This essay first appeared in Cliterati on February 22nd; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.
As I’ve written many times, tyranny always starts with unpopular minorities, but it absolutely never stops with them. Every time a new kind of law, legal procedure or police tactic is dreamed up by those with the sick need to control others, it is invariably tested first on some group that the “authorities” know few others will defend; then by the time it’s expanded to the general population, it’s much too late to do anything about it. For example, US surveillance methods which were first excused as being necessary to uncover “terrorists” were quickly expanded to drug investigations, then to the entire population (as Edward Snowden revealed); similarly, the license-plate readers which were first used in the Drug War and “end demand” operations against sex workers’ clients were recently revealed to be employed in vast numbers to build a nationwide database of all automobiles. Last year, I explained how men were being arrested for talking to a computer program intended to trick them into thinking it was a young girl, and in Florida and Arizona huge police operations (with cops in place of the program) have predatorily arrested hundreds of men whose only “crime” was looking for women their own age on dating sites. In the UK, an internet censorship regime which was sold to the public in the name of “protecting children” from “extreme porn” is now being used to block anything some government official decides he doesn’t want the public to see. And “asset forfeiture” proceedings, which were first touted as weapons against “drug lords”, are now being used to rob ordinary people who have done absolutely nothing wrong of their cash, cars and even real estate.
“Sex trafficking” has proved a bonanza for those who wish to install ever-greater tyranny without the slightest opposition from the populace; besides the increased surveillance, expanded asset seizure and new laws that criminalize ordinary behaviors, fanatical politicians are working to entirely destroy the internet as we know it by subjecting website owners and operators to criminal charges for third-party content. And even if they fail, other nosy parkers are trying to harness the power of computers to spy on otherwise-anonymous citizens by analyzing what they post online:
…researchers have developed software that allows police departments to mine online ads offering prostitution services. Traffic Jam gives police a rapid way to sort sex ads, spotting indirect language that may suggest sex trafficking, or grouping ads with similar language that may have been written by the same person… research analyst Emily Kennedy said more than 100 sites are commonly used in sex trafficking…
Regular readers know this is arrant nonsense; “sex trafficking” is here being used as a dysphemism for “sex work”. Promoters of this incredibly misogynistic myth pretend that women are too asexual to choose sex for pragmatic reasons, and too stupid to place our own ads or plan our own travel; this article hilariously claims that women fly into towns “with a handler”, which is especially funny because four-year-old interviews with the same cops from the same podunk little Pennsylvania town mention no “handlers” of any kind. These imaginary persons are almost literally pasted into the line to fit the “sex trafficking” narrative that is used to justify gross invasions of privacy.
But the aforementioned cops, who are well-known for the grotesque and evil lengths to which they will go to harass and victimize sex workers, fit right into the rogue’s gallery quoted in support of this Orwellian surveillance program; another such collective entity is the Arizona State University School of Social Work, Dominique Roe-Sepowitz’s highly-criticized factory for generating bogus prohibitionist studies and the academic leg of the awful Project ROSE. And who, pray tell, financed the development of this data-mining program? Why, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which sunk $3.6 million into the project. Another, similar platform was funded by the CIA. But you just go right ahead believing that the US military-industrial complex is so very concerned with commercial sex that it’s willing to spend considerable funds just to stop people from having it; I’m sure that’s a lot more comforting than recognizing that whores are just the guinea pigs for yet another oppression that will soon be extended to everyone.
Speaking of stupid, here’s what Warner Todd Huston dragged in: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/03/26/congresswoman-claims-climate-change-will-turn-women-into-prostitutes/
That’s the Church of Global Warming. It’s a religion – not a science. Same as when right-wing Christians claim that giving the HPV vaccine to teen girls causes them to suddenly become insatiable fuck-bunnies.
They just pull shit out of their ass, throw it against the wall – and see if it sticks.
I’m still trying to figure out how they roped the entire nation of Kirabati into their hoax. And the butterflies. Those butterflies are almost as hard to train as house cats.
Prostitution and climate change have been around since the recording of history (and before). So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that things will continue as usual.
I’ve mentioned this before, but what’s your take on the Rotherham scandal. Real, witch hunt, or some of both? I read the first reports with an uncritical eye, but the longer I think about it, the more it sounds like another Satanic Day Care Abuse panic.
Anybody got any ideas?
I think it’s a bit of both – I think the incidents have been “hijacked” by the trafficking alarmists, who are really grasping at threads for some kind of evidence to back up the trafficking meme.
There is no doubt that some girls were raped – but were those rapes connected to a larger conspiracy to “groom” and “traffic”?
I’m gonna say something and I’m gonna get jumped for it. If I said it about Christians – no one would question me. But Islam has a basic problem with treating it’s females like livestock. According to the Hadiths – Mohammed married one of his wives when she was seven – and consummated the marriage when she was nine. One ISIS soldier captured by the YPG in Kobane said he witnessed ISIS soldiers raping girls below the age of 10. When he tried to intervene to stop one, he was told the act was sacred and blessed – and it was immolation of the prophet Mohammed. His own life was then threatened. The Hadiths prescribe certain, very vague “boundaries” when it comes to sex and marriage of young Muslim girls – but when it comes to NON-Muslim females – the Hadiths basically say you can do whatever you want with them. They are non-believers and shouldn’t even be alive … and if you opt to keep them alive, use them for whatever purpose you wish.
There is, no doubt, an element of all this in this scandal. The question is – to what extent? We may never know – once the trafficking idiots get involved in an issue – they make it so convoluted you can never reach ground truth.
But what we DO know – is that some girls were raped.
The things, I’ve read much the same thing about every group we’ve ever been at war with. I’m not saying that it isn’t correct, but it plays to a stereotype, and that makes me leery.
I’m reserving judgement until we see the trials, at least.
There’s a little good news on the civil forfeiture front; the New Mexico legislature recently passed a bill to essentially abolish the practice.
http://www.nmlegis.gov/lcs/legislation.aspx?Chamber=H&LegType=B&LegNo=560&year=15
Under the new law, property may only be permanently seized upon conviction. The law also makes provisions for releasing the property if the owner claims to have had no knowledge or part in the alleged illegal activity (and the state cannot prove otherwise) or if the owner needs it to fund their legal defense.
It hasn’t been signed yet, but it’s been passed, and that’s more than most states.
If DARPA is involved … we are all FUCKED. Make plans to rocket off to another planet. Fuckers are everywhere these days. They are making jet fuel out of seawater now and even a treatment for Ebola. They probably have the most advanced AI in the world and there is just a world of other stuff we don’t even know about. They are like SKYNET and I can’t believe that no one has mentioned the fact that DARPA may be getting out of control.
On the AI-angle, what is currently possible can be publicly observed: IBM Watson. The purpose of Watson (which is not a true/strong AI, as such do not currently exists and may well never exist), is pretty clear: Mass trawling of email and blog postings and other Internet-based communications to profile people. It may even be an effort to improve the still abysmally bad automated voice recognition.
While I have not seen the “Jeopardy” episodes where Watson played, from reports it did exactly what followers of AI research expected: It managed to fake brilliance on some occasions, and on others it revealed that it was completely lost and does not even have the understanding of the world that a small child would have.
So while DARPA very likely has the most advanced AI in the world, it is not much of an AI. What Watson does is make data-mining and automated aggregation cheaper, and that _is_ a real threat in a democracy.
“What is currently possible”.
I keep trying to tell people – “you really don’t know what’s possible – or what has been accomplished.”
If DARPA developed a powerful AI – they would not advertise it, or … they would falsely advertise just how advanced it is.
I have worked in government for over 30 years in some very sensitive places. You would be SHOCKED to know some of the things I’ve seen.
’nuff said.
Just for instance … If I remember correctly – no one knew the US had “stealth fighters” until we used them against Sadaam in Desert Storm.
Just out of curiosity, Krulac, have you heard of a radio host named Alex Jones? If so, what’s your opinion of him?
krulak, I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall that the existence of “Stealth” technology was well known, at least in the DC Science Fiction crowd I hung with pre-Desert Shield/Storm. The SR71 was very advanced in that regard, though the F117 did make a couple of big jumps. The public at large may not have know the details – hell, most of them are as ignorant as apples even now – but a lot of general information was out and about.
I have to assume that the real Airtech junkies knew even more.
Maybe the Press was surprised. The Media, especially in Wonderland On The Potomac, tend to not know anything that would require them to get out of range of a free bar.
There were plastic models of them you could buy before the first real pictures of Stealth aircraft appeared on the evening news. At least some of them were accurate enough that I can only guess the modelers had a weekend warrior or two on staff.
“even a treatment for Ebola”
And let me guess, they are deliberately withholding this so as to further destabilize Africa so it doesn’t look as bad when population control projects start, right?
“fanatical politicians are working to entirely destroy the internet as we know it”
Well, since the internet is the outgrowth of a product of “the system” that by some fluke turned out to be somewhat nice, won’t it have to be destroyed in order for true change to take place?
Welcome back Maggie all your readers know you have been going through a rough patch in life lately but today post was written in the style we all looked forward to reading in the morning. Thanks
Good summary of the state of affairs on establishing surveillance states and police-states in the western world. (Next step is usually totalitarianism of some form.) While you describe the angles that you are an expert in, other angles, like re-emergence of backdoored crypto, mandatory data-retention, etc., justified with the same tired old lies as always, confirm your observations from other angles.
It seems the last fascist catastrophe is too far in the past and the authoritarians yearn for some more decisive and universal oppression (and ideally eradication) of anybody that has an independent opinion or is somehow different.