The next US presidential election is still almost two years away, but since our culture has completely lost the ability to keep the future in perspective, every power-mad politician who wants to rule the world is already announcing his or her candidacy. And while every single one of them deserves to be dropped down a disused mine shaft and buried under thousands of metric tons of concrete, the absolute greatest of these evils is California senator Kamala Harris, a career prosecutor whose list of crimes, if fully delineated, would make this one of the longest columns on this blog. But naturally, bean-counters are willing to overlook her corruption, duplicity, petty sadism and racist tyranny because she is part Jamaican, part Indian and has a vagina. I’ve already written about her in “Power Play” and its sequels, and the Unsinkable Liz Brown did a thorough debunking of her last January which only started with her vile censorship and persecution of sex workers; it then went on to her covering up for rapist cops; her arguments for the facilitation of literal slave labor; her covering up for dirty prosecutors; her campaigns to lock up more minorities and keep them locked up for longer, even when a federal court ordered them released; and her repeated persecution of people who had consensual sex in ways the state doesn’t like. Other writers have discussed her strenuous efforts to hide police brutality and murders; her crusade to steal citizens’ possessions without due process or supervision; her obsession with keeping people locked in cages to use as slaves even after the feds ordered their release; her vengeful, bloodthirsty attitude toward prisoners; her opposition to cannabis legalization; and her bizarre vendetta against poor people whose kids skip school. And though her deranged fans keep making ridiculous arguments equivalent to “it’s OK she’s evil because she’s a woman of color”, high-profile articles in The Atlantic (referring to her fans’ support of her in the face of her many glaring flaws as “a kind of political fetishization by virtue of her identities”) and The Guardian (which re-iterates many of the points mentioned above, with special emphasis on her persecution of minorities and sex workers) countered her carefully-calculated attempt to anoint herself as the champion of minorities by announcing her campaign on Martin Luther King Day. Will this be enough to let the gas out of her balloon? Given the deep stupidity of the American electorate, probably not, even though The Onion is already mocking her. But we can only hope, and I’m going to keep bringing up new articles as they appear.
Posts Tagged ‘cops’
Top Cop
Posted in Biography, Current Events, Tyranny, tagged California, consensual crime, cops, politicians, prisons, racism, slavery, Top Cop on January 25, 2019| 7 Comments »
In the News (#906)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, bogus studies, brothels, cops, Counterfeit Comfort, Fair-Weather Friends, fantasy, fascism, Georgia, Gingerbread House, Hollywood, hysteria, Ireland, language, LGBT rights, massage, Michigan, Monsters, Moving Pictures, Ohio, Philippines, prisons, Pyrrhic Victory, racism, rescue industry, Russia, sex offender registry, stripping, surveillance, Traffic Jam, violence vs. sex workers, Where Are the Victims?, Whimsical Notions on January 23, 2019| 2 Comments »
I am here of my own free will and no one has threatened me. – Irish sex worker to cops, during a raid
Facts have absolutely nothing to do with US sex laws:
…in…2002’s McKune v. Lile…Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in a plurality opinion that there was a “frightening and high risk of recidivism” for [sex offenders]…and that “the rate of recidivism of untreated offenders has been estimated to be as high as 80 percent.” That statement has since been used in numerous legal verdicts as well as to support countless pieces of state and local legislation aimed at curbing the rights of those found guilty of [sex] crimes…[but] the sole piece of evidence that led Justice Kennedy to make such a bold claim came from a 1986 Psychology Today article written by Ronald Longo, a counselor…in an Oregon prison—and there was absolutely no statistical basis for his “80 percent” assertion. Moreover, Longo himself has since rejected that figure…actual sex-offender recidivism rates are low. In three-year studies done by Connecticut, Alaska, Nebraska, Maine, New York and California, recidivism figures are generally less than 4 percent—hardly a “frightening and high” figure. Furthermore, most conclude that there’s no correlation between recidivism rates and geographic proximity, meaning that laws passed to keep registered sex offenders from living close to schools, playgrounds, or other kid-centric areas generally have no impact; if wrongdoers are likely to seek prey nearby, it’s often in their own homes, or in churches or educational settings, where they know their intended targets…
Quite possibly the most appalling euphemism for “jail” of the entire moral panic:
Vista Maria plans to break ground this spring on a new human trafficking stabilization center to improve and expand services for young female victims…The new Aaron and Helen L. DeRoy Stabilization Treatment Center will provide residential treatment housing for up to 16 girls, doubling Vista Maria’s current capacity, and a first-of-its-kind emergency intake wing to provide services for up to three rescued adolescent girls…with best practices gleaned from [prohibitionists and cops]…
Based on my experience, this is like demoting a captain for eating at local restaurants:
Capt. Travis Zettel…commander of the USS Bremerton was removed from his post and demoted last summer…the Navy did not elaborate on his dismissal, only saying that there were “questions of inappropriate personal conduct” and that his superior officers had lost confidence in his ability to lead his crew…The Kitsap Sun filed a Freedom of Information request…and discovered that Capt. Travis Zettel was relieved from command because he had hired prostitutes while in the Philippines. A [snitch] called the inspector general’s office and said that Zettel had requested ten local women to come to his hotel room in Subic Bay…
It’s like watching an entire culture lobotomizing itself.
A woman running massage parlours in Dublin who…thought the offering of “manual relief” was legal has received a suspended prison sentence. Nan Wu…[was] sentenced…to two years imprisonment, but [the judge] suspended the entirety of the sentence…[the cops] admitted…that there was no evidence of coercion and that one of the woman working at the parlour had told gardaí “I am here of my own free will and no one has threatened me”…there was no sexual intercourse taking place at the massage parlours and…Wu had not directed her employees to engage in sex acts…her employees kept the money they earned from [providing a normal, healthy service to clients]…Wu had believed what her employees were doing was legal. She had once sacked an employee for [intercourse] with a client…The judge said the [only] aggravating factor in the case was the seriousness of the offence…
If you thought “pimp” classification schemes were stupid, how about “human trafficking typologies”?
Human trafficking claims some 25 million victims worldwide, but analysts are hard at work uncovering these illegal operations through state of the art methods and typologies, combining AI with human detective work. The human trafficking epidemic is so widespread that [cops have been caught raping underage girls]…[invent]ing human trafficking rings is one of the many [profitable] issues [promoted] by UK-based [fascist collaborator] Quantexa…Typologies are compiled by analyzing many factors that make up a profile that is indicative of human trafficking behavior…“we were looking for things like lots of airline purchases to Eastern Europe [because the only] circumstances [when a woman would come from]…over here [to the UK is] to be sex trafficked…we see stuff on things like craigslist and back pages and massage parlors and this kind of stuff”…
Obviously if cops (specifically, UN “peacekeepers” in this case) rape vulnerable young women as cops have always done in every place they’ve existed, it’s part of a “human trafficking epidemic” so we should give these con artists more money. Because women are mindless cows who only travel if “pimps” herd us, plus “craigslist and back pages and massage parlors and this kind of stuff”. SO SCIENTIFIC!
The Russian republic of Chechnya has launched a new crackdown on gays in which at least two people have died and about 40 people have been detained…media outlets have interviewed some of the victims, who spoke about torture at the hands of Chechen [pigs]…Chechen authorities have denied those accusations, and federal authorities [covered for them, as police states always cover up police brutality]…
Perhaps the low point of Toni Rivera’s life as a sex slave happened when she was forced to have intercourse with 23 men back-to-back to pay off her pimp’s Super Bowl bet. Perhaps her breaking point happened when she begged a Miami cop to free her from violent bondage, only to have that police officer say that he’d love to take her home and have sex with her himself. Or maybe Rivera’s low point came when she became a sex pimp herself and she began recruiting young girls out of churches every week. Or maybe it was the time when a known national sex trafficker tried to grab Rivera’s 6-year-old daughter off the famously crowded 6 Train in New York City, and no one would step in to help her…Toni Rivera Presents Silent Screams on the Frontlines…is a captivating but heart-wrenching recap of how Rivera went from being a naive, small-town South Carolina teen with big dreams of being a singer who wound up being a piece of property that was bought and sold with impunity on the streets of Atlanta…the critically acclaimed film Traffik…is based partially on Rivera’s tortured existence in the sex trafficking business…
I literally LOLed at “sex pimp”, but there’s SO MUCH hilarity here…23 clients back to back! The Super Bowl! Violent bondage! Hero cops! “Recruiting” out of churches every week! A “nationally known sex trafficker”! And a movie that was supposedly based on this wanking fantasy, despite the filmmaker’s previous claim that it was based on “real life sex trafficking incidents near his home in Northern California“…
I’m afraid it’s far too late to put this evil djinni back into its bottle:
…A group of Amazon shareholders are looking to force a vote at the upcoming annual meeting to prevent the company from selling its facial recognition technology to the government until the company’s board of directors has a chance to look at the societal impacts…The resolution was submitted by lead filer Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood and four co-filers: The Sisters of St. Francis Charitable Trust (Dubuque), Sisters of St Francis of Philadelphia, Maryknoll Sisters and Azzad Asset Management…one of three things could happen next: Amazon principals could address the shareholders’ concerns, prompting the group to withdraw the resolution; the company could take no action, which would bring the resolution to a vote at the annual meeting; or the company could fight the filing at the Securities and Exchange Commission…
Every sex worker arrested in a “sting” should sue the cops if at all possible:
Stormy Daniels is suing the Columbus Division of Police and several [vice pigs for] her July 2018 arrest…her arrest was planned days before [the] July 11, 2018 performance…as part of an attempt by [cops] to disparage her character and credibility due to her criticism of President Donald Trump. Prosecutors dropped charges against [her] hours later, saying the law cited in her arrest applied only to those who regularly performed at the club. The city prosecutor later said the law was “glaringly inequitable” and should no longer be enforced. The lawsuit seeks more than two million dollars in damages…
Links #446
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged consensual crime, cops, France, internet, lawheads, Missouri, Mongolia, Never Call the Cops, New York, Oregon, surveillance, video on January 20, 2019| 3 Comments »
Ten thousand of us will hand you the wrath of Heaven. – “The Wolf Totem”
This week’s video is yet another example of the total awesomeness of “cultural appropriation”, provided by Charles Hill; the links above it were supplied by Election Babe, Scott Greenfield, Franklin Harris, Phoenix Calida, Scott Greenfield again, and Tim Cushing, in that order.
- An ancient space probe?
- An excellent metaphor for prohibition.
- This is what an effective protest looks like.
- Calling the cops on people is conspiracy to murder them.
- Cop says she rolled over baby on sidewalk ’cause everyone does it.
- I have no intention of ever being even partially immersed in a toilet.
From the Archives
- It was inevitable that the “escort licensing” scam would eventually spread.
- Trying to dictate who others must have sex with is the mindset of a rapist.
- Rapist cops finally get attention outside of libertarian & sex worker circles.
- Lawheads amazed persecuting Backpage didn’t magically erase sex work.
- Tyranny always starts with despised minorities, but never stops with ’em.
- Think you’re safe as a sexual minority just because money isn’t involved?
- If Rainbow is “notorious”, I’d hate to see what adjective they use for me.
- How is anti-client bullshit “disregarded” in “sex trafficking” propaganda?
- I smell a whiff of Swedish rot here rather than actual decriminalization.
- Cops’ aping each other’s “sting” tactics illustrates their simian intellect.
- Seattle reporter libels sex workers despite knowing my phone number.
- Pride Toronto votes to ban cops from any official presence at parades.
- Pigs oink that families they damage by stings were already damaged.
- San Francisco is fond of non-binding, easily-revoked police “policies”.
- Brooke Magnanti on politicians & whores, including a quote from me.
- Fetishists claim Texas has 500% of underage sex workers in the US.
- Cops, karma, free speech, cult of personality, fungi and much more.
- Cris Sardina on the ridiculous “statistics” spouted by prohibitionists.
- The demand that sexual consent must be “enthusiastic” is infantile.
- An informal contract without a lawyer witness offers no protection.
- “Material Girl”, “Walk On the Wild Side” and three from Elton John.
- Cops, fascism, censorship, D.B. Cooper, Gomer Pyle & much more.
- On the Swedish state’s complicity in the murder of Petite Jasmine.
- What better way to find a vulnerable person to exploit and abuse?
- Margaret Atwood on women giving away autonomy for “safety”.
- As usual, Indians understand this far better than Americans do.
- Another vile monster being celebrated as a “feminist” heroine.
- Alabama wants to put pigs in women’s bathrooms. Seriously.
- Dr. Laura Agustín on why she wrote The Three-Headed Dog.
- If only amateurs realized how common this sort of thing is.
- A short history of politicians’ war on sex work advertising.
- Woman arrested for helping black people get into Europe.
- Medical ethicists are now solidly behind decriminalization.
- I find the lack of “victim” rhetoric here kind of refreshing.
- “Sex addiction” is becoming a “get out of jail free” card.
- Unfortunately, this doesn’t really help Backpage now.
- Politician pays whores for mildly-kinky show. Yawn.
- “Sex trafficking” debunking comes to the LA Times.
- Can’t prohibitionist idiots get a new phrasebook?
- At least they’re talking about decriminalization.
- Lovely pictures from our trip to Puerto Vallarta.
- US prisons are hotbeds of rape in every form.
- Lorelei Rivers & I return from Puerto Vallarta.
- The push for decrim in Hawaii isn’t dead yet.
- Politician pays whore for discretion. Yawn.
- Rapist cops of the week, 2017 and 2018.
- How can I get you to speak in my city?
- Note what this “official’s” last job was.
- Another excuse to justify rape.
- The first leg of my 2017 tour.
- Just another thug cop.
- Backpage on trial.
- Pig meets dog.
In the News (#905)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Bottleneck, brothels, Business As Usual, cops, dehumanization, Denmark, Eternal Vigilance, fantasy, Feminine Pragmatism, France, Here We Go Again, hysteria, India, Legalization a Good Idea?, Madonna/whore, Monsters, New York, New Zealand, Ohio, politicians, pragmatism, racism, rape, serial killers, sex work is work, shame, statistics, stripping, Surplus Women, Swedish model, Texas, The Course of a Disease, The Scarlet Letter, Traffic Jam, transgender, Under Every Bed, violence vs. sex workers, Washington DC, West Virginia on January 19, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Reports’ consistent portrayals of miserable, victimized prostitutes and villainous madams—despite evidence to the contrary—display [prohibitionists’] tireless ideological labors to bring their real-life encounters in line with their…assumptions. – Nicolette Severson
Prohibitionism never, ever changes:
…members of the New York Female Moral Reform Society…visited brothels all over New York City [in 1835-36]. They…[pretended they wanted] to learn…why women [did] sex work and [wanted] to sav[e] them from what they considered a grave sin and social ill…[like modern “sex trafficking” fetishists] members of F.M.R.S…assumed that the women didn’t voluntarily decide to become prostitutes, but that they were seduced and trafficked by men who caused their moral downfall…Those preconceived notions were [and still are] false. Prostitutes…enter…sex work because…[it pays better and is more flexible than the sex workers’ other alternatives], and for many, prostitution [i]s a temporary job. The reformers were shocked at the high-end brothels they visited. Fitted with refined furnishings and attractive, accommodating women, these brothels were…similar to the homes middle-class women were expected to keep…No wonder, then, that…the F.M.R.S. reformers used [stereotyped] characters to portray sex workers…[so as] to support their own belief that prostitution meant moral decay and internal misery…
The City of Dayton announced a new initiative…aimed at [harming sex workers]…Called Buyer’s Remorse, the campaign will “modernize” the city’s approach to prostitution…It will make the information of anyone [in]…Dayton to [have consensual] sex “very” public [without due process], Mayor Nan Whaley said…Their names and addresses will added to a[n online] map…
I hope the first few men listed on this site have the sense and resources to sue the city and shut the site down.
Lingerie fetishist offers women a pragmatic avenue of harm reduction:
With the shutdown now likely the longest of its kind in US history, furloughed feds are turning to second jobs, side hustles, and Craigslist sales to make an extra buck. Now one Virginia resident…asks women who “could use several dollars” to send their undergarments—in return for a whopping $120 a pop…
Of course, the amateurs are as gobsmacked as Depression-era rednecks staring up at a skyscraper for the first time.
…“Humans are the best commodity that there is,” [a prohibitionist salivated]. “Pimps and stuff will tell you that they don’t have to renew their supply, unlike drugs that they have to keep buying more…The average time a person is sold during the year is 1,000 times.” Sex trafficking is happening throughout the state of West Virginia and in places like Wheeling…Sheriff Tom Howard [fantasized]…“Be very careful with children because it can happen, unfortunately, with the drug epidemic…Any time you see something that looks like a lot of drug activity, there’s probably some kind of human trafficking going on along with it…It happens all throughout the county”…
These people are like living caricatures of self-important hicks. The “unlike drugs, people can be sold many times” canard is an excuse to keep persecuting members of “gangs”; see “Traffic Jam” below.
The Course of a Disease (#349)
The Danes just keep emphasizing their disgust with the Swedish model:
Danish Social Minister Mai Mercado…has revealed that the government is looking into improving conditions for sex workers, decrying the dramatic lack of human rights in this field…sex workers don’t enjoy the same rights as those engaged in other vocations, including the right to unemployment insurance payouts and pensions…”Society demands that everyone pay their taxes, including prostitutes, so I think that we are duty-bound to ensure people have basic rights”…Mercado said…Prostitutes are required to register…as their income is taxable, a situation described by Mercado as “taxation without representation”…Citing the experiences of neighbouring countries which…criminalis[e] the procurement of sex, Mai Mercado argued that accepting prostitution instead of trying to ban it is the right approach. “We have witnessed Sweden’s experiences. These are really bad. There is more violence, more insecurity, and it keeps sinking to the underworld. There is no need for that”, Mercado said…Among other things, [the new approach] will mean that prostitutes will have the right to enroll in an unemployment insurance fund, be entitled to unemployment benefits and be able to earn a pension…
“Sex trafficking” is another excuse to persecute the same groups as always:
…Some [things the government labels] trafficking are prosecuted more heavily than others…Sex trafficking of a minor…carries a statutory minimum of 10 years…[and] maximum…of life in prison. [Other things labeled] human trafficking…[such as] forcing people to labor for no pay in domestic service, factories, restaurants and so on — have no mandatory minimum…federal prosecutors have behaved accordingly, prosecuting more than twice as many minor sex-trafficking cases as adult sex-trafficking and labor-trafficking cases combined…57 percent of the defendants in minor sex-trafficking cases are black — compared with 43 percent in adult sex-trafficking cases and only 18 percent in labor trafficking…The average age of a defendant in a minor sex-trafficking case is 31, while it’s 33 and 40 respectively for adult sex- and labor-trafficking cases…76 percent of defendants in minor sex-trafficking cases are male, while that’s true for only 71 percent and 59 percent of adult sex- and labor-trafficking defendants, respectively. In other words…the [cases labeled as] trafficking…that carr[y] the highest penalties and [are] most likely to be prosecuted — are significantly more likely to be [against defendants who are] young, black and male…
Tight bylaws limiting where brothels can operate in Queenstown and Wanaka have failed to stop the trade, with sex workers instead using “working girl-friendly” hotels and selling sex from homes…prostitution contributes “hugely” to the district’s economy, but those working in the industry continue to be discriminated against, mocked and marginalised. The Queenstown Lakes District Council…has kept its towns brothel-less through restrictive and “draconian” bylaws since prostitution was decriminalised in 2003…going as far as banning them altogether in a 2008 bylaw. The council later reviewed the bylaw because it was potentially at odds with the Prostitution Reform Act, but…[it] is still at odds with the Act…[because] brothels are only allowed to operate within a two-block zone in the town centre…They cannot be on ground level or beneath ground level or have signs advertising the business…
For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (#863)
Some helpful figures for countering prohibitionists’ agency-negating lies:
…anti-traffickers often [lie] that the majority of those who sell sex in India are forced or begin when they are underage. The best available research, however, provides a different picture. A survey of over 6500 female sex workers in South India aged 15 and above found that the mean age of entrance into sex work was 21.7 years. The most comprehensive data set included 3000 sex workers from across the nation. Of these, 81.59% entered sex work when they were 19 years old or above and 14.53% between 15-18 years. The Pan India Survey found that across all modes and sites of sex work in India, 79.4% of women entered the trade voluntarily, while 7.1% were forced, 2.8% were sold, and 9.2% were cheated…The term “forced” should only be used in reference to work rendered through physical force, threats, beatings, blackmail, cheating and similarly direct forms of compulsion…If financial urgency were defined as “force”, then the vast majority of the world’s workers would have to be defined as “forced labourers”. Very few individuals are either entirely free to make unfettered decisions about their means of earning money or are entirely freed from the need to do so…
When a headline asks a question, the answer is almost always “no”:
Stormy Daniels’s July 2018 arrest…by…Columbus [vice pigs]…turned out to be…a pre-planned political stunt by vice detectives — one of whom later bragged about it to colleagues. Daniels and two others later sued for false arrest. Then, in August, the [gang] was again in the spotlight because a vice detective [murdered] a sex worker…after…she [resisted his attempt to rape her]…in his unmarked car. In September, another whistleblower familiar with local strip clubs informed city officials of extortion, selective enforcement and entrapment by the vice [gang], bringing a large package of documents to corroborate the allegations…[then] the chief of the CPD asked the FBI to take over the investigation…and…on September 27, [rapist and murderer] Andrew Mitchell…was [given a paid vacation]…On December 13, the CPD put a third vice detective involved in the sting on desk duty…[and] announced that the vice [gang] will resume limited operations with a “select” [herd] of [pigs], although the FBI probe remains ongoing. The [gang] will [supposedly] be handling liquor and nuisance complaints at after-hours clubs, instead of spending thousands on drinks and lap dances [while molesting and raping women without consequence]…
Also: “hold accountable” is a moralist shibboleth which means something like “persecute using a moralistic excuse”. It has no place in articles about genuine wrongdoers facing the consequences of their actions.
Prohibitionists know we’re right about the dangers of criminalization; they just don’t care:
…the [trans sex worker community who work in and around the] sprawling Bois de Boulogne public park in western Paris…has felt considerably less safe since the French government introduced [the Swedish model]…in 2016…as p[redict]ed, clients now regularly ask the women for sex in secluded areas to avoid the police. In a Médecins du Monde survey conducted with nearly 600 sex workers…63 percent said they have seen their working conditions deteriorate, while 42 percent said they have experienced more violence since the law change…The Paris mayor’s office [even] shut[s] off many of the lights in the park in the evenings as a way to [intentionally increase the danger to sex workers] there…Acceptess-T, an association that advocates on behalf of trans and immigrant sex workers [says] “They are more vulnerable than ever”…
Juan David Ortiz, a U.S. Border Patrol agent, pleaded not guilty…to capital murder in the deaths of four women [because they were just whores]…Ortiz [was convinced by government anti-sex propaganda that] it was his duty to clean up the streets of Laredo…so he began picking up alleged sex workers, driving them to remote areas, and then shooting them in the head…Ortiz thought [cops] w[ere]n’t doing enough to stop [adults from having consensual sex] in Laredo, so he believed he was “doing a service” by killing the women…prosecutors are seeking the death penalty because Ortiz’s “vigilante mentality” presents a “future danger to [people who aren’t whores]”…
In the News (#904)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Broker in Pillage, agency denial, asset seizure, Australia, Bottleneck, Buried Truth, California, cell phones, Censor Chic, censorship, China, cops, dirty, fascism, I Spy, Illinois, Imaginary Victims, internet, McNeill's Law, North Carolina, prisons, Pyrrhic Victory, rape, robots, scams, sex rays, Sex Rays (updates), sex toys, surveillance, Tennessee, Texas, The Last Shall Be First, The Pygmalion Fallacy, Things We Choose To Do Together, To Molest and Rape, transgender, violence vs. sex workers on January 16, 2019| 2 Comments »
Bounty-hunters can buy information about where we are, in real time…and come after us. You don’t need to be a replicant to be scared of the consequences. – Thomas Rid
Government is just a word for the things we choose to do together:
Chicago…regularly pulls residents into a nexus of ticket-related debt and car seizures that is stunning in its scope. In 2017 alone, Chicago booted more than 67,000 vehicles for unpaid tickets. In about a third of those cases, the driver couldn’t afford to remove the boot, and the vehicle was later towed to a city impound lot…[and] sold off, with the owners receiving none of the sale proceeds…the city and its towing contractor pocketed millions of dollars, while residents were left with ticket debt…there have been nearly 50,000 of these sales since 2011…the vast majority…from low-income and minority communities…The city…[calls] those who owe ticket money…“scofflaws”…conflating the inability to pay debts with criminal activity…workers or contractors sometimes [illegally] issu[e]…multiple tickets on the same day…[and] just two or three outstanding tickets will prompt the city’s revenue workers to boot a car. Owners have just 24 hours to pay $100 to remove a boot…if the window’s missed, the car’s towed, and the owner [is also assessed]…a $150 towing fee…cars can [then] be sold in as little as three weeks, but not before drivers rack up [daily] storage and other fees…
Not quite an example of the McNeill Rule, but close:
Donnie Romero, a Baptist pastor in Texas who has a history of making…anti-LGBT…[remarks], told his congregation last week that he would be resigning from his post…Though Romero did not provide details to his congregants…[another preacher] Steven Anderson…weighed in on his “grievous sins” in a [YouTube] video…“The major sin involved was being with prostitutes, and then there were also marijuana and gambling”…Romero, who has called gays “scum of the earth,” also came under immense scrutiny in 2016 after he said he was praying that victims of the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando who were injured would not survive “so that they don’t get any more opportunity to go out and hurt little children”…
The puritanism just keeps increasing:
Organizers of the Consumer Electronics Show…in Las Vegas selected a sex toy called Osé as one of a handful of honorees in its robotics and drones Innovation Awards program. But two weeks later, they disqualified the device and banned its exhibition at the event — because it’s an adult product…Osé…(formerly called Vela) is a sex toy developed in partnership with an engineering professor at Oregon State University that uses “biometric mimicry” for hands-free vaginal and clitoral stimulation…It’s unclear why the CTA made the Osé an honoree in the first place, before backtracking on its decision…The trade show gave a sex toy a similar award three years ago, and other companies have exhibited sex toys and adult products at the show over the years…
Canberra is infested with prohibitionists, many of them in the police. Articles like this one typically spout similar “rescue” and “sex trafficking” nonsense; the rebuttal from actual experts is way down at the end:
…Jules Kim from the national sex worker’s union, The Scarlet Alliance, doubted that human sex trafficking was as widespread in Canberra and Australia as police claimed…a 2017 federal government inquiry…found no sex workers were tricked into the job out of the 14 sex-work-related trafficking convictions nationally since 2004…despite this, there [i]s “a continued focus on framing issues” in the sex industry, particularly those involving South-East Asia migrants, as trafficking…”police raids…ha[ve] been proven to create worse conditions for sex workers, resulting in…barriers to accessing police in the event of a crime“…Ms Kim said the “illegal brothels” police referred to were often situations where more than one worker was working from a premises in order to share costs — which is illegal in some states and territories, including the ACT…
The Last Shall Be First (#785)
Anti-trans bigots often claim transwomen will sexually assault ciswomen in public toilets:
Two North Carolina women…were charged with second-degree kidnapping and sexually battery of a transgender woman in a ladies room of a Raleigh bar…the…victim had just entered the women’s restroom at the popular Milk Bar when Amber Harrell…and Jessica Fowler…followed her in and locked the door….[then] verbally and sexually
assaulted her…Both women are also accused of exposing their breasts and genitals to the victim, who eventually escaped the bathroom. The two…then followed her to the bar and continued the abuse, a bartender testified to police…
It’s not coincidental that this happened in a state where politicians openly encourage such bigotry.
Another pig uses a traumatized woman’s fear as leverage:
In one of the first releases of records under a new [California] law that [removes the previously-existing laws which allowed]…police [departments to hide] misconduct, documents show the Burlingame Police Department fired a [rapist cop] last year after…he [pressured] a woman [for sex by claiming he would interfere] with [her] DUI [case] if she would [not]…David W. Granucci…was later found to have made similar proposals to two other women, one [of] who[m submitted to letting]…him [rape her]…Granucci…obtained her phone number and address and went to her house the…day [after she was arrested] and made the [threat]…She rejected Granucci’s advances and reported him to police. Granucci was [miraculously] fired [probably because Bay Area police departments are covering their arses due to the Celeste Guap affair]…
When it comes to mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down:
Whereas it’s common knowledge that [pigs] can track phones with [stingrays or] a warrant to service providers…at least one company, called Microbilt, is selling phone geolocation services with little oversight to a spread of different private industries, ranging from car salesmen and property managers to bail bondsmen and bounty hunters…this spying capability is also being resold to others on the black market…mobile networks and the data they generate are…open to surveillance by [cops], stalkers, and [other] criminals, and comes as media and [informed citizens] are paying more attention than ever to how location and other sensitive data is collected and sold…
…Bryan [Texas]…put…the definition of a sex robot into the city [zoning] ordinance….[so] any [sex doll arcade]…would be required to be located only in the area of the city that’s zoned for adult-type businesses. The move comes mostly as a precaution after someone tried to open a similar type of business in Houston…
Corporations are becoming the favored tool of censors around the world:
Li Chengzhi had a lot to learn when he first got a job as a professional censor…Now, after training, he knows what to look for — and what to block. He spends his hours scanning online content on behalf of Chinese media companies looking for anything that will provoke the government’s wrath. He knows how to spot code words that obliquely refer to Chinese leaders and scandals, or the memes that touch on subjects the Chinese government doesn’t want people to read about. Mr. Li, who [has been well-brainwashed, believes]…his job…“helps cleanse the online environment”…For Chinese companies, staying on the safe side of government censors is a matter of life and death. Adding to the burden, the authorities demand that companies censor themselves, spurring them to hire thousands of people to police content. That in turn has created a growing and lucrative new industry: censorship factories…
Naturally, he had to show how big his dick is by delaying her release for seven months:
Cyntoia Brown…is due to be released on Aug. 7…She has [been kept locked in a cage] since she was 16…Gov. Bill Haslam…granted Brown a…commutation to parole…for 10 years…Brown will be required to participate in regular counseling sessions and to perform at least 50 hours of community service, including working with at-risk youth. She also will be required to get a job [with a murder conviction on her record]. Her Aug. 7 release marks 15 years since the date of her crime. Brown’s attorneys said 15 years is a typical sentence for a second-degree murder conviction…
Links #445
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged animals, Arkansas, Canada, cops, Florida, imaginative fiction, New Jersey, TSA, video, Washington (state) on January 13, 2019| 2 Comments »
If your dog gets aggressive, I’m going to shoot it. – “Officer” Keenan Wallace, referencing a 9# animal
Lovecraft-inspired pop culture stuff is often very gimmicky, but I quite enjoyed this little concerto inspired by “The Call of Cthulhu” (which was called to my attention by The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, natch). The links above it were provided by Tim Cushing, Scott Greenfield, Brooke Magnanti, Popehat, Mistress Matisse, and Jesse Walker.
- But for video.
- MUCH more of this, please.
- How a wealthy Florida man behaves.
- A primitive form of Keynesian economics.
- Disembodied feet of the Pacific Northwest.
- And now for something completely different: New Jersey man.
From the Archives
- “Rescuers” invariably want to push sex workers into menial crafting work.
- “Ally” parrots Swedish propaganda, pretends human rights are debatable.
- Amateurs: a menace to public health who should be licensed & regulated.
- I don’t think I‘ve ever seen the word “molest” used in this context before.
- Always good to see a sex worker run for office, especially when she wins.
- This will continue until people recognize that “filtering” is just censorship.
- How many fakumentaries there will be before “trafficking” hysteria ends?
- Florida “authorities” don’t think their magic posters cage enough people.
- Mistress Matisse offers advice on the “how do I find an escort” question.
- “We did not believe it should be legal for adults to have consensual sex.”
- Another court continues the trend of classifying strippers as employees.
- Fascism, futurism, progressivism, Florida, cops, celibacy & much more.
- It’s always “gangs”; women are too stupid to use AirBnB for ourselves.
- Pompous men taking it upon themselves to “disrupt” women’s income.
- Declare anything a “public health crisis” and it can be harassed at will.
- To hear these yo-yos ranting, you’d swear this film had magic powers.
- India eliminated high-denomination currency; guess who it hurt most?
- Gentrification is a common motivation for persecution of sex workers.
- 80% of all violence vs sex workers in Hong Kong is inflicted by cops.
- Is anything narrower and meaner than the mind of a prison official?
- The “sex trafficking” myth is rooted in Protestant Christian dogma.
- Pigs harass migrant sex workers no matter how they’re portrayed.
- “People who need money do lucrative work to get it!” is not news.
- The subjects of moral panics continually grow “worse than ever”.
- Propaganda for the rebranded “Operation Northern Spotlight”.
- My two previous columns for Epiphany (AKA Little Christmas).
- The primary customers for male sex robots will also be male.
- How many moronic prohibitionist plays can the market bear?
- I’m sure useful idiots will cheer this expansion of censorship.
- Cops, dates, partisans, childhood, rainbows and much more.
- If only amateurs realized how common this sort of thing is.
- In the US, she would’ve been arrested if she reported this.
- “Sex trafficking” hysteria is now almost pure self-parody.
- Losers try to cash in with debunked bullshit a year early.
- Enterprising pervert invents a spooge-squirting system.
- Slowly but surely, public opinion is turning in our favor.
- It’s so nice to watch them feeding on their own.
- Facebook can’t even follow its own “standards”.
- Tit-for-tat non-monogamy can never work.
- I’m afraid this might be too little, too late.
- Rapist cops of the week, 2017 and 2018.
- I meet a pro-decriminalization politician.
- What wonderful company the US is in!
- I head for Mexico with Lorelei Rivers.
- Hypocrisy, thy name is Washington.
- I’m sure he did it to “protect” them.
- In which I leave for my 2017 tour.
- A list of alternatives to Backpage.
- Another setback for due process.
- Cows still cause “sex trafficking”!
- The end of my annual reviews.
- Rapist judge of the week.
- Preparing for FOSTA.
- Whores of Yore.
- 2016 in review.
In the News (#903)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, Music, News, Tyranny, tagged animals, Blunt Instrument, brothels, California, censorship, China, Choke Point, cops, fantasy, fascism, FBI, First They Came for the Hookers, Florida, games, Having and Eating Cake, hysteria, I Spy, Imaginary Victims, law, Overdue, psychology, Pyrrhic Victory, Rhode Island, stripping, Subtle Pimping, surveillance, Texas, The Spiral of Absurdity, TSA, underage, Wisconsin on January 12, 2019| 2 Comments »
Is this going to school or going to prison? – anonymous Chinese citizen
On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake
I’ve been waiting for this shoe to drop:
Lawsuits alleging improper classification of workers and a recent California Supreme Court labor law ruling are impacting…adult dancers in San Francisco, many of whom once relied on daily cash payouts to survive…dancers, previously considered independent contractors, now are walking out of club doors with biweekly employee paychecks and not with cash in hands after their shifts end. The move to convert adult dancers to employee status is causing an exodus…[from] those establishments…BSC Management…operates the majority of adult clubs in San Francisco…According to Axel Sang, BSC’s marketing director…“The BSC-managed clubs now have matching payroll taxes, unemployment compensation, workman’s compensation, Healthy San Francisco costs, Affordable Care Insurance costs and San Francisco sick leave pay for several hundred new employee entertainers in addition to the hourly wage”…Sang estimated that 200 dancers have quit their jobs since the policy change to paychecks…
…the New Port Richey [Florida] City Council approved the first reading of an ordinance that would ban bathhouses in the city…[in an attempt to strangle] massage parlors…The ordinance would ban any establishment that’s not a medical facility from [letting water touch] clients. Anyone who violates the law would be fined up to $500 for each violation and possibly imprisoned for up to 60 days…
Yet another scumbag profits from the criminalization of sex work by basing a game on lies about us:
Billy Cain…started searching for a way to use virtual reality technology — or VR — to [profit from] people…[by promoting hysteria] about sex trafficking…Texas has been a hub for…human trafficking [hysteria] for [a] decade…[one typically disgusting masturbatory fantasy claims] 79,000 children are being sex trafficked in Texas at any given moment…[in] his sex trafficking [sex fantasy] simulation…people put on a special pair of goggles to [roleplay an imaginary] 13-year-old girl who fell victim to trafficking. In “Trapped: VR Detective Story”, players see where the girl is being held and interact with objects to [flesh out the fantasy prior to masturbation]…players will learn…who is most vulnerable to being trafficked — anyone. Anywhere. From any background…
TRAFFICKERS ARE EVERYWHERE! THEY’RE WAITING TO GET YOU! EVERYBODY PANIC, THEN BUY MY GAME!
Collapsing empires are obsessed with form over substance:
“We’ve made a conscious effort in TSA … to use floppy ear dogs,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske told the Washington Examiner…”We find the passenger acceptance of floppy ear dogs is just better…Doesn’t scare children”…in the last year, 80 percent of dogs purchased by TSA…were…breeds…[with] droopy ears…which are deemed less intimidating…
Yes, the people who literally grope children’s genitals claim they’re worried that dogs will frighten them.
Useful idiots are unable to understand how precedent works:
…a death metal/black metal record label has shut down in the wake of PayPal pulling out support for processing purchases, along with the creditors at Visa and MasterCard because the company was labeled as “high risk”, “promoting hatred”, “promoting violence”, and “promoting hate speech”…Elegy Records, a label that hosted all sorts of death metal music since 1996…[has closed due to] the inability to sign with a normal credit processor due to being…classified as “high risk” by the banks and credit processors, which meant that he was effectively blacklisted from the banking industry…the only way to accept payments from customers was…via cash or money orders. For online businesses it’s not possible to operate without some sort of banking institution, or credit card processing since all purchases are made electronically…
It always starts with a politically-unpopular group like sex workers or gun owners, but never stops there.
Where US schools are soon headed:
In China’s latest quest to build an all-seeing surveillance state, schools…in…one of China’s poorest provinces…are now required to wear…uniforms…embedded with electronic chips that track their movements…[they] keep track of the exact times that students leave or enter the school…an[d]…facial-recognition equipment stationed at the school entrance can match a student’s face with the chip embedded in the uniform…The chips…can activate an alarm when the sensor detects that a student has fallen asleep in class…
The FBI is piloting…Amazon Rekognition…as a means to sift through mountains of video surveillance footage the agency routinely collects…While Amazon is now a significant supplier of technology to the government…[and] includes the CIA and Defense Department as customers—it is less clear how its facial recognition software is being used in the [police state]…the company pitched the software to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials last summer, a move that has…Amazon employees asking questions. The company does not list any federal clients on its customer page, and currently only identifies as a customer one local law enforcement agency, the Washington County Sheriff Office…[yet]…the city of Orlando recently began a second pilot of…[the] software…
The Cyntoia Brown case has attracted attention to the cases of other underage sex workers who killed abusive clients:
…Chrystul Kizer, 18, is charged with first-degree homicide, arson and auto theft for the June 5 shooting death of Randall Volar III. She was 17 when Volar was killed…he had been shot twice, and that the fire to the house appeared to have been set…Investigators said…Volar had paid for an Uber driver to bring Kizer from Milwaukee to his home…she initially denied knowing Volar, but later told police that “he (Volar) helped her with money and places to stay”…she reportedly confessed, saying “she got upset and was tired of Volar touching her” and that she had shot him…before his death Volar was under investigation by the Kenosha Police Department for sexual conduct with underage girls. In a motion to compel discovery…[her lawyer stated] “The defense believes that the discovery in this case suggests that Ms. Kizer acted in self-defense”…
First They Came for the Hookers… (#900)
It’s rare that judges side with sex workers against the government:
Imagine a symphony orchestra barred by the state from performing again because a musician was [accused of selling] marijuana to a colleague backstage…In Providence, Rhode Island…it happened to a strip club called the Foxy Lady. On Dec. 19, the Providence Board of Licenses voted to permanently shut down the…[club] after police arrested three employees [and accused them of prostitution]…By doing so, the board threw more than 200 people out of work less than a week before Christmas. Within days, the state Department of Business Regulation quickly restored the club’s liquor license, but the Foxy Lady’s owners were required by law to petition the state Supreme Court to regain its entertainment license…the state Supreme Court agreed to issue a stay, allowing the club to reopen for now, but the threat of future closure remains…
Links #444
Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Tyranny, tagged animals, cops, Georgia, hotels, Mississippi, Never Call the Cops, Ohio, Oregon, pregnancy, prisons, racism, Stop faking!, Texas, Things We Choose To Do Together, video on January 5, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The medical examiner recorded over 59 entry wounds into Mr. Robinson’s body. – Paul Howard
I know you’ve probably asked yourself many times, “What songs go through Maggie’s head when she’s really stoned on weed and she hasn’t started any other music yet?” Well, wonder no more, because this one came into my brain on the evening of Christmas day. The links above it were provided by Elizabeth N. Brown, Tim Cushing, Mike Siegel, Christian Britschgi, Tushy Galore, and Tim Cushing again, in that order.
- Stop faking!
- Phoning Mom while black.
- I hate it when this happens.
- Government is just a word for the things we choose to do together.
- Cop rewarded with 2-week vacation for shooting 2 people while drunk.
- Crime: accused of assault. Penalty: summary execution by firing squad.
From the Archives
- If there’s a Hell, those who pimp whores’ corpses are going to the bottom.
- Despite a good start, this is a typical “whores are mindless victims” mess.
- The government’s excuse for flushing the remains of the 4th Amendment.
- She has “big chunks of…memory gone”, so she filled the spaces with lies.
- Empowering cops to indefinitely detain underage whores for “protection”.
- How many kids need to be sacrificed to this obscenity before it’s enough?
- Pathetic “sex trafficking” fetishists recycle a failed propaganda campaign.
- Every attack on the edifice of criminalization helps to hasten its collapse.
- Scumbags profiting from sex workers by promoting harmful lies in India.
- It’s hilarious watching cops try to regain control of runaway moral panic.
- At least this new version doesn’t look as ridiculous as the prototype did.
- Do they think everyone in the shelter will be contaminated by sex rays?
- Another example of how people’s memories can be rewritten by others.
- Let’s hope Snopes will start doing more to debunk “sex trafficking” lies.
- It’s both fascinating and horrifying to watch a culture lobotomize itself.
- Laura Agustín’s new novel dramatizes the problems faced by migrants.
- Prohibitionist seems to understand that going after websites is asinine.
- Cops, Darwin, decay, lost cities, tarot cards, Matthew Hopkins & more.
- This is a supposedly rational adult with power to inflict violence at will.
- Whores in the Global South are much better at activism than US ones.
- Liz Brown presents her picks for the best sex work writing of the year.
- Can the “anti-pimp personal hygiene product” trope get any stupider?
- Can you imagine US feminists criticizing a cop’s anti-whore fantasies?
- Another attempt to censor the internet, from an unfamiliar direction.
- A sow spins tragedy-porn for her audience’s masturbatory pleasure.
- Don’t take Uber unless you actually want to be “rescued” into jail.
- $750,000, no strings, to spread propaganda & infantilize women.
- Public funds for anti-whore hate groups will soon start to dry up.
- Cops, copyright, psychopathology, dominoes and much more.
- Sex workers are subhuman so “teen hooker” is good enough.
- More evidence that “free” pussy is the most expensive kind.
- I hope this rapist scum is both bankrupted and imprisoned.
- Immigration raids cloaked under the pretense of “rescue”.
- Previous columns for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
- It’s good to see a few realistic movies about sex workers.
- Better headline: “Most moronic & childish sentence ever”.
- This is a man who claims he wants to “protect” women.
- Another exercise in cop-fellation & myth-regurgitation.
- How my 2012 predictions looked in 2017 and 2018.
- Predictable in the current Neo-Victorian climate.
- Could this bootlicking be any more pompous?
- Attack of the cross-dressing prohibitionists.
- Dr. David Ley on sex workers and therapy.
- The true intent of “brothel keeping” laws.
- Rapist cops of the week, 2017 and 2018.
- Still think you don’t live in a police state?
- It’s just so lovely having Grace nearby.
- Two similar cases in just a few weeks.
- A lovely holiday season.
- Die young, stay pretty.
In the News (#901)
Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, animals, cops, domestic violence, drugs, Facebook, fantasy, Fever Dream, harm reduction, hysteria, India, Israel, law, lawyers, Legalization a Good Idea?, Louisiana, Madonna/whore, McNeill's Law, Mississippi, neofeminism, New York, Pennsylvania, politicians, porn, propaganda, rescue industry, Scapegoats, Swedish model, Tennessee, The Course of a Disease, The Crumbling Dam, The Red Umbrella, The Widening Gyre, violence vs. sex workers on January 4, 2019| 4 Comments »
Efforts to abolish sex work…since the 1860s have one thing in common—failure! – Paul J. Maginn, Raven Bowen, and Maggie O’Neill
If amateur women weren’t so busy trying to ruin sex workers’ lives, they could learn a lot from us:
…Why don’t more people outside the sex industry organize against the dangers of sexual or intimate abuse in the way that sex workers do? It’s not because sex workers have more resources or support. In part, it’s because so many women outside the sex industry still believe that [women] are responsible for the abuses committed against them because they stepped outside of respectable behavior and “should have known better”. Sex-work communities are often more resilient against these messages…Sex-worker feminism shows us that our safety and freedom should never be conditional, and that we have to come together—on the corner, online, at marches, and beyond—to prevent sexual abuse and resist its insidious effects on us…
A Bossier City [cop]…has been arrested for filming himself having sex with an animal…Terry…Yetman’s residence [was searched for undisclosed reasons, possibly involving domestic violence and]…detectives found pornography involving sexual acts with an animal…The investigation is still open and may result in additional charges [if the cops can figure out what kind of animal is involved]…
We’re not hearing quite as much of this “highway” bullshit as we used to:
The newly opened Together Cafe…in Chattanooga…is…dedicated to [harassing sex workers]…Every dollar [of profit after the considerable overhead of cafes]…will go toward [creating prohibitionist propaganda]…Chattanooga has become a focal point…for…sex trafficking because of its geographic intersection of Interstates 75, 24 and 59, which provides an easy path for pimps to transport their victims around the Southeast…the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation [repeats the impossible masturbatory fantasy that] that one in four children who run away will be propositioned by a sex trafficker within 48 hours of leaving home and every year 1.2 million children worldwide are trafficked for sex…the average age of a child sold for six is 13 years…
This is not the first coffee shop “rescue” scam we’ve heard of. Note that the language about Chattanooga, interstate highways and “pimps” is plagiarized verbatim from pig propaganda at least two years old.
The international law firm DLA Piper has signed on to represent Safehouse — the nonprofit organization attempting to launch a supervised-injection site in Philadelphia — pro bono…the move gives Safehouse some added clout in the legal fight [against federal prohibitionists]…Although Philadelphia’s mayor and district attorney support the opening of a privately funded supervised-injection site, federal authorities have threatened legal action…DLA Piper’s decision to represent Safehouse “demonstrates there’s an ever-increasing group of lawyers who respectfully disagree with the U.S. Attorney’s position,” said Ronda Goldfein…director of the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania…DLA Piper, which has offices in 40 countries, is also representing the pharmaceutical giant Purdue Pharma…[against a nuisance lawsuit] brought by New Jersey’s attorney general over its marketing of…Oxycontin…
This article by three academic allies covers a lot of ground, but starts here:
In 2015 British journalist Suzanne Moore wrote a piece lavishing praise on US hip-hop star Nicki Minaj…the…piece…celebrated Minaj’s agency and hypersexuality…[yet] Moore…shudders at the idea that women—especially middle-class women—would engage in real forms of sex work…she…seems to be[lieve] that sex workers come from lower-class backgrounds and lack agency, business acumen and even intellectuality…
For Those Who Think Legalization is a Good Idea (#863)
…Days after it passed in the lower house of India’s Parliament in July, two United Nations experts said the bill leans too heavily on the criminal justice system. Without more of a “human-rights based and victim-centred approach,” the UN special rapporteurs on human trafficking and modern slavery warned, India “risks further harming already vulnerable individuals”…In major Indian cities like Kolkata, Hyderabad, and Sangli, sex workers are well organised and politically engaged. Yet no sex worker groups were consulted during the drafting of the legislation…[which like all “sex trafficking” laws] promotes a dangerous idea that everyone in the sex trade is either a victim or a criminal…
Posts on Facebook are spreading quickly, claiming women are attempting to lure other people into sex trafficking at stores in the Mid-South…Memphis [Tennessee] and Southaven [Mississippi] police…said no one has made any official reports…One woman [claimed] she was shopping at…Walmart…when she was approached by two women inside the store…[who] the[n]…followed her back home…[yet]…she didn’t call police…[an]other post…shows a picture of two women…[and] claims they were trying to lure women into sex trafficking [by] taking pictures [of women, like the poster did]…
The Course of a Disease (#884)
The Knesset is set to pass a landmark law against prostitut[es] making hiring sex workers a crime…The new law will make Israel the 10th country to institute what is called the “Nordic Model” of [persecuting sex workers]…the law…offers the Justice Ministry the option of instituting other punishments, such as “John Schools,” meant to [indoctri]ate [people in anti-sex propaganda]…The law…[also] budgets NIS 90 million over the next three years for the [brainwashing] of [captured sex workers]…the “Nordic Model” [was] first adopted in Sweden in 1999. In recent years, others passed similar laws, including Ireland, France, Canada, Norway and some states in the US…
So far, only Sweden, Norway, Iceland, the two Irelands, France and Canada have adopted the Swedish model; that’s seven, plus one is eight. And no US states have adopted it, though of course that’s among the smaller lies in this authoritarian screed (another claims the average sex worker dies at 46).
As long as sex work is marginalized, sex workers will be targeted for violence:
Alexander Popenkov, who is trained as an MMA fighter, and his wife, Maryana Kayumova, both 25, trolled online sex [worker] ads for victims [to] set…up phony appointments…on victims they [knew would]…be easy targets and vulnerable…Popenkov and Kayumova savagely beat and robbed at least eight women [in Manhattan], most of whom are Russian immigrants…[They] were arrested on charges including burglary and robbery and released on $35,000 bond each. [Prosecutor] Danbee [Kim] asked [Judge Maxwell] Wiley to hike the defendants’ bail to $500,000, arguing that they had threatened numerous victims to discourage them from coming forward…[but] Wiley [refused because their victims were just whores]…
The Problem With Prophecy
Posted in Miscellaneous, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Backpage, blogging, censorship, cops, hysteria, prohibitionist myths, propaganda, rescue industry on January 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Prophecy is not an exact business. – “Cassandra’s Mirror”
My January 2012 prediction on the future of sex trafficking hysteria was right on schedule up until 2017, and then, unfortunately, started to fray and become more difficult to interpret (as so often happens with prophecy). On the one hand, articles critical of the hysteria have become far more common, just as I originally predicted, and the passage of FOSTA seems to have served as a bucket of cold water on a large number of American journalists; it’s now not at all unusual to see articles calling for decriminalization, attacking the War on Whores and even openly labeling the moral panic as a scam intended to justify censorship of the internet and persecution of sex workers and our clients, families and associates. It is clear even to many of the stupider members of our society (including some cops) that the intentional destruction of Backpage has harmed sex workers, driven many of us to the street, and dramatically increased violence, and the increasing absurdity of “sex trafficking” scary tales involving litter and meaningless non-incidents at retail outlets has forced even cops to deny some of the more extreme and idiotic elements of the mythology. The “Super Bowl sex trafficking” myth is all but dead, and it’s now relatively safe for politicians to support decriminalization. Unfortunately, the US government, billionaire sociopaths like Swanee Hunt, and Hollywood nitwits like Ashley Judd and Ashton Kutcher continue to double down on the fading hysteria, expending huge sums of money and investing their considerable influence on the Very Stupid to artificially prolong the moral panic beyond its natural shelf-life. One year ago today I wrote (quoting myself from a year earlier):
…by [2020] ([2021] at the outside), we’ll be able to get through a day without having to hear fetishists like Nick Kristof non-consensually foisting their nasty wanking fantasies of gang-raping traumatized 13-year-olds in bondage upon us. Cops and politicians may still prattle about it for a while, but once they realize nobody actually cares any more, that will soon fade away…it may take a year or two longer than I originally predicted, so let’s say…around the end of 2021). And…remember that even after the moral panic is over, “the laws spawned by the panic will still exist and will continue to be used to destroy the lives of sex workers and our clients and families until decriminalization is achieved a decade or two from now…”
I’m still confident in that prediction; already we’re starting to see a few cops and politicians drifting away from the “sex trafficking” myth to return to the malodorous bosom of the “criminal whore” myth. And while the latter is just as conducive to oppression of sex workers as the former, it’s also far less effective in bamboozling the large number of people who understand that government has no place in the private lives of individuals.
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