You don’t make the rules out here, we do. – “Officer” Ethan Newberg
Sadly, there aren’t many holiday videos any more, but this one from Mike Siegel, in which Pachelbel’s Canon is played with Polish train horns, is pretty festive. Mike also provided “deep”, and the rest of the links above the video are from Ricardo Cortés (“apples”); Cop Crisis (“serving” and “standing”); Maura Alwyen (“physics”); Radley Balko (“trained”); and Dave Krueger (“time”).
[Cops] in Oak Lawn, a suburb of Chicago, subjected Tylus Allen Jr. to…illegal searches of his vehicle and person, including strip-searching him and ordering a doctor to [anally rape him]…on Dec. 2, 2018…co[ps decided to pretend Allen was]…concealing drugs. They searched him and his vehicle…without his consent…then called for a…dog [to manufacture]…evidence [but it failed. Next they abducted Allen] to [their hideout, where they violated his anus but still found]…nothing…[they] then called an ambulance [to take] Allen [to a hospital, even though he]…was…not in need of medical assistance…[cops] lied [to]…a doctor that they had found drugs in Allen’s vehicle…and [used their magical medical degrees to]…order…the…doctor to perform a digital rectal examination and an abdominal X-ray…Approximately three hours after the initial traffic stop, Allen was charged with reckless driving, [locked in a cage all] night…and…stuck with a bill for the ambulance…
A Tucson [sow] is determined to return…[sex workers to] childhood…Sarah Haught [refers to her intended victims as] little girls…[and says] “I want to provide a place [to return] them to…childhood again”…Beauty from Ashes Ranch…[is] Haught[‘s]…a[ttempt to cash in on] the $150 billion [rescue] industry…Haught [moaned with her hand in her pants while breathlessly sharing pig fantasies like] “Pimps…can make more profit off of girls than drugs since they can sell the girls over and over”…[she also vomited] “the Johns who participate in these acts…need to be held accountable” [all over the reporter]…She and her board members…signed a lease on a 70-acre property in central Arizona (the location is undisclosed to [isolate their victims)…“I personally believe in the healing powers of Jesus Christ and we can…[force] our beliefs [on these young women because nobody will stop us]”…
A Missouri church leader…tried to pay for sex on the gay hookup app Grindr…with an Arby’s card…Barry Cole Poyner…[also] offer[ed] to pay for gas…a student [he approached snitched on him] and a cop [decided to decieve and entrap him]…Poyner [stupi]dly sent the [pig] a message saying he “would love to have a sugar daddy relationship”…offered to fill up his gas tank in exchange for sex…[and] said…he “might throw in an Arby’s card LOL”…[the pigs then ambushed him] at [a] gas station, where he [initially] tried to flee…the Church of Christ…has made [anti-gay] comments in the past…
I’m always happy to see authoritarians feeding on each other.
United Nations peacekeeping forces fathered hundreds of children with girls as young as eleven years old while deployed in Haiti…The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was i[mpos]ed in 2004 [using the excuse of]…political instability and organized crime. The mission continued through 2017…MINUSTAH peacekeepers introduced cholera…causing the infection of 800,000 Haitians, 10,000 of whom died as a result. The organization has also previously admitted that over 100 Sri Lankan peacekeepers were involved in [what “authorities” label a “sex ring”] between 2004 and 2007…MINUSTAH [troops also left many women they raped with]…AIDS…[yet the “authorities” are still trying to blame all this on]…transactional…sex…
The word you’re looking for is “sired”; “fathering” requires more than spooging into some young, gullible girl you manipulated. But I’m sure hundreds of pregnant teenagers is MUCH better for Haitian society than injecting money into the local sex work economy, so Bra-vo. {slow clap}.
Attorneys for Chrystul Kizer…were seeking to use a law that shields sex trafficking victims as part of her defense…[against a] charge[s of] first-degree [murder]…for the June 2018 shooting death of Randall Volar III…[who] at the time…was under investigation for child sex trafficking…The case…is slated to go to trial in February…
250 sex workers petitioned the European Court of Human Rights to recognize the violation of their fundamental rights to health, safety, and privacy…Faced with a government…that denies their lived reality and remains oblivious to the violence of its policies, they have decided to attack the state…Whether in Sweden, Ireland, Canada or France, we have the necessary hindsight to assert that the Swedish model implementing the penalization of clients endangers all people engaged in sex work. This is why we…give them unfailing support in the fight against France’s…repressive laws…
…a…jury [let a rapist Delaware cop go free after he orally raped a woman]…Thomas Oliver Jr. was [only] convicted of official misconduct, a misdemeanor…[after] his attorneys…[used] the [“she wanted to suck a random pig’s dick on the side of the road” defense]…as…the [prosecutor pointed out]…”He had the power to arrest her, and she had no choice but to submit”…the [jury also ignored that]…after Oliver [blew his load in his victim’s mouth] he threw $3 at her and [shoved] her…out of his p[igmobile]…
MoveUP, [a Canadian union with] over 12,000 B.C. members, declared that it formally supports the decriminalization of sex work…The union news release cited the work of Amnesty International…[and] the Lancet, one of the world’s most respected peer-reviewed medical journals…MoveUP plans to work with groups, including WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre, on actions to advance the decriminalization agenda…
Even the Defense Department is now pointing out that the government’s quest to weaken encryption lies somewhere between counterproductive and downright harmful. Attorney General Bill Barr and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham have been on a tear lately in a bid to undermine encryption standards. Those efforts culminated in a hearing…whose primary purpose appears to have been to demonize encryption by falsely proclaiming it “poses a risk to public safety.” Many [spooks and bureaucrats] have joined the festivities, arguing that encryption enables all manner of nefarious behavior, from human trafficking to child exploitation as they push for the inclusion of [pig gates] in everything from routers to smartphones. Actual security experts…have long highlighted the foolishness of such efforts…[a very few bureaucrats] seem to understand the benefits of retaining strong encryption…the Defense Department’s Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy…notes that all DOD issued unclassified mobile devices are required to be password protected using strong passwords, and that any data-in-transit on DOD issued mobile devices be encrypted via VPN…Deasy wrote… “maintaining a domestic climate for state of the art security and encryption is critical to the protection of our national security…Facebook sent a letter…to Bill Barr, in which the company made it clear that it would not backdoor its encrypted messaging apps at the government’s [demand]…
Imagine a building where drug-sniffing dogs roam the corridors, air-quality sensors alert officials if anyone is inhaling a controlled substance, using the bathroom is a privilege rather than a right, clothing is searched in case anyone is hiding contraband up their sleeves, and those who are caught breaking the rules could face life-derailing punishments…I have just described a public school in Texas…so obsessed with stopping teenagers from vaping that they are perfectly willing to treat them like inmates…That 17-year-olds in Texas are considered insufficiently mature to vape, but plenty old enough to go to prison, is an absurd and unconscionable hypocrisy…
How many of us would think being jailed is a form of help?…that’s the twisted rationale faced by…sex workers, forced to endure the constant threat of imprisonment by people who claim it’s “for their own good.” At a time when the American political establishment is witnessing a…revolt against the waste and destruction of mass incarceration, one area of the carceral state is [still] headed in the wrong direction: the war on sex work. Not only is this puritanical crusade endangering sex workers’ lives, but it created yet another justification for the over-policing of communities of color…[and] the…undocumented..and… expanding the surveillance state. Guised in the language of combatting…“sex trafficking,” new measures have given law enforcement agencies sweeping powers to take down websites used by consenting, adult sex workers. Federal measures like SESTA-FOSTA…have driven many sex workers offline and…some have even died, because of the laws that were purportedly passed to “protect” them. The impact has been so disastrous that [politicians] are now pushing a bill to study just how much damage their own law did…
…EFF fought [SESTA/FOSTA] in Congress, concerned that its vague, ambiguous language and stiff criminal and civil penalties would drive constitutionally protected content off the Internet. And we represent organizations and individuals that are challenging the law in federal court. Activists and organizers from within the sex working community made it clear from the beginning…that…it…would…deprived a community of many of the online tools they used to stay safe and to organize. 2019 has brought us the unfortunate statistics to prove that they were right. In a recent study of sex workers completed by the grassroots sex worker advocacy organization Hacking//Hustling…40% of participants reported experiencing increased violence after FOSTA became law…these grim statistics aren’t an outlier: last year the San Francisco Police Department reported…street-based sex work offenses had spiked 170% since FOSTA’s passage…
A [typical and representative] San Diego [cop] who groped, hugged and tried to kiss more than a dozen women…was sentenced…to 44 months behind bars followed by 16 months of p[robation, but]…Richard Fischer will not have to register as a sex offender…he…attack[ed his 16 victims] between 2015 and 2017…some [after]…he arrested [them] and others…while responding to 911 calls the[y] made…Fo[rtunately]…he’ll be…barred from obtaining another [cop] job in [California, though rapist cops often simply move elsewhere to regain the power they crave]…
On Monday I drove out to Sunset, and the past few days have been lovely. I’ve managed not to stress about anything this week, even when I was preparing our small feast (5 of us altogether) on Wednesday. Oh, I had the usual low-level anxiety which is inevitable when trying to get several dishes prepared at the same time, but beyond that nothing. Even the drive out on Monday wasn’t bad; I threaded the traffic in Tacoma pretty well, and got here in about 2 hours and 20 minutes. And Christmas Eve…well, look at the picture and judge for youself. And I’ve got almost another week here! Sometime in the next few days I’m going to try to listen to the latest episode of the Trek Profiles podcast, featuring me; since most of the podcasts I do focus on heavy topics like human rights and police violence, it was rather nice just to talk about Star Trek for once. If you’re a fan, give it a listen!
The name of Caroll Spinney, who died earlier this month, may not be familiar, but I’m sure you’ll know the names of two characters he played for almost half a century: Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. So I can’t think of a better way to observe Christmas and honor Spinney than to feature this video of Oscar sharing his feelings about the holiday. The links above it were provided by Mama Tush (“faking” & “strangles”); Radley Balko (“explain”); Anarras Ansible (“treatment”); Mike Siegel (“Kampala”); and Cop Crisis (“execution” & “umbrella”).
The apparent path of the sun reached its southernmost point at 04:19 UTC this morning (last night for those in North America), making this the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the longest day of the year in the Southern. This is a time for remembrance, renewal and rebirth; I wish for all my readers the blessings of the season, and pray that all of you get all you hope for in the new year. Blessed Be!
If you want to donate but don't want a recurring charge, you can send any amount you like via PayPal to my email address (see below). Be sure to include a note so I can thank you!
All original content on this website (i.e. all of my columns, pages and anything else which I write myself) is protected under international copyright law as of the time it is posted; though you may link to it as you please or quote passages (as long as you attribute the quote to me), please do not reproduce whole columns without my express written permission. In other words, you have to say “pretty please with sugar on top” first, and then wait for me to say “okey-dokey”.
At long last, my prophecy from eight years past is beginning to come true. It has taken a bit longer than I predicted, roughly three or four extra years; the difference is due to the US, state and some foreign governments (not to mention sociopathic billionaires) dumping far more money and effort into maintaining the propaganda than I had imagined they would. But as it so often does, the hubris of those who yearn for power over others above all else undermined their own plans; in the spring of last year power-drunk US politicians tried to use the hysteria to achieve their long-desired goal of control over the internet, and the result of that power grab – the massive internet-censorship bill called FOSTA – badly backfired, galvanizing sex worker activism so powerfully that neither the media nor up-and-coming politicians could ignore it any longer. Populations of sex workers who once preferred to remain silent have become extremely vocal, and many media outlets who once ignored or opposed us are now reporting on our demands and publishing supportive articles, many of them centered around the damage done by FOSTA and its attendant pogroms. Academics in many fields are urging decriminalization for a broad front of reasons, and the broken-down Hollywood celebrities who champion police violence against women are increasingly finding themselves ignored or even publicly mocked for their cluelessness. “Feminist” anti-sex rhetoric is finally being recognized as the puritanical garbage it always has been, and the hysteria, as I predicted it would long ago, is rapidly approaching the point of implosion. Even politicians, those opportunistic crowd-followers who fantasize themselves “leaders”, have finally recognized support for sex workers as a possible path to power (especially those campaigning as reformist district attorneys). Soon the government will recognize that its manufactured hysteria has accomplished all it is likely to accomplish, and shift the money it has flushed down the “sex trafficking” toilet to some new civil-rights-destroying boondoggle; all that will be left then is to fight the myriad laws it spawned and attempt to salvage what remains of the internet once the FOSTA-enabled lawsuits are done. But widespread public recognition of sex worker rights as a valid cause is here to stay, and no matter how dark the days before victory is finally achieved, the prohibitionists can no more undo that than they can undo LGBT rights or the slow-motion collapse of the drug war.
