I always enjoy the time I spend at Sunset, especially when it’s mostly doing nothing. This time, besides just relaxing and eating and drinking and getting stoned and actually staying basically on track with my writing, I helped Grace to scope out what’s going on under my floor. After moving the bathroom linen closet (which is not built-in) we drilled some test holes in the floor beneath it, and once we had a space large enough to admit a certain dainty white hand I was able to feel around to ensure we wouldn’t drill into a pipe, wire or other hidden obstacle. We soon had a hatch large enough for me to slither through and with the help of a cellphone camera Grace was able to analyze the problem. From what we can tell, the original house (which was built in 1927) had only three rooms: parlor, bedroom and kitchen. The plumbing was probably outdoor, not unusual in rural parts of the US prior to the Great Depression. Then in the early ’50s or thereabouts, the owners added an upstairs bedroom and two plumbed rooms to the east of the kitchen, a bathroom and a laundry room. But they did not allow for the weight of those added structures, and the supports were placed several inches east of the load-bearing wall instead of directly beneath it, with the result that for the past 6 or 7 decades the joists supporting the east wall have slowly cracked and several have broken loose. So now we need to redo the plumbing so we can cut out the old pipes to make an adequate crawlspace under the house (the current one would be barely adequate for a leprechaun) in order to install footings and an I-beam to properly distribute and support the weight of the eastern portion of the house after jacking it back into level (it has dropped about two inches, which doesn’t sound like much but is noticeable when crossing the floor above). I’ve already bought the new pipe and tools, and Grace started the work yesterday. Once the new plumbing is in we can assess the next step, and though it’s going to be a lot of (dirty, difficult, & expensive) work it’ll be nice to know that my country place is on a solid foundation again whenever I’m sitting around watching animals grazing in my yard.
Archive for July, 2019
Diary #471
Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, tagged blogging, Sunset, Washington (state) on July 11, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Ninth Anniversary
Posted in Biography, Diary, tagged activism, blogging, Maggie in the Media, psychology, The War on Whores on July 10, 2019| 3 Comments »
I can always be counted on to persevere as long as it is humanly possible to do so, and then just a bit longer. – “Eighth Anniversary”
As I wrote one year ago today, “There are quite a few older blogs, but I daresay not many bigger ones; despite travels, travails and troubles, I’ve somehow managed to produce a post every single day since July 10th, 2010. That’s [well over] 3000 of them now, and that isn’t even counting the books, essays for other publications, audio and video interviews, and speeches I’ve given in public (not to mention the innumerable unrecorded rants to which I’ve subjected my admiring clients and long-suffering friends, the latter not always while entirely sober).” On top of all that, I now have my own documentary (which you should watch if you haven’t already). I’ve reached the point where I summarize that as “for the past decade”, and given the incredible density of posts I think that’s acceptable shorthand; in fact, those who follow this blog closely have probably noticed that I’m already shifting toward looking back at essays from ten years back rather than a mere three (expect a new feature in January). I’ve sometimes said that I’m not entirely sure how I’ve managed to continue for this long, but that’s a self-effacing lie rooted in my Southern Belle upbringing. In reality, I know exactly how I’ve done it: it’s a formula consisting of personality force, righteous indignation, stubbornness, anger, and OCD, in roughly equal proportion. And though (like most people) I’m not entirely sure how much longer I have in this incarnation, I have no plans to stop fighting this war until there is no breath left in me. And truth be told, I’m not even sure I could stop even if I wanted to.
In the News (#952)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, All-Purpose Excuse, Believe Them, brothels, China, cops, dirty, fascism, Girls Girls Girls, hysteria, illegal aliens, India, Islam, language, Massachusetts, Monsters, Pakistan, politicians, prohibitionist myths, Pyrrhic Victory, racism, rape, rescue industry, Safe Position, shame, social purity, stripping, surveillance, transgender, violence vs. sex workers, Whatever They Need To Say, With Friends Like These on July 9, 2019| 5 Comments »
This isn’t just a few rogue agents or “bad apples”. – Daniel Martinez
Only bootlickers think the “cashless society” is a good thing:
…for the business of stripping, the end of cash is causing a crisis. A club makes the majority of its profits in credit card charges at the door, the bar, and the private rooms; the cash that flies around has always belonged to the strippers…without cash…club[s are]…free to exploit. Cash handed directly to a dancer gets pocketed, but credit card charges are skimmed—and because workers are more or less off the books, we have no recourse to contest absurdly high fees. When a customer pays several hundred dollars to spend time in a dark room alone with a dancer, the club takes a 70 percent cut…When the customer runs out of cash bills and doesn’t want to pay the exorbitant fee at the club’s ATM (which is often, conveniently, broken) the club will take roughly 30 percent out of every dance dollar—plastic bills representing the cost of a lap dance. That’s on top of a roughly $100 nightly fee that dancers pay in order to work…cash allows sex workers access to reliable and untraceable income, it makes it possible to avoid the discrimination inherent in the banking system, it allows us to hide our work from outside scrutiny…
Gentrification is one of the most common motivations for persecution of sex workers:
…members from South India AIDS Action Programme (SIAAP) [spoke]…at a discussion on “Sex work is work: Rethinking labour, consent and agency”. The stigma around sex workers further marginalises them, said Shyamala Nataraj…“State governments often claim to rescue sex workers from red light zones. If you follow the issue carefully, you’ll observe that the rescue will shortly be followed by a real estate venture in the area”…
…decriminalization like what [every single sex worker activist, every academic who has actually studied the issue and every human rights group want] is the worst option. More permissive sex work laws are associated with more sex works of all kinds…attract[ing] more traffickers [from prohibitionist sex fantasies]…Decriminalizing also does not protect willing, adult sex workers…because [surveillance, outing, and rape & persecution by cops constitute “protection”]…The better alternative is legalization…[including] a thorough background check and [compulsory, ongoing invasion of sex workers’ privacy by bureaucrats and rapist cops]…
“Written assurance” is like a “restraining order”:
A man in Pakistan has been arrested [for the murder of] his transgender daughter…19-year-old [Maya]…had left home and was living with friends in the city of Peshawar. Her family attempted to [lure] her [back to their] home on [June 29th]. Maya’s friends, concerned for her safety, contacted the police….[who] allowed family members to take Maya [back] to the city of Nowshera…Aurangzeb Akbar, the teenager’s father, provided the police with a written assurance that he would not harm his child. Maya’s bullet-ridden body was discovered just hours later…beside a river bank…Police…are…reportedly searching for Maya’s uncle and brothers…
A cop in Lowell, Massachusetts, has been charged with rape after…he repeatedly [raped] a 16-year-old homeless girl in her tent [after threatening her with nonexistent arrest warrants]…Kevin Garneau…is facing up to 40 years in prison…[after a] grand jury indicted him…Garneau’s police department didn’t learn about [his raping homeless girls]…until January — nearly three years after the [rapes]…and [rewarded him with a paid vacation]…up until the indictment…
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time“:
Members of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents joked about the deaths of migrants, discussed throwing burritos at Latino members of Congress visiting a detention facility in Texas…and posted…vulgar illustration[s]…group members responded with indifference and wisecracks to…a news story about a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant who died [in a cage] in May…the…group…boasts roughly 9,500 [typical and representative] members from across the country…The patrol…[has] approximately 20,000 [pigs in all, so the group represents half of them]…Perhaps the most [typical and coppish] posts target Ocasio-Cortez. One includes a photo [manipulation]…of a smiling President Donald Trump forcing Ocasio-Cortez’s head toward his crotch…
Please, rescue industry, keep attacking the institution that most promotes your narrative:
…The credibility of the TIP Report must first and foremost be grounded in the integrity of the government issuing the report…U.S. policies are deliberately eroding protections for the most vulnerable among us. Not only is this approach ineffectual to reduce human trafficking, this puts the United States’ standing as a leader on human rights in question…the United States is increasingly denying human trafficking survivors’ access to T Visas, which were explicitly created to [bribe people to sing as directed by prosecutors]…the administration’s zero tolerance and the “Remain in Mexico” border policies…empower…traffickers…
Tyranny always starts with despised minorities, but it never stops with them:
Over the past two years, an estimated 1 million Muslim Uighurs have been rounded up and [imprisoned] in…”re-education camps.” It’s extremely difficult to report from the Uighur homeland of China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. Journalists are followed wherever they go and prevented from visiting certain places or speaking with locals. So we posed as tourists and snuck in wearing hidden cameras. Twice. What we witnessed was an Orwellian state unlike any place on earth. We got a chilling, up-close look at how the Chinese government is using the world’s most advanced surveillance technology to spy on every aspect of Uighur life, and how Uighur men are taken away by the police in the middle of the night. Most disturbingly of all, we learned how many Uighur children are being separated from their families and brought up by the state — as if they are orphans. They’re prevented from speaking in their native tongue and indoctrinated with Party propaganda. The goal of all this is clear: the total erasure of an entire religion, culture and ethnicity…
The concept of “human rights” becomes incomprehensible to Americans in proximity to the word “sex”:
..pervert-friendly…Tiffany Cabán…pimps and johns…gigantic brothel…sex tourism…[quote from CATW]…sexually transmitted diseases, drug use and depression…denizens of cathouses…epicenter of sex work in New York City…disgrace…normalizing hooking…troubled people…unhealthy…Teen Vogue…is urging youngsters…as young as 13…to dump their professional goals…shame…protect[s]…kids from being used…violence is caused by…pimps and buyers of human flesh…dangerous and soul-crushing pastime…
Since this “article” is basically just one big ball of stupid, I simply extracted all the especially-pompous puritanism so you could get a whiff without having to dive into this burning dumpster.
Guest Columnist: Cathy Reisenwitz
Posted in Biography, Guest Columns, Perception, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, dirty, fascism, Madonna/whore, marriage, neofeminism, politicians, pragmatism, violence vs. sex workers on July 8, 2019| 5 Comments »
I’ve followed Cathy Reisenwitz‘ work since I started this blog, yet somehow we’ve never had a guest column from her! So when I saw that she’s started a new newsletter, I jumped at the excuse.
It’s a tragedy of feminism that so many of us are stumped by a very easy question: Is sex work a choice? Ask any current sex worker and they’ll tell you: Sucking dick for money under patriarchal capitalism is as much a choice as cleaning toilets. But one pays a lot better. Is being a housewife a choice? If your view is that society worships motherhood and despises ambitious women, then obviously those forces will influence women’s choices. But an influenced choice is still a choice, something many radical feminists don’t like to admit. Radfems like to straw-man arguments for female autonomy as choice feminism. But when the women in question have power, suddenly the question changes. While downtrodden and oppressed women aren’t allowed to make their own choices, women in positions of power are afforded unlimited options. I find a particularly interesting example of this “choice only for the powerful” phenomenon in feminist author Jill Filipovic’s treatment of presidential hopeful Kamala Harris. While Filipovic equivocates about sex work and choice feminism, she asks for nuance when considering Harris’s choice to use her powers as a prosecutor to deprive women of the choice to engage in safe sex work.
Harris’ record as prosecutor reveals a woman who is more than happy to use the criminal justice system to keep other women from engaging in sex work without fear of violence, arrest, or imprisonment. Harris arrested Backpage.com executives and illegally charged them with pimping and conspiracy, then after a judge threw out the case Harris filed nearly identical charges in another California court; the First Amendment Lawyers’ Association described the maneuvers as “a gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion.” Harris fought Backpage and continues to support FOSTA in the name of fighting human trafficking, yet everyone from Amnesty International to the World Health Organization says that decriminialization leads to lower rates of sex trafficking. Despite this, Harris has consisently sided with prostitution prohibitionists and supported police raids of sex workers. And while San Francisco Bay Area police officers were committing actual sex trafficking, Harris and her office pretended it wasn’t happening. Jill Filipovic is quite aware of the “Kamala Harris is a cop” meme, but has a more nuanced take. In a recent op-ed, Filipovic asks readers to consider the competing interests Kamala had to take into account when making choices as a prosecutor (if Harris hadn’t defended the death penalty she risked alienating politically powerful police unions; if she hadn’t fought the California anti-overcrowding court ruling the state would’ve missed out on slave labor, etc). I’m not sure how to justify her choice to become a prosecutor in the first place; as Joe Biden pointed out in the recent Dem debate, “I was a public defender. I didn’t become a prosecutor.” Filipovic is able to see Harris’s choices through the lens of a woman navigating a minefield of racism and sexism while also balancing careerism and her own conscience, yet when it comes to sex workers, all that nuance is reduced to “choice feminism.”
In Supporting Sex Workers’ Rights, Opposing the Buying of Sex, Filipovic writes, “[In Utopia], sex would be a fun thing, a collaborative thing, always entered into freely and enthusiastically and without coercion. Of course women should have the right to do what they want with their own bodies, and of course there are many sex workers who aren’t trafficked or forced into the trade. But that smacks a bit too much of ‘I choose my choice!’ feminism, which I find to be incredibly intellectually lazy.” What’s really incredibly intellectually lazy is to spend hundreds of words apologizing for a woman who chose to arrest and incarcerate sex workers and make their jobs less safe to bolster her own career, and then dismiss the fight for sex work decriminalization as “choice feminism.” Are sex workers not doing the best job they can considering there are negative consequences to every position they could take?
A look at my own experience with sex work may be helpful in illustrating this. From the time I walked the aisle at a tent revival and confessed my sins and gave my heart to Jesus at five years old, I’ve always been a true believer. I’m not sure if I ever signed a purity pledge, but I might as well have. I met my favorite high school boyfriend at a good old-fashioned Southern Baptist abstinence retreat, and I lost my virginity at 22, on my wedding night. As I pulled away from religion, my husband drew in; by the time I said I wanted a separation four years in, he said he’d only see the pastor and his wife for marriage counseling. I studied her perfect highlights as they refused to talk about the problems in our marriage until my relationship with Jesus was fully addressed. Sometime between the divorce and today I got paid for sex for the first time, because once you see that traditional marriage is just one long, nominally exclusive mutually beneficial arrangement you really can’t unsee it; then the question becomes how long, and how exclusive, do you want the arrangement to be?
I was a sex work activist before I was a sex worker, because a feminism that doesn’t include self-ownership is no feminism at all, and women don’t own our bodies if we aren’t allowed to rent them out. Contrary to the carceral feminists, I don’t believe any kind of consensual sex should involve arrest or imprisonment. In what universe can a woman consent to cleaning a toilet for money under capitalism, but not to sucking dick? Such a conception is utterly infantilizing, superstitious, and antifeminist. It’s not despite my femimism that I support sex work decriminalization; it’s because of it. Whoring has always been one of the only ways a low-born woman could rise above her station; sex work enables more women (and men) than you’ll ever know who don’t have trust funds to pursue social justice, music, comedy, and acting. Or writing feminist screeds, in my case. I’m neither proud nor ashamed of having done sex work. If I had been a great sex worker I’d be proud, but I wasn’t; I didn’t find most of my clients interesting and I’m bad at pretending. Yet I found sex work empowering even though I didn’t like doing it; maybe it’s my libertarian showing, but I tend to believe more options are better than fewer.
I’ve been writing about feminism, sex, and capitalism for the past ten years, mostly at Sex and the State; in that time I’ve changed my thinking on everything from abortion and sex work to the social safety net. My writing is thinking aloud and learning in public. I’m honored to have learned from women like Maggie, who turns the “prostituted woman” trope on its head; far from being abused or oppressed (except by cops and an overinvolved state), no one could prostitute Maggie except Maggie herself. I’m still a true believer — evangelical as the day is long — but what I’m preaching has changed quite a bit. I invite you to join my sex-positive libertarian feminist tent revival, by subscribing to my daily email.
Links #470
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged advertising, Alabama, animals, cops, Illinois, lawheads, LGBT rights, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, politicians, racism, rape, Stop faking!, video on July 7, 2019| Leave a Comment »
This machine is pumping fluid into my veins as we speak. – Shaquille Dukes
Apparently five years of living in Seattle is not enough for me to have heard of this, but I’m not terribly ashamed because Chekhov, a font of local knowledge who first moved to Seattle in 1978, had never heard of it either. It does actually serve as a kind of goofy real-life metaphor for the city, though. The links above it were provided by Marijke Vonk, Boatfloating, Franklin Harris, David Wraith, Emma Evans, and Lucy Steigerwald, in that order.
- “Family court“.
- Paging Doctor Hellstrom.
- Politicians never, ever learn.
- Wannabe pig beats up young teen.
- Loony is afraid Oreos will turn her kids queer.
- “Stop faking!” spreads from scews to loose pigs.
From the Archives
- Pigs shouldn’t be “investigating” sexting at all, but at least this is a start.
- They often don’t even bother with the “sex trafficking” excuse any more.
- Cops, cuteness, thoughtcrime, Burning Man, The Bangles & much more.
- And the next time they broaden the definition, it will “grow” even more!
- Just in case you think owning a “legal” sex work business protects you.
- Indian prohibitionists are a minority who can be individually called out.
- Seattle cops & prosecutors destroy more men’s lives for fun and profit.
- Reporters are stupid enough to keep giving Dennis Hof free publicity.
- Remember this when you hear pigs oinking about arresting “pimps”.
- Please don’t use my escort email unless you want to book a session.
- Abuse of migrants has been a bipartisan US policy for quite a while.
- Virginia passes law to indefinitely detain associates of sex workers.
- FOSTA is so blatantly unconstitutional this will win, but not quickly.
- Neither “dreams” nor “fun” have anything to do with human rights.
- “Hi, I’m interested in buying sex from a potential trafficking victim.”
- Just in case you didn’t think you were spied on enough in airports.
- This dude must’ve pissed off somebody well above his pay grade.
- “When the bad guys at Rikers are the guards”, meaning “always”.
- Another interview with Dr. Agustín about The Three-Headed Dog.
- Not as bad as calling rape “theft of services”, but bad enough.
- I love seeing “authorities” caught up in their own moral panic.
- Using “sex trafficking” hysteria as anti-American propaganda.
- Is Trump hastening the collapse of “sex trafficking” hysteria?
- Dutch authorities’ attempts to Disnify De Wallen are failing.
- Do they even think about the words they’re vomiting out?
- Cops, politicians, microbes, Steve Ditko and much more.
- Dick is not in any way an equal or fair trade for pussy.
- Loon claims NASA is sex trafficking children to Mars.
- My two previous columns for Independence Day.
- Ron Weitzer debunking prohibitionist bullshit.
- How can I switch from sugaring to escorting?
- Another dumb “awareness-raising” stunt.
- Pigs claim sexting is a “gateway” to rape.
- Rapist cops of the week, 2017 and 2018.
- Olaf Tyaransen, meet Barbra Streisand.
- Long-time readers already know this.
- The trailer for The War on Whores.
- How old are these idiots, eight?
- This was only a matter of time.
- Pride and Wonder Woman.
In the News (#951)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, agency denial, Alabama, Bad Fantasy-Good Reality, California, Cambodia, cell phones, cops, dirty, disease, drugs, Election Day, end demand, Europe, fascism, Held Together With Lies, hotels, hysteria, Illinois, lawyers, Libya, politicians, porn, pregnancy, prisons, propaganda, Property of the State, Pyrrhic Victory, racism, rescue industry, Rooted in Racism, Sexual Predators, Shame Shame, streetwalkers, surveillance, Useful Idiots, violence vs. sex workers, Worse Than I Thought, Yellow Fever, yellow journalism on July 6, 2019| 5 Comments »
[A “sex trafficking” propagandist] told me to say negative things so that there would be more funding. – Keo Malai
A “sponsored” article is one that the paper was PAID to print; in other words, it’s an ad disguised as a news story so as to trick the public into accepting it as credible. This one is an ad for the Dolan law firm, whose owner, Christopher Dolan, is an ambulance-chaser attempting to capitalize on “sex trafficking” hysteria by recruiting professional “victims” for lucrative FOSTA-enabled lawsuits against websites, hotels, truck stops and anyone else he thinks he can rob. It would be bad enough if this tissue of ludicrous lies ($150 billion a year! $650,000 a year for every “pimp”! 14% of all US minors are “sexually enslaved” every year, which means 210% of all US minors since the hysteria began!) were labeled as an ad, but the only clue – which virtually no non-proofreader will catch – is that little word “sponsored” hidden in the url. So much for “journalistic ethics”.
Yet another abomination from Alabama:
Marshae Jones [of] Birmingham…was indicted…on a manslaughter charge…Jones didn’t fire the shots that killed her unborn baby girl…Ebony Jemison [did that]…but the charge against Jemison was dismissed after…she…shot [Jones] in the stomach…[pigs encouraged the grand jury to blame the victim rather than the assailant because] “It was the mother of the child who initiated and continued the fight which resulted in the death of her own unborn baby”…
Pomona…California [sow]…Angela Torres [role-]plays a sex worker…She has [done it] nearly 1,000 times and says she does it [because she gets off on destroying the lives of unsuspecting men]…“a lot of those dating sites have shut down, a lot of the girls who worked online and worked in hotels have now been forced out into the streets,” [oinked pig] Jesse Hedrick…“if we deter these Johns, then prostitutes…won’t be making a lot of money,” [gloated] Torres. “It will deter them from [paying their rent and buying food for their children, which will make them more desperate. We hope they’re raped and murdered so we don’t need to see them any more]”…
Bad Fantasy, Good Reality (#762)
It’s good to see Cambodia shutting down these propaganda factories:
A Cambodian court jailed a [fraudster] for two years…for his role in making a [propaganda film] about sex trafficking…Rath Rott Mony[‘s propaganda film], titled “My Mother Sold Me”, included a…[sexual fantasy] of a poor Cambodian girl who was sold into sex work, prompting authorities to question those involved…the girl and her mother [admitted they] were paid $200 to lie in the documentary…Judge Koy Sao…ordered Mony to pay $17,500 compensation to two of the mothers, Keo Malai and Tep Sreylin, who appeared in the film. The two [revealed] Mony had promised to help solve a land dispute and open a shop for them if they made up the story about their daughters…the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh expressed concern over [its ability to spread “sex trafficking” propaganda if Cambodia keeps prosecuting rescue industry lies]…Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch said [the imprisonment of one propagandist is a bigger human rights issue than vicious fraud which drives a hysteria impacting millions of women, including those condemed to] Cambodia[‘s notorious Prey Speu “re-education” camp in order to satisfy US prohibitionists]…
A programmer created an app…that…remove[s] clothing from the images of women, making them look realistically nude…DeepNude…uses a photo of a clothed person and…swaps clothes for naked breasts and a vulva…DeepNude…appears to work best on images where the person is already showing a lot of skin…Since [whitebread feminists] discovered deepfakes in late 2017, [most of] the media and politicians focused on the dangers they pose as a disinformation tool. But [clueless prudes still think] the most devastating use of deepfakes has…been in how they’re used [on pictures of] women…
The solution to this problem isn’t increasing the censorship powers of the already-bloated police state as carceral feminists are demanding; it’s fighting the idea that a woman’s body is something to be ashamed of.
Marijuana prohibition will soon be a thing of the past:
Illinois’ new governor delivered on a top campaign promise…by signing legislation legalizing small amounts of marijuana for recreational use, the 11th state to do so and the first to implement a comprehensive statewide cannabis marketplace designed by [politicians]. Legalization in Illinois also means that nearly 800,000 people with criminal records for purchasing or possessing 30 grams of marijuana or less may have those records expunged, a provision minority lawmakers and interest groups demanded…
I don’t know about you, but I find the reporter’s writing “the first to implement a comprehensive statewide cannabis marketplace designed by [politicians]” as though it were a good thing is extremely funny.
The result of European “humanitarianism” to “fight human trafficking”:
More than 80 per cent of refugees…locked up in one Libyan [concentration camp] have tuberculosis due to overcrowding and poor conditions…at least 22 have died…the bodies of Christians who died in [the EU-funded] Zintan [concentration camp] were not being buried, partly because the local community insists the cemetery is only for Muslims….some [migrants] hav[e] been [locked up] for two years…roughly 6,000 people [are] currently locked up indefinitely in detention centres run by the Libyan Department for Combatting Illegal Migration (DCIM)…[which is funded and trained by] the EU…
I’m afraid it’s far too late to put this evil djinni back into its bottle:
Technology…already [used] in authoritarian China…[is] also gaining a foothold…in [authoritarian] America…police departments…are turning body cameras]…into a means of constant surveillance. Evolving software applications will let police record every encounter and match up a citizen’s face with a database…California [politicians are] consider[ing] Assembly Bill 1215, which would ban police agencies from using facial and biometric tracking devices as part of their body cameras…the next step…[is] tying facial-recognition software into security cameras that are practically everywhere…Police admit that they want to use these cameras as part of wholesale dragnets, by scanning everyone at public events and not only those that they suspect of having committed a crime…This is far more intrusive than those checkpoints in totalitarian countries where people must constantly show their papers. In this emerging Robocop world, every American will always be identifiable to the authorities simply by walking around in public…
The [American Hotel & Lodging Association] vowed…to [harass and persecute] sex [workers using] its properties, in part by training every employee on [incredibly vague] warning signs for [sex work] and how to [rat them out to the pigs]…The announcement…comes after two women who [claim] they were forced into prostitution as teenagers filed a lawsuit against three Philadelphia hotels, alleging the businesses ignored and profited from the sexual slavery happening on their premises…
Copywrong
Posted in Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged comics, ethics, fascism, imaginative fiction, politicians on July 5, 2019| 9 Comments »
The single biggest fallacy in Randianism is the notion that the great industrialists of the past succeeded by their own genius. They didn’t; every single one got wealthy due to crony deals with politicians, “officially”-granted monopolies, protectionist laws, subsidies, etc; in other words fascism, not the free market. I’m an agorist; I believe all human interactions should be voluntary exchanges, and that nobody has a right to insert themselves into others’ voluntary arrangements. But crony capitalism warps markets with collectivist violence, making them evil. Let’s take one modern example, far more subtle than bailouts, subsidies or “regulations” so complex it takes a full-time legal department (such as big companies have and small ones don’t): the copyright scam. Basic copyright is a good concept; it allows creative people to make a living from their creations. Without it, nobody could afford to be a full-time creator because the unscrupulous would constantly be stealing their work. But look at how collusion between government and giant media corporations (especially Disney) have warped this good concept into a sick means of fascist corporations making billions from the intellectual creations of people who have been dead for decades. Mickey Mouse and many other characters should have entered the public domain years ago, but the collectives which “own” them paid off enough Congresscritters to ensure that won’t happen, and the process will continue indefinitely until something is done about it. But what could be done? Well, If I were dictatrix, I’d set copyright at life plus 21 years, so any minor children of a creator who died young could enjoy those rights until majority. But anything longer stifles future generations from doing new things with those creations (as Disney himself did with public-domain characters created by others). I’d also bar corporations from owning copyright; only human creators (including teams of specifically-named individuals) could have that. Of course, the creator could license his creation to a company, as Charles Moulton licensed Wonder Woman to DC. But 21 years after the creator croaks? It’s all over, including the licenses. Under my system, everything John Lennon did solo (post-Beatles) would’ve come out of copyright a couple of weeks after George Harrison died in ’01, and Harrison’s work would now have only three years left. But the collective Beatles creations would still be protected until 21 years after the last Beatle shuffles off this mortal coil. Superman would’ve entered the public domain two and a half years ago, 21 years after Jerry Siegel’s death (his co-creator, Joe Shuster, died in 1992); imagine what stories new creators could soon write about him or about Batman (out of copyright this coming November in my system).
The “creative team” structure leaves a loophole, but I think it’s a sensible one that could allow a creator to care for loved ones after his death. All a creator would need to do is give equal creative credit (at the time of publication; retroactive attribution would not be allowed) to the person he wanted to protect. So if Lennon had given Yoko Ono official equal credit on all or some of his post-Beatles work, the music so credited would still be under copyright until 21 years after she croaks. A clever creator could even give equal credit to their kids on individual works (one book or album per kid, that sort of thing). And it would last until 21 years after that “co-creator” died, but there would be no such thing as collectives of investors who never even met Walt Disney profiting from his genius 52 years after his death. This wouldn’t kill companies; for example, Disney would still hold rights to all from their ’90s revival, probably for decades to come, and they’ve got plenty of money to keep licensing new characters ad infinitum. But no more resting on laurels, and no more using the power of government to stop other people from doing exactly what 19th and 20th-century creators did.
Western Illiberalism
Posted in Current Events, History, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged cops, disease, ethics, Europe, fascism, holidays, illegal aliens, left-right myth, prisons, racism, slavery, universal criminality on July 4, 2019| Leave a Comment »
People call me heroic, but I don’t feel heroic; I usually feel as though what I’m doing is the only possible choice, or at least the only moral one. – “Divided We Stand”
For as long as I’ve written this blog, I’ve been pointing out several times a year (especially on July 4th and November 5th) that the US “was born with an ugly birth defect which doomed it from the start, and the monstrous doppelganger which grew like some loathsome fungus inside of its carcass would not be worthy of saving even if that were possible. Nor are the majority of modern Western nations any better.” European nations, including the US, grew and enriched themselves by invasion, land theft, pillage and enslavement of less-advanced peoples, and even after they disavowed that racist, colonialist history they have continued to be every bit as shitty to those formerly-subject peoples, albeit obliquely and under the guise of beneficence. It’s absolutely true that up until recently virtually all peoples, regardless of skin color, religion, time period or level of advancement, grew and enriched themselves by exactly those same means, but only the Western ones developed an intellectual tradition, generally known as “Western liberalism”, which allowed free and open discussion of ideas and paid lip service to basic human rights while continuing to allow their rulers to behave in the same abominable manner as rulers always have and always will behave. If anything, the tradition has encouraged rulers to behave even more abominably than in the past by simply thinking up some bullshit excuse for the evil and then feigning offense when called on it. For example, less-advanced peoples could be conquered by labeling them “savages” and pretending that more-advanced (i.e. white) people were only trying to “help” them by enslaving them. Europeans proclaimed they had a “right” to steal the land of non-Europeans by a pettifogging bit of legalistic chicanery called the “Doctrine of Discovery“, and that it was OK to exterminate them when they resisted conquest (in much the same way that modern cops charge their victims with “assault on a police officer” and “resisting arrest” for daring to defend themselves when they’re beaten, raped or tased). Modern rulers claim “legitimacy” by a long series of Byzantine pretenses and procedures no more moral, just or rational than “Divine Right of Kings” was, then claim that their subjects somehow agreed to obey due to something called a “social contract” by virtue of being born within a particular set of imaginary lines the rulers drew on a map; the fact that nobody can “choose” when, how or where to be born is pretended to be irrelevant, and the rulers claim the “right” to inflict violence – including assault, maiming, robbery, rape, child-abduction, locking them in a cage for decades and even murder – if the subject violates any of a vast, confusing, vague, broad, and ever-increasing body of arbitrary rules called “laws” which are invented by the rulers as excuses to expand their own power, destroy their enemies (especially rebellious subjects) and suppress everyone who isn’t a member of the ruling class.
This edifice of bullshit has achieved its highest development in the fascist semi-republics which are incorrectly labeled “democracies”; most people believe that they’ve acted freely as long as they’re given a “choice”, even if that choice is between two equally-awful representatives of entrenched political parties who agree on every important issue and make a huge and dramatic show of opposing each other on a few cosmetic ones. Similarly, the lie of “choice” is used to brutalize, cage and banish refugees from countries ruined by centuries of European exploitation and decades of proxy warfare (yes, that includes the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Terrorism”), as if “stay in your native country and watch your children starve while you’re being raped” is some kind of valid choice. We’re told that Africans trying to reach Europe and Latin Americans trying to reach the US in search of a better life (you know, the same reason Europeans came to North America) are “illegals” who deserve to be caged in brutal conditions until they die of preventable diseases; that those who assist them are “criminals” (usually “human traffickers”); and that deporting them is “rescue” and “helping them get home to their families”. If you want to participate in this vast charade on the off-chance of sparking some kind of butterfly effect which will eventually make things marginally better, please do so with my blessing. I, however, prefer not to get into the mud with the pigs; all I can do is follow my moral compass so that even if things don’t get better, at least I know that I had no part in making them worse or excusing the multitudinous sins of the powerful.
In the News (#950)
Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, animals, avails laws, Backpage, censorship, Check Your Premises, Colorado, cops, Dangerous Speech, Divided We Fall, Divination, hysteria, illegal aliens, internet, Japan, Japanese Prostitution, lawheads, LGBT rights, Louisiana, neofeminism, Oregon, politicians, porn, prohibitionist myths, rescue industry, Saving Them from Themselves, sex offender registry, sexting, Shazam!, sporting events, Storyville, streetwalkers, Swedish model, The Widening Gyre, This Means War, Torture Chamber, transgender, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers, Where Are the Victims? on July 3, 2019| 3 Comments »
People whose brains and morals haven’t been totally warped by partisan politics don’t write off…horrors just because The Other Side started them. – Elizabeth Nolan Brown
It’s always a “gang”, even when it isn’t:
A Chinese madam linked to a[n imaginary] “Snakehead” people smuggling ring, who [provided clients and an incall for migrant sex workers]…in…Scotland…was [sentenced to] 27 months…Yen Huang, 62…was [snitched on by racist busybodies at]…a bank in Dundee [after she went into the bank with] a 48-year-old [migrant] woman…Police…[had branded] the woman…a victim of human trafficking [so they arrested her]…and…she…[is] now [in prison] in England, waiting to be [deported]…Huang…eventually abandoned her claims to have been just a cleaner with “no connection” to…prostitution, and…[instead] claimed she herself was victim of human trafficking…brought to the UK…by “Snakehead” [an imaginary criminal cartel out of racist “Fu Manchu” style fantasies]…
According to Diane Gramley, head of the American Family Association’s (AFA) Pennsylvania chapter, the 1969 Stonewall uprising wasn’t caused by queer people fighting against police harassment, it was caused by police trying to rescue a young transgender boy who was being sexually abused by the bar’s queer patrons. Gramley [told her fantasy] on a recent broadcast of Stand in the Gap, a radio show produced by the American Pastors Network…Gramley [also] said…“Pride is definitely a menace to children…because they use these Pride events to desensitize us to the dangers of their lifestyle”…By claiming that police were trying to rescue a sexually abused transgender youth, Gramely continues to [advance the myth that cops exist to “help” people and to] repeat the old canard that LGBTQ people are pedophiles who groom and sexually prey on young children, “turning” some of them gay, bi or trans…
A “young transgender boy”? How interesting, considering that people like Gramley claim that being trans is a “lifestyle” rather than a characteristic, and therefore deny that any young person can actually be trans.
Prohibitionists just keep trying the same stupid publicity stunts:
[A pig oinked that] it was time to consider stopping drivers using the residential…Rosary Road [in] Norwich…”to prevent kerb crawlers doing laps” [even though cops admit this won’t have any affect on street work]…residents…[say they are] not bothered by kerb crawling traffic [though some virtue-signaled that they have read the propaganda about]…”women who are being exploited in all this”…
Click the subtitle link to see what happened the last time this Stupid Cop Trick was tried.
As the next Olympic host, Japan has become the focus of…global [hysteria over] child prostitution…with [profiteers] working to [spread disinformation] on “hidden crimes” they [pretend] have a symbiotic relationship with mega-events. Major sporting events attract troves [sic] of [rescue industry]…organizations…looking to cash in by exploiting [public ignorance about sex work in order to convince them that sex workers are] vulnerable children…Despite [a total lack of evidence for any issues]…Japan is far from immune, according to It’s a Penalty, a Britain-based [prohibition]ist group. “It does exist here, it is just that [the evidence says the opposite]” said Sarah de Carvalho, founder and CEO of IAP…
Saving Them From Themselves (#626)
Oink oink, but he was on the wrong side of an imaginary line, so we HAVE TO destroy his life! SHAZAM!
As of January 2018, teenagers in Colorado who use their cellphones to exchange nude selfies can no longer be prosecuted for “sexual exploitation of a child.” But that change, which state legislators approved after [considerable pressure from sane, normal people]…came five years too late for “T.B.”, a 15-year-old boy who in 2012 and 2013 swapped erotic pictures with two girls [his own age]…the Colorado Supreme Court upheld [destroying] T.B.’s [life by condemning him to]…sex offender [hell] for at least 20 years. The majority conceded that its decision “may strike some as [insane but typical police-state violence]”…but T.B. violated the law that applied at the time, the court said, so he is out of luck. Two dissenting justices argued that their colleagues had misread the statute and that the majority’s interpretation [was completely devoid of anything resembling justice]…
Yes, people really are stupid enough to believe a dog can smell electronic images:
Louisiana State Police have acquired a new tool to help solve child porn cases: a dog named Maggie who’s trained to sniff out even the smallest electronic devices that might be used to store images and videos, including memory cards and flash drives. At a press conference [pigs and politicians bloviated a lot of nonsense about magic pictures and infinitely-growing problems]…
…If you speak out in favour of decriminalisation of sex work as a member of the UK anti-trafficking sector, you risk losing partnerships, allies and funding. But…unless the sector comes to a united understanding on sex work and the laws surrounding it, we risk trafficking being used as a rhetorical tool which harms some of the most marginalised women in our communities. The major divide on this battlefield is between those promoting decriminalisation of sex work and those pushing the “sex buyer law”. Tackling trafficking for sexual exploitation is often used as the reason to support this law…This approach can feel instinctively right because it punishes the buyers. I don’t know a single sex worker who likes their clients. I’m sure there are some, but they are few and far between…
The author is clearly delusional. First off, she refuses to recognize that “trafficking” is and always has been specifically a “rhetorical tool which harms some of the most marginalised women in our communities”, because that’s exactly what it was intended to be; it paints sex workers as “victims” so damaged by the supposed “trauma” of pragmatic sex that we don’t know what is good for us and can therefore be disregarded. And anyone so out of touch with reality that she imagines the sex workers she “knows” (already an absurd assumption because whores aren’t generally honest with self-appointed saviors) are in any way representative of the great majority who wouldn’t even consent to talk to someone whose avowed purpose is the disruption of their entire profession, is too lost in her own navel to even bother correcting.
It wasn’t just sex workers who thrived in the “Wild West”:
…people who did not conform to traditional gender norms were a part of daily life in the Old West, according to Peter Boag, a historian at Washington State University and the author of Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past. While researching a book about the gay history of Portland, Boag stumbled upon hundreds and hundreds of stories concerning people who dressed against their assigned gender…He was shocked at the size of this population, which he’d never before encountered in his time as a queer historian of the American West…Boag expanded his research beyond the Northwest, but limited it to towns west of the Mississippi, and the period of time from the California Gold Rush through statehood for all the Western continental territories. It wasn’t that this time and place was more open or accepting of trans people, but that it was more diffuse and unruly, which may have enabled more people to live according to their true identities…“My theory is that people who were transgender…saw the West as a place where they could live and get jobs and carry on a life that they couldn’t have in the more congested East”…
Liz Brown delivers a scathing indictment of the government’s horrific child abuse:
For years, U.S. propagandists have spread scare stories about trafficked children being housed in warehouses and forced to sleep on mats or rickety cots, with inadequate nutrition, zero privacy, and a lack of basic sanitation…[but actually] it’s the U.S. government that is doing that…ferreting [abducted] children off to secretive warehouse locations where neon lights shine 24 hours per day. Kids are crowded into large cages where they sleep on shared mats—or sometimes concrete floors…denied soap, toothbrushes, and medicine, amid outbreaks of lice and flu…Some sociopaths argue that abusing children is necessary to send a message to their parents…but…that innocent children should not suffer for the sins of their parents has long been a principle civil societies agree on…As Ken White writes at The Atlantic …“The sheer effrontery of the government’s argument may be explained, but not excused, by its long backstory”…Like civilian criminal counterparts, [Trump and company are] essentially threatening to keep on kidnapping and traumatizing kids until Democrats meet their demands…
Diary #470
Posted in Diary, tagged blogging, drugs, Maggie in the Media, psychology, Washington (state) on July 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Regular readers know that summer is not a good time for my nervous system; there’s just too much light for far too many hours a day, and when it’s light outside until almost 10 pm my brain doesn’t even start winding down until after midnight. But though moving to Seattle meant having to endure about an extra hour of light in the summer than I did when living in the South, it also means less frustrating heat and readily-available cannabis edibles with which I can force my brain to relax. That doesn’t help me in the hours when I have to be moving around doing stuff, but fortunately this past week was a busy one, and when my mind is busy I notice the anxiety less. Besides some pleasant work, I got to spend Wednesday evening watching Doctor Who (and four episodes of Good Omens) with Lorelei, Friday evening helping a friend move, and Saturday and Sunday evenings at events for Thaddeus Russell (you can hear me at the very end of an upcoming live podcast in which Thad talks with Katie Herzog of The Stranger). Add to that the fact that I went into the week on the heels of an exceptionally good weed trip, and ended it on another that I hope will be just as good (I’m writing this Sunday evening and the edibles haven’t kicked in yet), and that tomorrow I’m heading to Sunset for the long weekend, I’m in a really good headspace right now…and for the week after the summer solstice, that’s practically a miracle.
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