted in every man, because there is no rule without exceptions; but it is false reasoning which converts exceptions into the general rule.” –Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Law, 1814. Complete Writings of Thomas Jefferson vol. 14: p.:41 All quotes from the 1904 Memorial edition.
Jefferson wrote a whole letter to Thomas Law about why selfishness could not be the basis for a system of morality (this happens to be the quote I have with me), yet every libertarian I have met in the last twenty years has stated that is the foundation of their morality is self-interest, i.e., selfishness. I have gone into profound detail in several of my OpEdNews articles about why selfishness never has historically worked as the basis for a system of governance, and why altruism is not the opposite of selfishness, merely its inversion.
I spent a summer in Norlin library at CU-Boulder reading Jefferson, Madison, et al., and am waiting patiently for the University of Virginia’s comprehensive collection of Jefferson’s writings.
Maggie, I am sorry, but someone, IMHO, has sold you a bill of goods about the Founders and the Framers for their own purposes. Remember Jefferson was the one in favor of establishing a state-wide system of education, funded by the state, all the way up to University level to educate the young men of Virginia regardless of their ability to pay. Madison thought that land lying unused by its owners should be confiscated by the state, and given to the poor in order for them to work and have food.
Gerard, I am sorry, but someone, IMHO, has sold you a bill of goods about libertarianism for their own purposes. And you have swallowed it, whole. Or else you’d realize that the Declaration of Independence is about as pure a statement of libertarian thought as can be conceived.
First, It’s Girard NOT Gerard. The French side of Burgundy, not the German. In fact, a Baron Girard was the first French Ambassador to the U.S..
Second, As usual you as a libertarian forget that the Declaration says “a long train of abuses and usurpations, leading to a single end,” (this is from memory so excuse me if I missed a word), against which other remedies have been sought. Jefferson then enumerates them, in tedious detail. But the Declaration is a moral document, not a legal one. It establishes nothing instead of the King’s law to give the United States either legal power or authority. That had to wait for the Articles of Confederation, and then the Constitution.
You might want to check out my OpEdNews articles “Rights, Powers, Privileges, and Responsibilities,” and “The Tao of Government.”
Taking away too much power from the government means that the 4% of the population who are sociopaths will have nothing to stop them before the fact when they take the rest of us for billions, or punish them after the fact when their perfidy is caught. Read about the Gilded Age and the crap John Rockefeller Sr. got away with to establish his nationwide monopoly. Remember Enron, as well as the 2008 Wall Street Crash. I expect another one before 2017. to wipe out the middle class the oligarchs missed the first time.
And I just finished re-reading “A Necessary Evil,” and I could take probably some time and tear it apart, but I think I’ve gone far enough, perhaps too far, with my answers to you. PAX! Reply as you will, I shall not.
I guess it’s legally possible, especially when the rich make the laws, though they usually bother about the law only just enough to be sure they cover their tracks when they break it. Ethically, hell no, but they don’t give a shit.
@Maggie: while I understand your answer (and agree with it somewhat), I don’t see Korhomme advocating consfiscation by the state (though you could argue that saying some people are too rich is a precursor of advocating such measures)
I do indeed argue that. The one is invariably a prelude to the other.
The problem is not so much that some people are obscenely rich, but that so many have to make do with scraps while busting their asses off.
I’ll go for that. I really don’t mind if there are billionaires in the world, because it takes a boatload of wealth to start up something like Virgin Galactic or Tesla Motors. But the fact that there are people who work hard, day in and day out, and don’t see their rewards increase with increasing productivity bothers me a lot. I don’t expect everybody to have exactly the same wealth, and I want rich guys with imagination around to play Tom Swift every now and then. But people who do what we’ve always heard you’re supposed to do: get an education and work hard, those folks shouldn’t have to go into huge debt to make ends meet.
The problem is … “Victoria Jane’s” self-penned story is about as well documented as the trafficking claims are – which means, it isn’t very.
I would like to know more about this lady before I buy into her story – I tried to google and there a million Victoria Jane’s out there.
She’s got about as much credibility with me at the moment as Stella Marr does. If I’m going to apply certain standards for credibility to Stella – I’m a hypocrite not to apply them to Victoria also.
Not all teen programs are bad. I was involved in a “Boot Camp” style program for juvies in Honolulu for awhile – sponsored by the Honolulu Police Department. I saw quite a bit of good come out of that program even though – for the most part – the kids were coerced into attending. Several of those kids who were on the wrong path eventually joined the Navy and I still have contact with them through Facebook. They’re doing great in life and acknowledge that it was that program that turned them around.
But yeah … sent off to a “wilderness” thingie for listening to heavy metal? I call bullshit – way more to the story than that.
krulac, there is a documented history here of some of these programs being abusive. Straight, Inc. ran for about 20 years and had a huge amount of documentary evidence of extensive physical, mental and sexual abuse. And I live in Pennsylvania, where a crooked judge sent thousands of kids to an abusive facility in exchange for kickbacks. So I am willing to give her the benefit of a doubt.
I’m not saying that some of the programs aren’t abusive – I’m saying this particular story smells and I wouldn’t use it as a “data point” to argue the issue.
Any more than Stella Marr’s stories can be used to argue FOR the trafficking hoax.
“Victoria Jane” – hell that’s even a made up internet name … like “krulac”.
The veracity of the account is kind of irrelevant, it’s imprisonment without trial. I guess there is some debate about whether kids have any rights, or if you can justify any means if the end is good on the whole. The military also uses similar testimonials of recruits being rescued from the “wrong path” to justify pointlessly destroying a large minority of them.
Pray tell … how does the military “destroy a large minority” of recruits? And can you quanity your assertion with a number?
The military doesn’t “destroy” anyone. If you’re talking about pointless wars – then perhaps you’re forgetting the fact that it’s the civilian leaders YOU elect that send these kids in to sitiuations to be “destroyed”.
And Wilson – without a class of “warriors” who are willing to sacrifice their lives to protect YOU – where would you be right now?
Certainly you would not be a free man.
That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. Of course the accuracy of the facts in the account are relevent. If they are not accurate – then someone’s trying to “snow” me … why? To make me reach the conclusion that they desire me to?
I am not manipulated in that manner. A guy lies to me – I don’t believe a damn thing else he says to me unless I can verify it through other sources. If I use other sources – I can discount HIM.
sure …………theres good and bad people, places and organizations. Just showing again you must resolve things like this on a case by case base. Its slower…….But it is the only way to get to the real problem.
This entry brings to mind one day in seventh grade when our Language Arts class read an account very similar to this one cited. It was laid out in the form of a screenplay, but apparently based on a true story. The main differences (that I can recall) is that the male victim actually put up a fight against being removed from his home, getting a distress call out to his girlfriend, and there was either a happy (or at least ambiguous) ending where the teen’s mother, a single parent, realized the error of her ways.
Please excuse me if I sound glib, but if the teen ‘flipping out’ and crying mere kidnapping doesn’t attract attention and rescue, perhaps crying “sex trafficking” will? We’ve seen that even the most flimsy accusations have a tendency to stick when sex is involved.
WOW! Put to words so well for a brilliant read.
Enticingly Yours
Velvet Steele
I just happened to read Cracked last night (not the story you feature here– I read it a couple of weeks ago). Anyway, they had an article from a few days ago about Super Bowl myths, and I noticed they had a link to one of Maggie’s columns!
Congratulations! When You’ve been featured in Cracked, you know you’ve hit the big time. 🙂
I wouldn’t know how to go about verifying or debunking this particular woman’s story, but the story is consistent with stories which have been verified. These sorts of things do happen with these programs, including the midnight abductions, the pepper spraying, the handcuffs, and teenagers dying.
I suppose that this young woman could be falsely claiming to be a victim of exactly the sorts of things that others have truly been victims of, but really, why? And even if she’s lying through her dishonest heavy metal fingertips, these programs are concentrated evil, and no more teens should be subjected to them.
For the record, I wouldn’t advocate the Naked in School Program in real life, either, for all that it’s fun to write about.
And for the record, I think it’s pretty insulting to actual escorts that these legalized kidnappers call themselves “escorts.” In a weird way, it’s the inversion of trafficking mythology: it’s “escorts” doing the abducting, the trafficking, instead of escorts being the victims of trafficking.
[…] More recently, sex work activists like Maggie McNeill have been chronicling the conspiracy-theory-like thinking engaged in by so many people who are worried about human trafficking. […]