Despite delays and obstructions, Ask Maggie, Volume I is here! It contains 80 of my answers to reader questions, and volume II (currently planned for October) will feature another 80. I’m really pleased to have been able to keep up the pace I set for myself by publishing one book every three months this year; I’m hoping I can maintain that for the three books I want to publish next year, starting in January. As usual, you can buy the book at Amazon (and here’s the Kindle edition); if you prefer an autographed copy, they’ll be available in my bookstore as soon as the box of my own copies arrives (last time they took much longer than expected). Thank you for reading, and please consider helping me out by reviewing it on Amazon!
Posted in Miscellaneous, Q & A | Tagged advertising, Ask Maggie | Leave a Comment »
I hate that you put me in this position. – unidentified pig
As many of you can probably guess, I’m not a fan of Platonic thought; I am, however, a fan of weird short films from the ’70s, like this one discovered by Jesse Walker. The links above it were provided by Kevin Wilson, Amy Alkon, Thaddeus Russell, Mike Siegel, Cop Crisis, and Radley Balko, in that order.
- A “typo”.
- Out of the mouths of babes.
- Not for any fucking reason whatsoever.
- Cop claims 8-year-old boy caused his sociopathy.
- Even without the costume, I’d read this thug as a cop.
- “Crime”: broken taillight. Penalty: summary execution.
From the Archives
- The only positive point here is that local politicians condemned the hatred.
- How pundits lie abut the centrality of prohibition in US mass incarceration.
- Prohibition turns bodies into “crime scenes” which cops can violate at will.
- Texas replacing WA & AZ as the worst producer of “sex trafficking” idiocy.
- Magic stickers, secret-squirrel codes…it’s like a bad episode of Get Smart!
- Will porn companies be next to face the music for exploiting sex workers?
- I hope they get every last cent they’re asking for, plus punitive damages.
- The term is “tippelzone”, not “sex booth” or another sophomoric coinage.
- Despite their pious posturing, this is exactly what prohibitionists wanted.
- Liz Brown on the government persecution of Michael Lacey & Jim Larkin.
- If the Democrats cared about human rights, this would be their position.
- When forced, undesired sexual contact with strangers is “team building”.
- I’ve never seen anything galvanize support for sex workers like FOSTA.
- Pro-decrim articles are even common on conservative sites these days.
- UK cops increasingly use the euphemism “team” to mean “vice squad”.
- Ken White on the inhuman abominations that the US calls “correction”.
- The damage from the rebranded “Operation Cross Country” pogroms.
- Sex workers who are also performing artists are ambassadors for us.
- Cops, gulags, “environmentalism”, chalk drawings, and much more.
- A fascinating look at male actor/sex workers in 19th century China.
- More entries in the “sex trafficking” scare story invasion of Twitter.
- Welfare recipients are another guinea pig for invasive surveillance.
- “Sex trafficking” means whatever “authorities” want it to mean.
- “Safe harbor” laws only protect “perfect victims”, not real ones.
- How can I make up to a provider I didn’t treat well in the past?
- In mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down.
- The attackers were probably looking for someone to beat up.
- It is far too late to put this evil djinni back into its bottle.
- Slowly but surely, things are coming together at Sunset.
- Finally, some public skepticism about “diversion courts”.
- Brooke Magnanti on the re-opening of Laura Lee’s case.
- Racist anti-migrant bullshit reveals a deeper sickness.
- The heinous crime of “illegally subdividing a building”.
- More on Amazon’s campaign to end privacy forever.
- They’ll simply hand-wave a sex exemption into this.
- The stories of three residents of Casa Xochiquetzal.
- Cops & clergy are the worst sexual abusers of kids.
- Picket-fence queers claim cops aren’t our enemies.
- The Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit of 2019.
- On the meaningless tech buzzword “disrupt”.
- Thoughts on Machen’s “The White People”.
- I’d really like to be wrong once in a while.
- The death of a rather unusual archivist.
- This is what feminists call “equality”.
- Cops, rage, Florida and much more.
- “Youth pastors” are as bad as cops.
- The sweet smell of schadenfreude.
- A shame-powered blackmail scam.
- Did anyone not know this already?
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Philosophy, Tyranny | Tagged animals, Arizona, cops, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Never Call the Cops, politicians, teachers, Tennessee, video | 1 Comment »
It’s awful to think how disposable [migrant] women are. – Linda Corchado
The family of a woman whose [corpse was molested] by an…L.A. [cop]…is suing [both] the [molester] and the city of L.A. The family of Elizabeth Baggett notes that [necrophile cop] David Rojas already has been charged criminally in the case, and that his own body-camera footage…captured him in the act…the lawsuit…[was filed by celebrity] attorney Gloria Allred…
“Detention center” is just another euphemism for “prison”, and that means rape:
[Screws] in an immigrant detention center in El Paso sexually assaulted and [raped] inmates in a “pattern and practice” of abuse, according to a complaint filed by a Texas advocacy group urging the local district attorney and federal prosecutors to conduct a criminal investigation…the [screws favored attacking women]…in areas of the [cage stack] not visible to security cameras…[any] complaint…[results in faster] deportation…[three] women [so far]…have come forward with abuse allegations [and]…at least one [more] was deported after [reporting] a [screw had raped] her…the[se]…are [only] the latest…sexual abuse complaints related to [cage stacks] run by ICE, which imprisons about 50,000 immigrants across the country each year…About 14,700 [of those caged people reported] sexual and physical abuse…between 2010 and 2016…in a May federal court filing in Houston, a Mexican woman [reported] that she…and two [other] female [captives] were moved to an isolated cell…[where] they [were] raped and beat[en by masked screws, then]…bused to Mexico hours later, where the woman eventually discovered she was pregnant from the assault…one…wom[an who escaped the cage]…because of a medical condition…told an attorney that…guards encouraged women to sign up for anti-anxiety medication and antidepressants because they oversee the dispensing of medication at night and have access to an enclosed off-camera area [where they can rape them]…
The NYPD [em]ployed facial recognition technology in its [recent st]unt [targeting] a prominent Black Lives Matter activist, whose home was besieged by dozens of [pigs] and…dogs…Derrick Ingram, the 28-year-old co-founder of Warriors in the Garden, was targeted by [thugs] in riot gear during an hours-long NYPD raid on August 7th…[using the excuse that a sow’s dewicate widdle ears got an ouchie from his using a bullhorn] during a June protest against police brutality. More than 50 [pigs mobbed] his…apartment, shutting down his street and urging him to voluntarily surrender [for beating and caging], as NYPD helicopters hovered overhead…a spokesp[ig oinked]…that facial recognition software was used…to…”compar[e] a still image from a surveillance video to a pool of lawfully possessed arrest photos”…[but] the NYPD’s photo of Ingram appears to be taken from his Instagram page. It’s unclear how a social media post would constitute either a surveillance video image or an arrest photo…“the tools that are sold to the public as a way to fight terrorism and violent crime [are] being used to silence dissent,” said Albert Fox Cahn…of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “We would never have seen this level of police response for using a bullhorn if the message hadn’t been one opposed to the NYPD”…
But don’t worry, toothless local laws will definitely stop this!
…ICE [recently] signed a contract with…Clearview AI…[in order to expand its] use [of] facial recognition technology…the agency, along with the FBI, ha[s long] accessed state drivers’ license databases…without the knowledge or consent of drivers…Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That…[responded to requests for comment by vomiting up wanking fantasies about “sex trafficked”]…children across the country”…Federal records also show Clearview signed a $50,000 contract with the US Air Force in December…Several tech companies have sent cease and desist orders to Clearview requesting it remove any data culled from social media posts. And the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against Clearview in May for violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA)…
On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake (#1021)
Given that dancers win every one of these suits, the old strip club business model is a dead duck:
On July 31, the National Labor Relations Board upheld a ruling that a stripper named Brandi Campbell was a statutory employee of the Centerfold Club in Columbus, Ohio, and that she was fired for engaging in activities protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)…Campbell…was hired to work at Centerfold [in 2018] as an independent contractor, but weeks later the club management discovered her blog, stripperlaborrights.com, and the cases she’s brought against multiple past clubs where she worked. Management fired Campbell for violating “no touching” laws—which courts later decided was a discriminatory firing…
Indian sex workers, like their US sisters, are going online to survive:
…”floating” sex workers…used to travel regularly from the hinterland to Asia’s biggest red light area–Sonagachi–in north Kolkata…But in the past four months since the Covid-induced lockdown began, these floating sex workers have been reduced to a hand-to-mouth existence. Trains are yet to resume services and travelling in private vehicles like vans and buses is expensive. The brothels too are yet to resume business; the 7,000-odd sex workers who live in the red light area are managing somehow by providing “virtual” services online and with rations and other assistance from sympathisers…[but] for the…4,000 or so who commute to the city, their lives have become [more] challenging…The “high-class, A category” sex workers, who used to charge between Rs 25,000-30,000 a night, are now happy to negotiate for Rs 5,000 for it is important for them to stay in the business, pamper the clients. They have spacious rooms and independent arrangements and can cater to whatever the clients demand…But for the “floating”…getting an independent space to operate is difficult…
New York apes Scotland’s approach to “helping” sex workers:
The [New York] City Council tucked $4.1 million in the 2021 pandemic-influenced budget to “support people involved in the sex trade.” But sex workers [won’t]…see…any of the funds…none of the groups and agencies [receiving the largesse]…are run by sex workers. And [in fact most are prohibitionist gangs]…that…don’t [even] recognize sex work as legitimate employment…As COVID-19 disrupted the industry and forced would-be customers to stay home and social distance, sex workers were left without…income and [deemed] ineligible for government unemployment relief…The organizations that got funding, ranging from $85,000 to $650,000…[largely] focus on [working with cops to harass]…sex [workers]…and [target them for arrest and forced brainwashing]…
A “compromise” only bureaucrats and politicians could find reasonable:
Berlin’s brothels were [finally] allowed to reopen…months [after similar businesses such as hairdressers, massage parlours, gyms, tattoo shops, and saunas] – but [intercourse] is [still verboten by diktat]…clients looking for sexual healing in the German capital will have to make do with [hand jobs] until regulations are further relaxed in September…In July…[sex workers] staged a protest outside the Bundesrat upper house of parliament in Berlin, complaining that [discriminatory] restrictions were preventing them from making a living [legally]…
Notice how often rapist cops’ victims are underage?
The former head of the Boston police union…sexually abused a girl over five years, beginning when she was 7. Patrick M. Rose Sr…[repeatedly molested] a [now] 14-year-old girl…from the time she was 7 years old until she was 12…Rose…[tried to] flee…[but was caught when] State Police [used software to access the location data from] his phone…and [caught him at] a Needham [Massachusetts] hotel, where they arrested him [last week]…Judge Kathleen Coffey set bail at $100,000 and ordered that Rose wear a GPS monitoring device, stay away from the alleged victim and other children under 16, and surrender his passport, any guns that he might have and his license to carry a firearm…
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny | Tagged activism, agency denial, brothels, California, cops, crypto-moralism, fascism, Germany, Having and Eating Cake, illegal aliens, India, Massachusetts, New York, No Escape, Ohio, pragmatism, Pyrrhic Victory, rape, red-light districts, Social Distancing, stripping, surveillance, Texas, To Molest and Rape, Torture Chamber, violence vs. sex workers, Working From Home | Leave a Comment »
I was in Seattle for most of this week, but last week I was at Sunset working hard on the bathhouse project. I continued building the deck until I ran out of lumber (because the nearest Home Depot is incompetently run), then on Monday the 10th I cut all the posts to uniform height and put down the plastic sheeting as I did for the other two phases. The next day I spread gravel while our hired man finished digging the new French drain (it’s that dip running straight down the middle of the posts in this picture); it felt so good to finally have all the ground prep done before I went back to town! Grace also finished wiring the hot tub into the new breaker box, and we measured out the main cable that will run from the main input down to the junction box; she and Chekhov ran it through the conduit and put it in place while I was in Seattle. I returned to Sunset yesterday to find more wood waiting for me, and today I’ll be working on the foundation for the second guest cottage. We plan to start building it on Sunday, but next week I’ll just show you the foundation; I’ll be much too busy working on the cottage to show you that work for two weeks yet!
Posted in Diary | Tagged Sunset | Leave a Comment »
More than eight and a half years ago I predicted that when the end of “sex trafficking” hysteria came, it would not simply fade away, but rather violently implode. A year later I described it this way:
…This doesn’t mean that things will get steadily better…in fact, they may get worse in some ways…In “The Widening Gyre” I referred to the “trafficking” myth as “an increasingly-erratic cultural meme spinning wildly out of control, whose far-flung debris is going to cause a lot more damage before it finally disintegrates”, and…[in] this last and most dangerous phase we should expect to see a lot more people hurt…Because it’s a useful tool of social control and a versatile excuse for tyranny, governments (especially the US government) will work hard and invest huge sums to continue the panic well beyond the time when it would have died naturally; that, however, can only work for so long, and once the edifice of prohibition starts to collapse the US will no more be able to halt the process than the communists could stop the destruction of the Berlin Wall…
As it turned out, government and private funds were able to extend the lifespan of the panic by about three or four years, and it was their own overconfidence that eventually triggered the death-spiral:
…the hubris of those who yearn for power over others above all else undermined their own plans; in the spring of [2018] 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…sex workers who once preferred to remain silent have become extremely vocal…academics in many fields are urging decriminalization…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…
Less than three months after I published that came the plague, and as their funds started to dry up prohibitionists began to lose their shit, desperately attempting to somehow tie the pandemic into their profitable wanking fantasy. But what not even Cassandra McNeill could predict was that the process of collapse would be accelerated by the most unlikely of unwilling and inadvertent allies, the Trumpaloons. And the schadenfreude is so sweet, it almost hurts my teeth:
…the…#SaveTheChildren…hashtag [has been] trending…[thanks to] followers of QAnon, the sprawling pro-Trump conspiracy theory…[combining prohibitionist fantasies about] human trafficking…with…[inconvenient-to-prohibitionists fantasies about] a global conspiracy involving a ring of Satan-worshiping, child-molesting criminals led by…Hillary Clinton…[who] are kidnapping and eating children…in order to harvest a life-extending chemical from their blood…[unlike “]legitimate[” propaganda which claims sex workers and brown people are]…doing the [imaginary] trafficking[, QAnon cultists claim it’s] a cabal of nefarious elites that includes Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey and Pope Francis…the…[recent nonsense] about…Wayfair…trafficking children under the guise of selling expensive cabinets…went viral…in [part thanks to QAnon followers]…and…In recent weeks, Facebook engagement on human-trafficking-related content has surged…Even the Trump campaign has begun sharing more anti-trafficking content to its millions of Facebook and Twitter followers. The QAnon strategy of pushing some [politically-approved prohibitionist nonsense]…in addition to [inconvenient, unprofitable] conspiracy theories has [forced the rescue industry and anti-sex media to attempt to draw arbitrary] lines between [so-called] legitimate anti-trafficking activism and…[inconvenient, unprofitable] conspiracy mongering. Recently…QAnon believers [are even infiltrating pro-police state “awareness raising” events], toting signs with messages like “Hollywood Eats Babies”…Tim Ballard, the [pro-Trump] founder of the [dangerously deranged, violently racist] group Operation Underground Railroad, see an opportunity to reach a new, hyper-engaged online audience…Other…[rescue industry profiteer]s worry that QAnon will divert valuable resources from [established, well-connected] groups trying to stop [sex work and censor the internet]…After the Wayfair incident, the Polaris Project…issued a news release saying its hotline had been overwhelmed with…reports…it…[couldn’t] spin [for its own profit]…longtime anti-[sex] activists…[a]re alarmed by QAnon’s recent incursion onto their turf. They ha[ve] worked for years to [invent and disseminate] fa[ntasies] about child trafficking, only to see them [hijacked] by [a rival gang of] partisan opportunists. And they worr[y] that…QAnon belie[fs are so bizarre they] could undermine the [rescue industry]’s bipartisan credibility…
I cannot tell you how satisfying it is to watch the New York Times forced to debunk the prohibitionist propaganda it has eagerly promoted for almost 17 years. As in tales of black magic, the “sex trafficking” fetishists, propagandists, and profiteers have lost control of the evil forces they unleashed under the delusion that they could control them, and now those forces are threatening them as well. If this keeps up – and I fervently hope it does – the media and political opportunists are going to have to choose who they hate more: sex workers and our clients, or Donald Trump and his horde of idiots.
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny | Tagged disease, Facebook, hysteria, left-right myth, Mumbo Jumbo, politicians, propaganda, psychology, rescue industry, Served Cold, The Implosion Begins, The Monsters Are Due, The Widening Gyre, Traffic Jam, Twitter, Watershed | 2 Comments »
What seems obvious to citizens is far too often deliberately unclear to government agencies. – Tim Cushing
Busybodies are trying to ban dancing by cribbing language from the federal “obscenity” test:
The city council of Drain, Oregon passed new regulations…with the specific purpose of outlawing a…[strip club by] introducing business licenses to the city’s Code of Ordinances…[and adding a] new pro-censorship ordinance [featuring nonsense about]…”public morals, public safety, public health and public convenience”…and…“public nudity…appeals to the prurient interest…and…lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value”…Ray Hacke, an attorney with the…religious [pro-censorship] group Pacific Justice Institute [bloviated that]…“an adult entertainment business has no business…next to a church…[or] any place where children congregate…These places do [magically] attract sexual predators”…
Decriminalization is just the beginning:
Last month Kiwibank rolled out a “responsible banking policy” stating that it would no longer deal with any companies involved in [fossil fuels] and blacklisting the adult entertainment industry, casinos, military grade weapons, synthetic drugs, palm oil, tobacco and predatory lending. But after representations from the New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective, Kiwibank agreed to work with strip clubs and brothels that could demonstrate good practice. The NZPC argued that banning brothel owners would have a flow-on effect to the people who worked for them. Since then, [prohibitionist group] Wahine Toa Rising has written to Kiwibank applauding its initial commitment to [misogyny and discrimination]…and asking them to reconsider. Kiwibank is still considering its response…
Even in New Zealand, the yellow press colludes with prohibitionists. From the headline claiming that bigotry and dicrimination are “principled”, to the mischaracterization of a rescue-industry organization employing paid “survivor” shills as a legitimate sex worker group, to the prohibitionist propaganda which makes up the bulk of the article, to the Swedish criminalization snake oil, to the ugly prohibitionist masturbatory fantasies such as “the majority of sex workers…[were] sexually abused as…child[ren]”, this garbage would be more at home in a US tabloid than a New Zealand website purporting to be a news magazine.
On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake (#938) 
BammRose…is…the CEO of Stilettos Inc., a grassroots organization led by sex workers that provides support to Black dancers, and has called for a strippers’ strike in Philadelphia. The Stilettos, as they call themselves, are not alone in mobilizing for the workplace rights of Black dancers in the stripping industry. In Portland, more than a hundred strippers went on strike in June against…racist hiring practices, and organized rallies pressuring strip clubs to…hire Black dancers…and give them profitable shifts…At the root of the strippers’ strike is a demand for better, safer working conditions, fair wages, and protection from sexual assault…
Michigan is among the greediest, most unscrupulous states in this regard:
[The Michigan supreme] court…[ruled in favor of] two plaintiffs suing…Oakland County…[over its] forfeiture policy…a…tax lien…[was] put on [Uri Rafaeli’s] property when…he…[underpaid his property taxes by] “$8.41 in…2011, which grew to $285.81 after interest, penalties, and fees. Oakland County and its treasurer, Andrew Meisner…foreclosed on Rafaeli’s property…sold [it] at public auction for $24,500, and retained all the sale proceeds”…the county turned less than $300 in delinquencies into a $24,200 profit…Another property owner, Andre Ohanessian, saw $6000 in taxes, fines, and fees turn into a $76,000 net gain for the county when it auctioned his property for $82,000 and kept everything…
I can’t tell you how satisfied I am that Trumpaloons are taking over “sex trafficking” hysteria:
…a [Facebook] post shared over 1,000 times reads…“Did you KNOW that a child in AMERICA is over 66,000 x more likely to be human trafficked than to get COVID-19?” Similar [Facebook] posts contend that upwards of 800,000 children go missing every year, and that mask-wearing makes a child more likely to be trafficked. These posts also criticize government officials and businesses for promoting mask use, [fantasiz]ing they are endangering children. “We have now COMPLETELY taken away identifying our children’s faces. We’ve made it much easier on these child abductors and human traffickers!” a post shared almost 8,000 times reads…“A child is 66,667 times more likely to be sold to human traffickers than die of COVID-19,” another post shared 2,000 times reads. “In addition, your masks assist in them being transported undetected and unidentified to anyone”…
Best part: the article then goes on to attempt to debunk these hysterical fantasies while simultaneously wallowing in other claims nearly as wacko as “masks cause sex trafficking!”
Facial recognition systems have quietly become ubiquitous:
A would-be class action lawsuit alleges that the Macy’s department store chain violates Illinois law when it identifies customers recorded on its surveillance cameras by using facial recognition software…the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act…bars some private companies from obtaining scans of facial geometry without written consent. Macy’s uses software provided by Clearview AI Inc., which scrapes data from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other internet platforms…Clearview…provides facial recognition services to more than 200 corporate clients, including Macy’s, Best Buy, Kohl’s and Walmart. Some of the companies used the software on a trial basis, but Macy’s is a paying customer that has completed more than 6,000 searches…
This psychopath is only two steps from the power she so desperately craves:
Joe Biden announced [last week] that he had picked [Kamala] Harris to be his running mate as he seeks to become the next president of the United States. The good news is that it keeps Harris—who has a long and authoritarian history on criminal justice issues—far from the [post of] attorney general…[where she] would have the potential to do much more damage than as vice president. The bad news is that it puts Harris next in line for the presidency should anything happen to [the man who would be the oldest ever elected to that office] and sets her up nicely for a future presidential run. In Harris, we would get a leader with President Donald Trump’s penchant for unchecked executive power and modern Democrats’ tendency to consider no issue outside the reach of government. The pick is somewhat surprising…[considering] Harris’ backhanded busing stunt during the Democratic candidate debates last summer, and…[her] troubling history…[on] law-and-order issues [for which she] is despised…by many young left-of-center voters…That’s a particular liability as Americans streets are still erupting with protests over police violence and calls for criminal justice reform…
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny | Tagged A Broker in Pillage, activism, asset seizure, censorship, Choke Point, cops, fascism, Having and Eating Cake, Illinois, Michigan, Negative Secondary Effects, New Zealand, Oregon, Pennsylvania, politicians, propaganda, Pyrrhic Victory, sex rays, stripping, surveillance, Swedish model, The Implosion Begins, The Widening Gyre, Top Cop, yellow journalism | 3 Comments »
As regular readers have noticed, I’m not spending a lot of time in Seattle lately, so I try to schedule my dates with clients in close proximity to beauty or doctor appointments. Accordingly, I arrived in Seattle on Thursday, got my hair done and had a meeting on Friday, then over the weekend I started editing Ask Maggie, Volume II (Volume I hit a few formatting snags, but should be available this week). Today I’m spending the afternoon with a dear friend I haven’t seen in a few months, then tomorrow I’ll be getting my nails done before returning to Sunset for the rest of the month. It may seem strange to some of y’all that I can maintain my nails while doing construction work, but as some of you know from personal contact my hands are very soft; accordingly, since I was in my 20s I have scrupulously worn gloves to do any kind of physical labor. And this month is full of such labor; if you’ve been following the progress on my bathhouse annex you already know I’ll be working on the foundation for the second guest cottage this week, and next week we’ll be assembling the actual cottage. I’m starting to look forward to doing the roof (not because I like doing rooves, but because it will pave the way for getting rid of a couple of eyesores), and I’m beginning to have hope that I’ll actually get to spend some time with one of my favorite gentlemen soon after several attempts have fallen through in the past several months. Even with everything going on in the world, the Dog Days have been less stressful for me than usual this year; let’s hope that signals a trend.
Posted in Diary | Tagged Ask Maggie, Sunset | Leave a Comment »
Seven years ago I published “Catching Up“, in which I gave a new reader advice of how to get started reading my blog. At the time, I compared the strategy of starting at the beginning and trying to read every post with “hacking your way across the Amazon Basin with a machete,” and since there are now roughly 3.5 times as many posts as there were then, that is barely even hyperbole any more. Some of the advice is still good, such as the following:
…subscribe to the blog and read the new columns as they come out; most of them contain links to older columns, which you could then read as they come up…[twice a week] I publish a news column…made up of…short subsections; each item has its own title, and the vast majority of those titles refer back to older posts (each containing a link to the referenced post). This will lead you to a lot of older columns every week, assuming you have the time! Also, every Sunday I publish a “Links” column, and the bottom section, “From the Archives”, contains links to the posts from that same week for the past two years; you could click on and read any that sound interesting. You can also follow me on Twitter, where I share lots of interesting links…and also remind readers of my columns from that same day one, two and…three years in the past…
But now that I’ve been publishing for over a decade, the best way to start is to simply buy my “best of” collections, The Essential Maggie McNeill, Volume I and Volume II; they’re available in both paperback and Kindle editions, and each contains 52 hand-picked, revised and edited essays from the first six years of the blog. Then watch this space for future “best of” collections, including Ask Maggie, Volume I (a collection of 80 answers to reader questions, which should be available later this week) and Volume II (same, should be available in October). In addition to presenting what I think are my most important essays in a more accessible and easier-to-browse format, these volumes give you the chance to support my work in a tangible way, which is especially important in these difficult times; it’s a perfect example of a win-win situation!
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Q & A | Tagged advertising, Ask Maggie, blogging, The Essential Maggie McNeill, Twitter | Leave a Comment »
I could have gotten shot in my face. – Sincere Goodman
If I’d play music more often while I worked, I probably wouldn’t have as many weird songs pop into my head, but then I couldn’t inflict them on y’all. The links above the video were provided by Jesse Walker, Amy Alkon, Rick Horowitz, Thaddeus Russell, and Cop Crisis (x2), in that order.
- Sic transit gloria mundi.
- Not a police state, no sirree!
- “Crime”: Buying paint. Penalty: Life in prison.
- Cops murder man for sitting beside a highway.
- Cops attempt to murder children for running home.
- Amazing how many people “commit suicide” when cops attack them.
From the Archives
- Latest sleazy government trick: attack with civil suits rather than criminal.
- When you can’t get the people to support you, simply overrule the people.
- Redbridge harasses sex workers while belching up stupid “crime” rhetoric.
- Kristin Davis embroils herself in another scandal to get in the news again.
- FBI “re-evaluates” a scheme by rebranding, quadrupling its length & cost.
- It’s a mystery where Trump gets his ideas about “sex trafficking victims”.
- Threatening landlords to get them to evict whores is a popular pig trick.
- How does sex work criminalization suppress the sexuality of all women?
- 21st century humor sites are more honest and moral than “news” sites.
- Prohibitionists who didn’t give a shit are claiming credit for her release.
- Wonder why government pushes “sex trafficking” propaganda so hard?
- It’s great to see sex workers striking back at prohibitionist persecution.
- Why bother looking for actual victims when cops can just invent them?
- Tyranny always starts with despised minorities, but never stops there.
- Cops, Weird Tales, Aretha Franklin, geological history and much more.
- How can a transwoman meet men who see her as more than a fetish?
- Cops try to weaponize the new visibility of Asian sex worker activists.
- Guy Smith on the torture hidden under the euphemism “registration”.
- Looks like Olaf isn’t going to be able to hush this up as he wanted to.
- The definition of “unexplained” will now start to expand dramatically.
- One can never have too many attacks on a power-hungry sociopath.
- Political “monkey see, monkey do” actually works for good for once.
- New York pigs harass a young woman raped by two of their cronies.
- With modern surveillance, no woman is safe from aggressive cops.
- The “couple” has become a cultic totem 2nd only to “The Children!”
- Government is just a word for the things we choose to do together.
- Reporter vomits dysphemisms all over a pragmatic young woman.
- Amazon’s fascist collaboration with cops just keeps getting worse.
- “Sex trafficking” rhetoric is now being used to attack prohibition.
- Mar Brettmann will say anything to sell her anti-whore snake oil.
- 1/3 of all Americans killed by strangers are murdered by cops.
- As I keep saying, it’s already far too late to stop this tyranny.
- The US only prosecutes people for sex worker “propaganda”.
- Indian sex workers fight a terrible new “anti-trafficking” bill.
- This absurd Victorian language is meant to be dead serious.
- Ashley Sinclair is the 11th member of my Hall of Shame.
- The prohibitionists are slowly losing ground to the facts.
- Cops, metaphors, the Tijuana Brass and much more.
- “The War on Backpage is a War on Sex Workers”.
- These politicians are living in a fantasy world.
- Visiting Washington, DC twice in two months.
- On the absurdity of automated censorship.
- Changing my business model.
- Rapist cops of the week.
- Lots of lovely gifts.
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny | Tagged Australia, California, cops, Georgia, New Jersey, politicians, universal criminality, Utah, video, Washington (state) | Leave a Comment »
Gender-specific…violence is not an aberrant corner of law enforcement. It is…a cornerstone of police power. – Anne Gray Fischer
Just in case you thought the US was the only country playing the compelled speech game:
A leading [Irish] sex workers rights group was told it could not access government funding unless it [pretend]ed that “prostitution is inherently exploitative of vulnerable people”. Sex Workers Alliance Ireland enquired about emergency funding from the Department of Justice after it gave similar funding to the leading “End Demand” advocate organisation in Ireland…The group says “this culturally entrenched position” from the government has “no place in decision-making within the DoJ in regards to policy-making”…A spokesman for the Department of Justice…[responded by vomiting out a lot of nonsense about] “organised crime involved in human trafficking”…
It’s good to see the real monsters caged for a change:
A court in El Salvador has sentenced three [typical & representative cops] to 20-year prison sentences for the murder of a transgender woman, the nation’s first convictions in a homicide case involving a trans victim…About 600 LGBT+ people have been murdered in El Salvador since 1993…[Camila] Diaz, a 29-year-old sex worker, had fled El Salvador for the United States following repeated threats on her life from a gang but was deported two years ago [due to racist, anti-sex US laws and violent Trump administration policies. Then in January 2019]…the three [murder]ers…offered to give Diaz a ride home a[s a pretext to murder her. They]…handcuffed [her] face-down in their p[igmobile, then]…severely beat…[her] and thr[ew her] out onto a highway…she…died three days later in a hospital…
It’s good to see this getting public attention again:
…Police sexual violence is hidden in plain sight…sexual violence…is endemic to law enforcement, and…women of color…are especially vulnerable to it. This violence is possible in part because of the extreme power disparity that exists between targeted women and police, which at once enables such violence and shields officers from consequences. But police sexual violence is also possible because it is a legally sanctioned tactic of everyday policing. Women’s bodies are the strategic terrain on which police gain evidence, secure informants, and impose their authority in the name of “public safety” and “border security.” Indeed, rape is considered a legal and legitimate tool of law enforcement…undercover police routinely entrap women into engaging in sexual acts to gain “evidence” that they are doing sex work. Because consent is obtained under false pretenses, this practice amounts to legal sexual assault…Sexual “contact” by police officers to enforce morals laws is legal in all fifty states; when lawmakers in Alaska tried to ban police sexual contact, the Anchorage Police Department quashed the bill. How did we get to the point where sexual assault is considered valid, necessary police work? The answer lies in the origin story of modern police, and specifically in the history of the discretionary enforcement of public order laws…
When it comes to mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down:
…Anomaly Six LLC…founded by two U.S. military veterans with a background in intelligence, said in marketing material it is able to draw location data from more than 500 mobile applications, in part through its own software development kit, or SDK, that is embedded directly in some of the apps. An SDK allows the company to obtain the phone’s location if consumers have allowed the app containing the software to access the phone’s GPS coordinates. App publishers often allow third-party companies, for a fee, to insert SDKs into their apps. The SDK maker then sells the consumer data harvested from the app, and the app publisher gets a chunk of revenue. But consumers have no way to know whether SDKs are embedded in apps; most privacy policies don’t disclose that information…Anomaly Six is a federal contractor that provides global-location-data products to branches of the U.S. government and private-sector clients…
Don’t Call It Trafficking (#911)
COVID-19 is almost as versatile an excuse for tyranny as “sex trafficking” is:
…Citing the threat of COVID-19, [the Trump administration has] granted federal agents sweeping powers to almost immediately return anyone at the border, including infants as young as 8 months. Children are typically entitled to special protections under the law…[but] the administration is not deporting children — a proceeding based on years of established law that requires a formal hearing in immigration court. It is instead expelling them — without a judge’s ruling…[or] access to…lawyers, sometimes not even their family, while in U.S. custody. The children are not even granted the primary registration number by which the Department of Homeland Security tracks all immigrants in its [custody], making it “virtually impossible” to find them…almost all children arriving at the border are being rapidly returned. Between April and June, [CBP thugs and bureaucrats] encountered 3,379 unaccompanied minors at or between ports of entry. Of those, just 162 were sent to federal shelters for immigrant children…Lisa Frydman…of…Kids in Need of Defense…[said,] “The rest are just gone”…Of the thousands of unaccompanied minors expelled under the health [pretext]…advocacy organizations said that they have only found about three dozen after months of searching across the United States, Mexico and Central America…the administration has detained at least [240] children in three Hampton Inn & Suites hotels in El Paso and McAllen, as well as Phoenix, before expelling them…Children reported being held for weeks…with little ability to reach anyone outside…
It’s great to see Asian sex workers fighting back against the racist “sex trafficking” narrative:
…sex work can be a crucial source of income and, in some cases, startup capital, for those denied access to other options. “I’ve seen a lot of former massage parlor workers start bakeries, laundromats, or new massage parlors of their own,” says [Kate] Zen, a former sex worker and co-founder and co-director of Red Canary Song, a collective of Chinese massage parlor workers in New York City that formed after massage parlor worker Yang Song died [because of] a police raid on a Flushing massage parlor in November 2017…It is the quintessential American story. Immigrants arrive, often fleeing persecution or other injustice elsewhere. They find a neighborhood that has at least some of the comforts of home — food, language, culture. Maybe some family or friends who came before them. They find work, even if it’s not necessarily the work they’d ever dreamed for themselves. They save up, and some of them start their own businesses, pay their way through college or get certification for careers they were already trained for…But because of who they are and the kind of work they do, sex workers are seen as nuisances at best and easy targets at worst by those with more power and wealth in the city around them…
Pigs are rooting around in people’s social media in order to destroy their lives:
…In early June…the City of Pittsburgh created [a new cop shop called] the Damage Assessment and Accountability Task Force [DAAT] to…charge…[as many] people [as possible with]…alleged crimes stemming from the protests. The charges range from disorderly conduct and failure to disperse to burglary and [so-called] weapons of mass destruction [as though they had nukes or something]…In 21 cases, police used social media in combination with other forms of evidence….including…Analyzing Instagram profiles and Facebook livestreams…facial recognition…surveilling the home of a suspect’s girlfriend…surveillance cameras…[and] using [facial recognition based on] a statewide database of photos…including…driver’s license photos…
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny | Tagged Blunt Instrument, Business As Usual, cell phones, cops, disease, Don't Call It Trafficking, El Salvador, evidence, fascism, I Spy, I Swear To God, illegal aliens, Ireland, Monsters, New York, Pennsylvania, pragmatism, prohibitionist myths, racism, rape, surveillance, transgender, violence vs. sex workers | Leave a Comment »
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