Gullible’s Travels | The Honest Courtesan

Posts Tagged ‘Gullible’s Travels’

Links #672

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged animals, Believe Them, cops, Florida, Gullible's Travels, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, politicians, porn, teachers, Under Duress, video on May 21, 2023| Leave a Comment »

This is not rocket science, and it’s not an epidemic. – Jennifer Jenkins

This week’s video seemed the proper sendoff for BTO’s original guitarist Tim Bachman; the links above it were provided by Clarissa, Jesse Walker, Cop Crisis (x3), Marc Randazza, and Mike Riggs, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one. Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful. But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer. So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets. Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements. Thanks so much!

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In the News (#1276)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Broker in Pillage, asset seizure, Backpage, censorship, cops, Dangerous Speech, Disaster, Do As I Say, drugs, genitalia, Gullible's Travels, hysteria, Indiana, internet, law, Louisiana, orgasm, Permanent Record, recipes, So What Else Is New?, South Carolina, South Dakota, teachers, TikTok, You Were Warned on October 1, 2022| 1 Comment »

What is it with government agencies & the media teaming up to Streisand some dumb thing…almost no one has ever…heard about…into a thing…everyone knows about? – Mike Masnick

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

It’s too bad most arrests aren’t of other cops:

Deputies in South Dakota have arrested a Louisiana state [cop], accusing him of hiring a prostitute while in town for a…conference…Kirk Thibodeaux…has been [rewarded with a paid vacation]…pending the criminal and administrative investigations…

So What Else Is New? (#504)

I’ve never understood why some men are so attached to this notion:

…a[t] orgasm…a “milky fluid” is excreted from the urethra…[but] about 5 percent of women release a clear liquid…studies have determined the milky fluid comes from the Skene glands…[and] scientists in Japan have just published research that [demonstrates] the [clear] fluid comes from the bladder, stating only the “milky fluid”…can be classed as the female ejaculation…Miyabi Inoue…and her colleagues injected blue dye mixed with water into the bladders of five female volunteers w[ith a history of “squirting”]…after a subject was stimulated to the point of climax, a researcher collected the ejected liquid in a sterile cup, and in all five women it was blue…[true] female ejaculation…contains prostate-specific antigen…[and the squirted] liquid from four of the women…was found to contain PSA, suggesting they produced female ejaculate around the same time as they squirted urine, and the two fluids mixed together in the urethra. Despite the fact previous studies have [produced similar findings]…the[y were] met with skepticism from hordes of men online…Women were quick to mock some of the shocked men and their responses, explaining it was something “women knew all along…Men need scientific study to admit they are being peed on and not actually gods in bed,” one scoffed…

Gullible’s Travels (#977)

Americans will believe basically any scaremongering about teenagers:

…the number of videos…of teens calling people idiots for even daring to think of putting a Tide pod in their mouth far, far outnumbered the extraordinarily few videos of people actually putting a Tide pod in their mouth. As some people have noted, it’s way more dangerous to talk about teenagers as if they’re all too stupid to know not to put a Tide pod in their mouth. But the media absolutely can’t resist. Last…week…the FDA (for whatever reason) released a consumer alert saying that people shouldn’t cook their chicken in NyQuil, calling it “a recent social media challenge”…of course, like all the earlier examples, this…turned out to be a whole lot of…adults freaking out over things that kids weren’t actually doing…the whole thing started as a shitpost on 4chan where someone made a joke about cooking chicken in NyQuil…and some people [making videos] reacting to the joke. And, then, of course, the FDA Streisanded the whole idea into becoming a thing. According to…TikTok…there were only five searches for NyQuil chicken…on Sept. 14, one day before the FDA posted its statement. By Sept. 21, searches on the topic had increased by more than 1,400 times…

A Broker in Pillage (#985)

The South Carolina Supreme Court declares itself illegitimate:

In a major blow against government accountability, the South Carolina Supreme Court…upheld the state’s civil forfeiture laws, which let police [openly steal] cash, cars, and even ho[us]es, without ever filing criminal charges. By overturning a lower court ruling that declared civil forfeiture unconstitutional, the decision jeopardizes property rights for [every citizen]…in…nearly 40% of all forfeiture cases…the owner was never convicted of a crime. And under state law, if an owner doesn’t formally file a claim for their seized property, [cops] win a “default judgment” and keep [the stolen property]…Worse, state law provides a powerfully perverse incentive to police for profit. [When any] property [is stolen by cops], the [robbers’ gang] keeps the first $1,000 and then 75% of the remainder. Prosecutors receive 20%, while a mere 5% is sent to the general fund. Since 2009, [cops have robbed citizens of]…nearly $97 million…

Disaster (#1234)

An amicus curiae brief was recently filed in the FOSTA challenge by a group of organizations including Decriminalize Sex Work, The Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center, Freedom Network, Brooklyn Defender Services, The Erotic Laborers Alliance of New England, Old Pros, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, New York Transgender Advocacy Group, Free Speech Coalition, SWOP Brooklyn, GLITS, and the St. James Infirmary. Elizabeth Nolan Brown has an in-depth look at the arguments in the suit and brief, and you can see a PDF of the brief here. In related news, the Woodhull Foundation (one of the parties to the FOSTA challenge) has recently launched a petition seeking to block the so-called EARN IT Act; I’m not sure if petitions have any effect in such cases, but I suppose they can’t hurt.

Dangerous Speech (#1270)

The government’s evil clown show has been renewed for another season:

The prosecution of Backpage founders Michael Lacey and James Larkin…can continue to drag on, per a new ruling from the…9th Circuit. The court [is pretending] that trying them again after a mistrial…would not count as double jeopardy. “No one is the least surprised”…Lacey tells Reason…”We have always believed we must rely upon jurors, not judges, for a fair shake. And so to trial.” Lacey, Larkin, and the other defendants are likely to face trial again in 2023, though no date has been set. That would mean a sixth calendar year in which their lives are upended by this…seemingly eternal attempt to put people in prison for running a website where sex workers advertised.

Permanent Record (#1274)

If prohibitionists really want to “rescue” sex workers, why do they keep trying to shut us out of other jobs?

A [teacher] who set up an OnlyFans account to supplement her income was fired from her…job…after her employer found out about the account…[thanks to a self-appointed morality cop who also] posted photos from the OnlyFans account without her consent…Sarah Juree worked full-time as a teacher in South Bend, Indiana…but…was unable to support her family on the modest salary of $55,000 per year…her rent alone cost nearly half of her income and her employer didn’t offer health insurance…Around the time Juree set up her OnlyFans account, she…had a casual conversation with a colleague and their boss about side gigs that fall under the sex work umbrella, including OnlyFans pages. “My boss got really excited and said, ‘Yeah, you can start a page. You can make a lot of money’…I was like, ‘Great, I’m not going to have any issues with work because my boss literally told me to sell my panties on OnlyFans”…

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Wicked Problem

Posted in Current Events, History, Tyranny, tagged child "protective" services, Gullible's Travels, hysteria, propaganda, psychology, surveillance, Traffic Jam on October 18, 2021| 6 Comments »

I scan a lot of articles every day in search of material for this blog, so I simply don’t have time to read most of them thoroughly even if I feature them in a news column; even if they’re interesting I generally read most of them in a somewhat cursory fashion, stopping to read more thoroughly whenever I hit a point that seems important. And if a piece is longer than 1000 words or so, I’ll generally start skipping at about that point to see if there’s anything of note further down. So when I find myself reading an article in its entirety, that is noteworthy in itself, as in the case of this post:

The parents of the 1980s and 1990s were Baby Boomers…until recently…the most panicky and gullible generation in American History…They grew up sheltered, coddled, [and] emotionally stultified…by PTSD-ridden survivors of World War 2 in atomized nuclear families…without nearby relatives…disconnected from the filial and familial bonds that had historically characterized social institutions…under the most suffocating and paranoid propaganda campaign ever undertaken in the West up to that point…Is it any wonder that this generation fell for every conspiracy theory that could be cooked up to fleece them? Is it any wonder that, once they had children they got paranoid? Or that, as parents, they freaked out about the same sex/drugs/rock’n’roll culture that they enjoyed and championed in their youth? Or that they believed that the risk for child-abduction in the 80s was both new and ubiquitous? Or that they believed that there was a Satanist behind every bush and that one in four young girls are being raped in occult rituals so that their babies might be sacrificed at a Black Mass?…Gen X and the Millennials grew up watching this insanity, and the State power that followed it. When a child claims (or is claimed by others) to be abused, the State comes in and runs through a bureaucratic checklist, frequently resulting in long-term fracturing of families, sending children into a…system where they are more likely to be abused than if they stayed with relatives or friends, all while the State was willing and able to violate every point of law and civil liberties at the merest rumor of abuse, domestic violence, drug use, or sexual or religious deviance…They had to submit to more onerous interference in their personal lives…and/or submitting to the most invasive surveillance state in world history…People in such a situation don’t have many children, and tend to be too fearful as parents to let their children actually grow up…

That’s a good taste of it, but I think you’ll find the whole piece worth your time.

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In the News (#1101)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Broker in Pillage, Arizona, asset seizure, Catholicism, censorship, cops, Dirty Laundry, disease, drugs, Elephant in the Parlor, Facebook, Florida, Germany, Guinea Pigs, Gullible's Travels, hysteria, I can't breathe, law, License To Rape, Mexico, No Escape, pimps, Policing for Profit, politicians, prisons, rape, Safe Position, Social Distancing, statistics, surveillance, teachers, The Proper Study, Torture Chamber, Twitter, United Kingdom, Vietnam, Winding Down on January 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »

When I agreed to be a representative, I don’t recall signing off on any moralistic fitness test. – Diego Rodriguez

License to Rape

Police states define the bodies of all citizens as “crime scenes” which can be violated by “authorities” at will:

Eight [cops] are under investigation [for] a…[sexual] assault on a [young] black [woman using the pretext of a]…strip-search…Footage surfaced on social media showing the [cops brutally kneeling on her back while]…she was…[gasp]ing “I can’t breathe”…she was in her friend’s car when [cops] pulled over the vehicle and dragged her into the street…she told BBC Newsnight…“They…picked me up with my…braids which they eventually tore out of my scalp”…The [cops abducted]…her…to…Lewisham Police station[, where they] charged her with obstructing [her own sexual assault]…but this was later dropped by the Crown Prosecution Service…[at the station] she was s[exually] assaulted again [under the pretext of a second “search”]…

Gullible’s Travels

Americans will believe basically any scaremongering about teens:

Skittle parties are…happening in places like people’s homes, backyards, parks, abandoned buildings, hotel rooms and who knows where else…kids raid medicine cabinets at home for prescription medications. They bring whatever they can find to the party and all pills are dumped into a bowl…Anyone can take whatever pills they want and however many they want in order to get high…Jack Schafer…wrote several columns for Slate from…2006 to…2010 [explain]ing that these parties are just a myth that has been perpetuated by the media. And…[there is no] actual evidence of them existing…[but] regardless of whether Skittle parties are a real thing or not, [the yellow journalists at Yahoo feel justified in declaring that they are]…very real…

Elephant in the Parlor (#341)

A new level of public support for sex workers from a politician:

…[Arizona politician] Diego Rodriguez…has a history of liking or replying to posts of nude women on [Twitter]…using a separate account from one he operates as a state [representative]..[and] has no plans to remove or hide the posts from the public. “I think that goes back to a difference in attitudes,” he said. “Are you…sex positive or sex negative?”…Rodriguez pointed out past tweets in support of sex workers’ rights. Sweeping his past under the rug would only further stigmatize an industry he says is unfairly maligned and mistreated…

Torture Chamber (#866)

Oh look, the State has finally “found” what thousands have been telling them for decades:

The largest women’s prison in the country subjects incarcerated women to pervasive and frequent [rapes and other] sexual assaults, violating their Eighth Amendment rights, the Justice Department concluded in a scathing and graphic report…[after] a two-year investigation…into…Lowell [Rape Camp in]…Florida…[besides oral, anal and vaginal rape] and groping…”staff demanded that prisoners undress in front of them, sometimes in exchange for basic necessities, such as toilet paper.” Furthermore…investigators found that the prison had [criminally] inadequate measures to prevent sexual abuse…staff exploited blind spots in surveillance camera coverage to abuse women; the prison deterred women from reporting abuse via threats of retaliation and…solitary confinement “for days or weeks at a time;” and the…[so-called] Investigator General [arbitraily] closed, suspended, or indefinitely delayed investigations…In [one typical and representative attack in] March 2018, a Lowell s[crew]…anally raped a…prisoner in a storage area…then…wiped himself off on [her underwear]…[the victim suffered] extensive…in[juries but]…no DNA evidence was collected…[and] the…rap[ist was allowed to quiet]ly resign [without consequences]…

Dirty Laundry (#868)

Horrifyingly-abusive nuns are not restricted to Ireland:

Catholic nuns running a children’s home in Germany pimped out boys to priests, politicians and businessmen who would rape the children at sex parties, according to a victim who has won a compensation battle…the man, now 63…said he was raped around 1,000 times…in the 1960s and 70s, alongside [at least]…three [o]ther victims [who] have since come forward…If they disobeyed they would be beaten with sticks or have their heads smashed against the wall…The children’s home was shut in 2000…The Catholic Church paid the man 15,000 euros in compensation and 10,000 euros for therapy costs alongside a victim’s pension…

Guinea Pigs (#970)

Facebook policies prohibit the creation of predatory accounts by law enforcement, but pigs make them anyway and Facebook does nothing:

For the past two years, Do Nguyen Mai Khoi…the Vietnamese singer and pro-democracy activist, known best simply as Mai Khoi, has tried tirelessly to warn [Facebook] of a thousands-strong pro-government…group of police, military, and other Communist party loyalists who collaborate to get online dissidents booted and offline dissidents jailed. Her evidence of the group’s activity is ample, her arguments are clear, and…Facebook doesn’t seem interested at all…social media allows [Vietnamese] citizens to squeeze past the state’s censorship stranglehold on traditional media, [but Facebook] has…become just another means of strangulation. Private groups filled with government partisans coordinate takedown campaigns — or worse — against any views deemed “reactionary” by the Vietnamese state, while Facebook continues to do little but pay lip service to ideals of free expression…

A Broker in Pillage (#1043)

Nobody will be safe until this odious, contemptible practice is recognized as unconstitutional:

…Since 2014…35 states and the District of Columbia have enacted civil forfeiture reforms, including two—New Mexico and Nebraska—that have abolished the practice…The manifest injustice of [legalized robbery of innocent people]…led to modest federal reforms in 2000, then not much else. But…interest in the issue has exploded in recent years…as…politicians became newly aware of [the] problem…and why they decided to do something about it, despite the dogged resistance of police and prosecutors keen to keep the money train rolling. The story varies from one state to another, but it generally involves a combination of outrageous injustices, corruption scandals, and rising disgust at the unseemly greed that leads cops to steal TV sets and snatch money from children’s birthday cards…

Social Distancing (#1082)

A study trashes one of the justifications for ruinous authoritarian “lockdowns”:

…The initial round of lockdowns was not about suppressing the virus but slowing it for one reason: to preserve hospital capacity…Gradually…curve flattening became an end in itself, apart from hospital capacity…Sometime in summer, the idea of asymptomatic spread started to trend…we were being asked to think of our fellow citizens not as human beings with dignity and rights but pathogen-carrying disease vectors…because we are secretly filthy and unclean…even with a mask we must stay 6 feet away….But…a gigantic study conducted in Wuhan, China, of 10 million people…published November 20…revealed something that hardly ever happens in these kinds of studies. There was not one documented case. Forget rare…Replace…that with: never. At least not in this study for 10,000,000…We keep hearing about how we should follow the science…[but] the lockdown lobby ignores whatever contradicts their narrative, preferring unverified anecdotes over an actual scientific study of 10 million residents in what was the world’s first major hotspot for the disease we are trying to manage…

Winding Down

A long-overdue move by Mexico to throw off US domination:

On December 15, Mexic[an] lawmakers passed a law reining in the asymmetrical, imperialist influence of the United States’ Drug Enforcement Administration within the country. Supporters hailed the move as a reclamation of national sovereignty…the new law…[defines DEA thugs as] “foreign agents”, which…limits their activities in the country to information-gathering, eliminates their legal immunity and assigns them reporting obligations. Agents will no longer be able to unilaterally execute arrests and raids, and will have to seek authorization from the Mexican federal government for their weapons. Permission from a newly formed security panel is also now required of any Mexican state or municipal official meeting with them…Drug warriors invested in the global dominance of the DEA have denounced the legislation…

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In the News (#977)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Bait and Switch, Bullies With Badges, cops, drugs, escort services, Fair-Weather Friends, fascism, Florida, France, Gullible's Travels, hysteria, Ohio, Philippines, propaganda, Pyrrhic Victory, Rescued To Death, RIP Petite Jasmine, scams, stripping, surveillance, Sweden, Swedish model, Texas, The Last Shall Be First, transgender, violence vs. sex workers, Welcome to the Future on October 5, 2019| 1 Comment »

The police are the true sex predators. – Peter Aiken

Gullible’s Travels

Americans will believe basically any scaremongering about teenagers:

Fort Bend County [Texas cops] are [fearmongering] about a [supposedly] new teen drug trend called, “Robo Tripping” [AKA drinking cough syrup]…to get high…”Robo Cough…[is] a legal substance [that we’re trying to scare people with,” bloviated Sheriff Troy] Nehls…Robo Cough…is…[an ordinary] Dextromethorphan [based]…cough suppressant [which pigs seem to imagine is more]…potentially dangerous [than other over-the-counter cough medicines] because cops’ little tin badges magically grant expertise in pharmacology without the trouble of having to earn a degree]…

Anyone who thinks trying to get high on cough syrup is something “new” is too ignorant to be allowed to run around loose.

The Last Shall Be First

Since their “bathroom bills” keep getting struck down, transphobes are now trying to accomplish their goals by spreading hysteria:

Drugs that are being used to halt puberty in gender-confused youth have been linked to thousands of adult deaths…The Food & Drug Administration has recorded thousands of deaths associated with Lupron, a…drug…routinely used to treat prostate cancer in men and [both breast cancer and] endometriosis in women…since 1984…there have been 40,764 adverse reactions…[including] 6,370 deaths…

For those unfamiliar with prohibitionist propaganda tactics: when prohibitionists claim that a drug is “linked to” or “associated with” a death or other serious effect, what that means is the drug was present in the person’s system when they suffered the effect. For example, if I died today cops could say my death was “linked to” cannabis consumption, because there are detectable levels of THC in my system. Given that Lupron’s most common use is in cancer patients, the statements made in this article would be equally true when made about insulin, painkillers, antibiotics of last resort, etc. Also: barely over 1000 adverse reactions a year to any drug as widely used as Lupron is not exactly a crisis.

Bullies With Badges

Big masked heroes in riot gear prove their manhood by brutalizing naked women:

[Pigs invited reporters along to humiliate dancers]…as [they dressed up like little boys playing soldier and frog]marched employees in handcuffs out one by one at the Wacko’s Gentlemen’s Club [last] Friday night…Other clubs in Jacksonville [Florida] are taking legal action in response to recent raids…[which clearly] violated the constitution [sic] rights of the dancers….Emperor’s Gentleman’s Club and Flashdancers…filed a federal lawsuit against the city and Sheriff Mike Williams on Thursday…[thus precipitating retaliation the next day]…the…raids violated a 2004 court order that stated performers should be given a “notice to appear”, rather than be arrested for minor violations…dancers [abducted by violent pigs] in those raids…were shackled in leg irons…While Wacko’s is not a party in the recently filed lawsuit, [it] was the lead plaintiff in the case resulting in the 2004 court order…

Rescued To Death

The Asian press just can’t let go of the word “rescue”, even when it’s patently absurd:

Authorities rescued some 91 Chinese women and 4 Filipino women inside an upscale…bar allegedly used as front for prostitution in…Makati City [The Philippines]…the victims…[charged] at least P15,000 [$288 US]…They…will face [charges] for violating…the Expanded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2012. This is the third incident this month that authorities have rescued several foreign women involved in the sex trade…

“Rescued” from jobs in which they made as much money as many US sex workers (in an economy where that represents a lot more buying power), then prosecuted. And you can bet deportation will follow whatever time they’re locked in cages for.

Bait and Switch

Cops don’t care how many lives they destroy with their sick fantasies:

Hamid Keshmirian committed suicide…after bonding out on charges related to his conversations…with a…[pig fantasy role-playing a teenage girl]…on…SkipTheGames.com, where Keshmirian responded to an ad that appeared to be for an adult escort…but [was really placed by lying pigs]…Keshmirian, a [62-year-old] single man, whose two adult daughters say he was battling depression and loneliness…ultimately agreed to meet up with the [imaginary] girl on Thursday, Sept. 19 — his birthday. He was arrested upon arrival, spending two nights in jail because…[pigs] denied him a phone call and kept his arrest out of the computer system while they continued to hunt other men…the [victims]…were looking to talk to other adults on legal, adult dating sites and…would never have considered talking to underage teens…[but] bait-and-switch tactics on adult dating sites have become more frequent for [pigs] that seek to boost arrest numbers related to sex crimes…[lying pigs] have resorted to teasing men who didn’t want to meet up with underage teens, pushing conversations about sex on men who didn’t want to talk about it, and offering gas money to convince one man to make a trip he initially declined. Some men are arrested for their conversations with decoys, even if they don’t ever travel to meet up…most of the [cops’ victims]…have no real criminal history and suffer from behavioral and/or emotional disorders…Some…are autistic…

R.I.P. Madame Claude

Normal people are growing increasingly sick of prohibitionism and puritanism:

French label Guy Laroche has raised eyebrows by celebrating prostitution in its Paris fashion week show just a day after police in the city raided a modelling agency linked to the Epstein scandal. Designer Richard Rene defended “cocking a snook” at political correctness by lionising the [late]…Fernande Grudet, known as Madame Claude, and the band of…girls [who worked for her]…high-class call girl agency in Paris in the 1960s and 1970s that counted several heads of state among its clients…Rene [said] the show was a reaction to…a growing atmosphere of uptight puritanism…

R.I.P. Petite Jasmine (#806)

A documentary about how the Swedish model led directly to the death of a young Swedish sex worker is now available on Amazon, and is included with a Prime subscription. I recently watched the film, entitled Everything’s Better Than a Hooker, and I highly recommend it to anyone who still has any illusions about the Swedish model being “well-intended”; the film unflinchingly portrays how Swedish “authorities” ruthlessly and maliciously persecuted a young woman to death and wrecked the lives of her entire family because they disapproved of her pragmatic choices.

Fair-Weather Friends (#906)

Every sex worker arrested in a “sting” should sue the cops if at all possible:

…Stormy Daniels settled her lawsuit against the city of Columbus, Ohio, over her arrest last year at a strip club…Daniels will receive $450,000 and drop all claims made in her federal civil complaint against the city…[she] could have reached a settlement for more…but she was satisfied with changes implemented by the Columbus Police Department following her arrest…“Her main goal was to make sure people weren’t going to be treated like she was going forward” [said her attorney]…

Pyrrhic Victory (#964)

As I’ve repeatedly stated, it’s far too late to put this evil djinni back into its bottle:

…Unilever…is among companies using AI technology to analyse the language, tone and facial expressions of candidates when they are asked a set of identical job questions which they film on their mobile phone or laptop. The algorithms [supposedly] select the best applicants by assessing their performances in the videos against about 25,000 pieces of facial and linguistic information compiled from previous interviews of those who have gone on to prove to be good at the job. Hirevue, the US company which has developed the interview technology, claims…that it provides a more reliable and objective indicator of future performance free of human bias [and that this isn’t anything like astrology or phrenology, no sirree]…

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In the News (#931)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Across the Pond, adolescence, advertising, agency denial, brothels, censorship, China, cops, dirty, Disaster, escort review sites, Facebook, Florida, Full of Themselves, Gullible's Travels, Hawaii, hysteria, Illinois, internet, Islam, language, law, Minnesota, New York, Nigeria, Original Sin, politicians, porn, propaganda, Pyrrhic Victory, racism, rape, Rooted in Racism, serial killers, shame, streetwalkers, Surplus Women, surveillance, The Prudish Giant, The Scarlet Letter, To Molest and Rape, Top Cop, Under Review, underage, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Wisconsin, yellow journalism on April 24, 2019| 3 Comments »

[Under FOSTA] smaller platforms…face the real risk that a single lawsuit could put them out of business. – The Center for Democracy and Technology

The Scarlet Letter

Compare to “With the faggots out of the way, hopefully we can focus on helping their child victims”:

[Milwaukee politician Russell] Stamper introduced an ordinance that would raise the minimum fine for those caught soliciting a [sow role-playing a] prostitute from $500 to $2,500. The maximum, regulated by state statute, would stay at $5,000. The measure was unanimously approved…The name of the fine has also been changed…to put more shame on those arrested. It used to simply be a “loitering-soliciting” charge; now it includes the word “prostitute”. ..The city [also] hopes to use [a fascist] media [collaboration] to publicly shame those convicted. “With the johns out of the way, hopefully we can focus on helping these women,” said Stamper…

Surplus Women

A classic case of NHI:

After years of local activists taking to the streets about the 51 Black women and girls murdered, the Chicago Police Department and the FBI…finally launched a review…the Murder Accountability Project…said the unsolved killings…“have characteristics of serial murder…It…stretches credulity to imagine that these 51 women were killed by 51 separate men”…[cops claim] DNA collected from 21 victims did not match to same person. But…because the women, some who were sex workers, had multiple sex partners, the DNA may be mixed, harder to decipher and match. It’s not a secret that…because almost all of these women were Black and from impoverished areas…police haven’t cared…

Gullible’s Travels

Americans will believe basically any scaremongering about teenagers:

Teens are daring each other to eat plastic packaging, cardboard boxes and fruit peels — and posting videos of themselves doing it to Snapchat — in a bizarre new social media trend called “shell on”. While not as dangerous as the potentially fatal “Tide Pod challenge”…doctors still advise against eating anything that isn’t food…physician Max Plitt [bloviated]…“[blah blah blah] cancers”…[reporters asked] a [high school] sophomore [about it and repeated what he said as though it constituted evidence]…

Under Review

Another complete shitshow involving a sleazy review board owner:

When Broward [County Florida cops raided the home of]…a 60-year-old escort website owner…they say they found a memory card of child pornography and evidence he paid…for sex with underage girls…Neil Greenberg…[hired] a 17-year-old girl living in a group home…[and] an employee of the home [found out]…the…[girl] told [cops] she met Greenberg two years ago through her sister, who advertised on Greenberg’s escort website, independentgirls.com…

To Molest and Rape

Another typical & representative cop:

A…northern Minnesota [cop] is accused of sexually assaulting a teenager [of unidentified gender] on more than 10 occasions. Joshua Demmerly…raped [the teen]…more than 10 times between 2017 and 2019. He’s also been charged with kidnapping [via false arrest]…in front of several witnesses…Demmerly claimed to be in love with the victim, and…sent photos of himself with a gun to his head, threatening suicide if the victim didn’t spend time with him. He also [stalked] them…On one occasion, the victim said they’d woken up naked in [Demmerly’s] house and unable to recall what happened the night before…

Across the Pond (#758)

UK cops keep pretending they want to “help” the women they stalk and harass:

South Wales Police said sex workers who “refuse to engage” with support services in Swansea could face [police violence]…Swansea Women’s Aid…said it was “very concerned”…that…the “stringent enforcement”…could stop women from engaging with the [cop-infested] SWAN project…which aims to [harass] women [doing] sex work…

Original Sin (#803)

Sometimes they don’t even bother to hide the religious foundation of “sex trafficking” hysteria:

On the morning of April 6, the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City became…a site of pr[opaganda]…that connected the Stations of the Cross to the [masturbatory fantasy] of sex trafficking…“The cross is a metaphor for sex trafficking,” said the Rev. Adrian Dannhauser…Stations of the Cross for Sex Trafficking Survivors followed seven stations, abbreviated from the usual 14, across three of the city’s boroughs…Attendees visited a shelter…for homeless youth, a strip club, a…[stroll in] the Bronx…a human trafficking intervention court in Queens, John F. Kennedy International Airport and a hotel in Brooklyn [featured in a propaganda film]…Jim Klein, [a] New York…Vice [pig, masturbated surreptitiously while telling the fantasy]…that his team has found 12-year-old girls…forced to have sex 25 to 30 times a day…

Disaster

It’s just going to keep getting worse:

…As of this week, Reddit is no longer allowing “ads for adult-oriented products and services,” nor will it allow any advertising to appear on subreddits that it deems “Not Safe for Work” (NSFW)…This is not just about blocking really explicit images or possibly illegal conduct but everything related to sex and sexuality…As platforms strive to keep up with an array of new tech regulations — from America’s ban on ads that facilitate prostitution under FOSTA to new “privacy” and “hate speech” laws in the European Union, a British ban on showing porn without checking viewers’ ages, and more—anything that might get above a PG rating is being quickly wiped clean from the internet…

Pyrrhic Victory (#860)

Tyranny always starts with despised minorities, but it never stops with them:

The Chinese government…[is] using a vast, secret system of advanced facial recognition technology to track and control the Uighurs…the…technology, which is integrated into China’s rapidly expanding networks of surveillance cameras, looks exclusively for Uighurs based on their appearance and keeps records of their comings and goings for search and review…Chinese authorities already maintain a vast surveillance net, including tracking people’s DNA, in the western region of Xinjiang, which many Uighurs call home. But…police are now using facial recognition technology to target Uighurs in wealthy eastern cities like Hangzhou and Wenzhou and across the coastal province of Fujian…

Rooted in Racism (#883)

Could this racist attempt to deter black migrants be any more transparent?

The UK government is backing a…[propaganda] campaign urging Nigerian women and girls to [stay in their native country] instead of “risking a life of modern slavery” [by migrating to] Britain. Posters are to be placed in schools, churches and marketplaces in an attempt to reduce [migration by black people]…The Not for Sale campaign is supported by…Nigerian [rulers concerned about their shrinking number of subjects]…

Full of Themselves (#886)

Puritanical language is an intrinsic part of any story about cops raiding massage parlors:

…the [Honolulu] Prosecutor’s Office…is…target[ing massage parlors without the usual “sex trafficking” pretense]…criminal activity…illegal businesses…made arrests…illegal businesses…busted 22 of them over the past 3 three [sic] years…15 people were arrested for prostitution…But nearly double that number were arrested for racketeering, which [makes prosecutors feel as though their penises are bigger]…

When “sex trafficking” is not used as an excuse, you can bet we’ll be told over and over again how people consensually touching each other without state licenses is a menace to society that must be stopped by police violence.

The Prudish Giant (#899)

People sometimes ask why I’m not on Facebook:

…Mark Zuckerberg oversaw plans to consolidate [Facebook]’s power and control competitors by treating its users’ data as a bargaining chip, while publicly proclaiming to be protecting that data…In some cases, Facebook would reward favored companies by giving them access to the data of its users. In other cases, it would deny user-data access to rival companies or apps…For example, Facebook gave Amazon extended access to user data because it was spending money on Facebook advertising and partnering with the social network on the launch of its Fire smartphone. In another case, Facebook discussed cutting off access to user data for a messaging app that had grown too popular and was viewed as a competitor…All the while, Facebook was formulating a strategy to publicly frame these moves as a way of protecting user privacy…

Top Cop (#919)

I’m pleased to see how many reporters see through Harris’ rhetoric to her sociopathic evil:

Kamala…Harris’ fundraising from Hollywood interests is nothing new…[she] raised more than $1.1 million from PACs and individuals in the television and movie production and distribution industry from 2009-16 for her campaigns…Harris’ top five donors have included Warner Media Group, 21st Century Fox, and Venable LLP, a lobbying firm that works for Time Warner. Harris’ strong support from Hollywood follows her history of working to help the entertainment industry…fight…websites like YouTube that allow users to upload and link to content…Harris played a key role in advancing…SESTA…a Hollywood–backed bill poked a hole in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act…SESTA [is] a step towards creating the filtered internet that the MPAA and RIAA have been pushing for for years, including…SOPA…a Hollywood-backed copyright enforcement bill that was withdrawn over censorship concerns following a massive internet blackout protest in 2012…“It’s easy to see the similarities between what Hollywood has been campaigning for in SESTA and what they’ve been campaigning for in the copyright space, which is ultimately an internet that is less interactive, more one-directional and more filtered,” [said] Elliot Harmon…[of] the Electronic Frontier Foundation…

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In the News (#827)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged Africa, agency denial, All-Purpose Excuse, Backwards into the Future, Bogeymen, bogus studies, brothels, Cambodia, Censor Chic, censorship, condoms, Cooties, cops, Disaster, Do As I Say, drugs, Eternal Vigilance, fantasy, Gullible's Travels, hotels, hysteria, internet, Maryland, Massachusetts, Morality Lessons, Ohio, pimps, politicians, pragmatism, prohibitionist myths, rape, surveillance, To Molest and Rape, United Kingdom, video on April 7, 2018| 5 Comments »

The major purpose of [FOSTA] is to…punish anyone who…engages in sex work. – Steven Thrasher

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

“A Toledo [cop] was issued a summons…during a prostitution sting at a Columbus area hotel…Mack Collins…was not arrested…”

Gullible’s Travels

I reckon the panic industry’s been too busy with Trump, guns, opiates and “sex trafficking” to come up with as many dumb “teen fad” panics as they used to:

…educators are warning about a “condom challenge” being spread online by YouTube videos and social media…The challenge involves snorting an unwrapped condom up one nostril, then pulling the condom from the throat out the mouth…Snorting a condom up your nose not only poses a choking hazard but also puts you at risk for allergic reactions and infections…women [who] accidentally swallow…condoms [can] developing ailments ranging from pneumonia to appendicitis…The condom snorting challenge may eclipse the most recent viral video fad among teenagers, which involved eating brightly colored Tide Pods…

Yeah, I’m sure this is going to be so much more popular than video games.

Bogeymen

Five years in prison for talking to someone online:

A Brockton man who recruited women online for prostitution, including an undercover police officer, was sentenced to five years in state prison for human trafficking…Shakwaan Simpkins…had “used a website with the express purpose of recruiting a woman to engage in prostitution,” District Attorney Marian Ryan said…

That’s all he did: talked to a pig on the internet. Five years in a cage, at a cost to the taxpayers higher than if he were sent to Harvard. I’m sure the good puritans of Massachusetts feel safer now that this evil texter is locked up.

Censor Chic

Corporations are becoming the favored tool of censors:

Earlier this month, the European Commission published a new [diktat] demanding that internet companies remove…content flagged to them in less than an hour — or face legislation forcing them to do so….Google and other big tech companies still publish transparency reports, but they now seems to serve a different purpose: to convince authorities in Europe and elsewhere that the internet giant is serious about [censorship on bureaucratic demand]…The more takedowns it can show, the better…Expect additional “transparency” designed to underline Google’s own [internally-generated censorship]…the…report does not yet include a full accounting for YouTube…But Google has hinted it will soon produce a dedicated report for the video sharing site. When and if it does, it promises to show not thousands but millions of annual takedowns, many for copyright violations, but also many for breaking “community rules”…The pace of private sector censorship is astounding — and it’s growing exponentially…

All-Purpose Excuse (#718)

Fans of the Democratic party need to remember their team did half the work of creating this lunacy:

Roseanne Barr was under attack this weekend for supporting President Trump’s efforts to end human trafficking. CNN and other MSM media outlets claimed Barr’s tweet supporting the President’s efforts relied on a conspiracy theory while dismissing President Trump’s efforts. Roseanne was right. Our analysis shows that arrests for human trafficking were up 150% in 2017 and are on track to be up nearly 500% in 2018 over 2016 numbers…

Actually, she’s not right; click on the title for Elizabeth Nolan Brown’s analysis of these bogus numbers, which come from the tinfoil-hat “Pizzagate” crowd of which Barr is a member. However, I must point out that given the vague definition of “human trafficking”, it’s easy for any executive to increase “human trafficking” arrests by simply ordering cops and prosecutors to charge basically everyone they arrest in prostitution, immigration or immigrant-labor stings with “human trafficking”. Given Trump’s ICE pogroms, I’m surprised it has only gone up by 500%.

Eternal Vigilance (#732)

Puritans are still upset about the fact that some women are comfortable paying our rent (and other expenses) with sex:

…Renting rooms for sexual favours is seen as a growing menace by [busybodies], and a byproduct of a housing crisis where young people are unable to find somewhere to live without spending exorbitant sums. The [so-called] problem has become particularly marked in university towns, where young women are targeted by rogue landlords. But while then justice secretary David Lidington last year said such offers may breach the Sexual Offences Act, there is frustration that more is not being done. “Since last year, there has not been a single arrest, let alone a conviction, let alone anybody actually going to jail for it,” says [politician] Peter Kyle…[who] has consistently called for landlords who offer accommodation in exchange for sex to be prosecuted [for upsetting Kyle’s delicate fee-fees]…

Backwards into the Future (#778)

Note that the headline blames the girls rather than the busybodies who want them unemployed:

The Global Fund is pulling out of a controversial partnership with Heineken but not for the reason most cited by critics. [Crypto-moralists] had been blasting…the Global Fund…for backing a partnership with Heineken to “fight infectious diseases in Africa.” Some activists said it was [better for people to die of malaria than]…to align with a product that can be detrimental to people’s health…The Global Fund shrugged off that criticism for weeks. The plan was for Heineken to use its extensive logistics and communications expertise to help the Fund deliver medical supplies. Now the Fund says it’s suspending the deal not out of concern for the people who drink too much Heineken but…because of “the company’s use of female beer promoters in ways that expose them to sexual exploitation and health risks”…for more than a decade [anti-sex groups have moaned about]…the exploitation of “beer girls” in Southeast Asia, including women working to boost sales of Heineken in bars in Cambodia. Also known as “promotion girls,” these (primarily young) women encourage male customers to order a particular brand of beer. The women earn relatively low wages, often survive off tips and…[often] moonlight as sex workers…

Cooties (#811)

Cops trying to draw others into their “sex slave” fantasies are a more dangerous version of time-wasters who call whores to masturbate to the sound of our voices:

Human traffickers [are fantasized to] be putting up sex workers in Cumbrian bed-and-breakfast businesses before moving them on to pop-up brothels…[cops pretend] that “a significant” proportion of illegal moving of people nationally is being carried out under the guise of tourism…[cops] urged business bosses and the public to [spy on their fellow citizens]…Detective Superintendent Lesley Hanson said…”We [masturbate to the fantasy] that pop-up brothels are set up across the county and there are victims forced into prostitution”…

To Molest and Rape (#814)

Seeing this one power being taken from cops is a small victory, but a victory nonetheless:

Maryland is among 35 states that lack laws prohibiting police from [raping] those they arrest…New York’s legislature recently voted to change its law…Brooke Lierman…wants to make the same change in Maryland. Her bill to do that has passed the House. She told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee…that she was moved to push for the change after reading reports about women who were raped while in police custody [and the rapists get away with it by claiming it was consensual]…

Disaster

Now they notice. Good going, Gay, Inc!

…More people should care about sex workers’ rights. But if you think none of this applies to you because you’re not queer or into kink or sex work, think again: the US Congress wants to further regulate sex by way of the internet, and most people’s modern sex lives interact with the internet. Craigslist shut down its entire personal section because of the overreaching congressional desire to control sex work. And there’s no reason Congress couldn’t similarly intimidate Tinder or Grindr to remove you or shut down entirely as it has Craigslist…the real sex panic is not due to feminism run amok, but due to the patriarchal, homophobic, transantagonistic, theocratic desire of the US Congress to control sex workers – and, by extension, to smother the sexual desires of any of us who don’t want to conform to their puritanical ways.

Here are a few more of those in that “any of us” category:

…Another website taken offline was Pounced.org, a dating site for “furries” – or devotees of anthropomorphic animal characters who like to dress in costumes…“with limited resources and a small volunteer staff, our risk for operating the site has now significantly increased…if someone posts an ad looking to exchange sex…and we don’t catch it, is that facilitating prostitution?”…Microsoft…issued a change to its terms of service which will ban “offensive language”…from its services, including Skype…YourDominatrix.com ended all US listings, with a note saying it was “due to a recent bill passed by Congress”…the escort forums on “Hung Angels” shut down…VerifyHim, a site devoted to helping sex workers stay safe by screening their clients, also removed its discussion forums…On Twitter, sex workers…were passing around safety tips and “self-censoring” advice for the new era, while others were converting to secure email accounts and offshore internet hosting sites…

Morality Lessons (#826)

Looks like at least one dangerous censor-moron is on his way out:

New revelations about the man who authored trendy anti-porn and digital censorship legislation has killed its chances in…Rhode Island…and may doom it…in the 17 other states with similar proposals…Chris Sevier…sometimes called [his brainchild] the “Elizabeth Smart Law”…[but] Smart recently demanded that Sevier stop using her name…It’s a bad legal month all around for Sevier, who had sued in federal court for the right to marry his laptop…A federal judge in Utah threw out the case…The whole fiasco isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of how a lot of state officials approach the lawmaking process. At minimum, you’d think someone…would put a smidge of effort into finding out basic background about the people whose whims they’re attempting to enable into law…

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In the News (#699)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, An Example to the West, Ashley Madison, brothels, California, cops, Do As I Say, drugs, fantasy, Florida, games, Georgia, Gullible's Travels, Here We Go Again, hysteria, Imaginary Evils, Madonna/whore, Maryland, Mexico, New Zealand, Ohio, prohibitionist myths, propaganda, psychology, rescue industry, scams, The More the Better, The Widening Gyre, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, video, Whore Madonnas on December 18, 2016| 5 Comments »

When [cops] weren’t groping you, they were having sex with you, and if you had any money they took it from you. – Mérida, Mexico City sex worker

Here We Go Again

Jesse Walker on the long American tradition of rescue fantasies:

On December 4, Edgar M. Welch carried a rifle into the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria…to rescue [“child sex slaves”]…This is hardly the first time someone has filled up on fantasies that a conspiracy was holding innocents captive and exploiting them. It isn’t the first time a fantasist has set off on a potentially bloody rescue mission either. Take the mob that burned down the Ursuline convent and boarding school in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1834…the rumors that prompted the riot took an oft-told form: Girls were being held prisoner, and they needed to be saved…Throughout the era, paranoid Protestants became convinced that convents contained sex slaves, secret tunnels, and other staples of the modern pizzeria; more than once, they invaded intending to liberate the nuns…A couple decades before…a youngster named Ithamar Johnson was “rescued” from a Shaker community in Ohio. He promptly returned the next day, and remained a Shaker until he died in his eighties. Much more recently, the cult scare that took off in the 1970s produced a whole profession of “deprogrammers”, some of whom felt the best way to liberate a cultist was to kidnap and torture him…the Satanic panic of the 1980s and ’90s…[claimed] a web of devil-worshippers was raping, kidnapping, and even killing children…In the white-slavery panic of the early 20th century, a flood of exposés—there’s that “fake news” again—made lurid claims about prostitution, greatly exaggerating both the number of women coerced into the profession and the extent to which the trade was controlled by a centralized conspiracy…

Whore Madonnas

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

I love it when they feed on each other:

Larry Harmel, executive director of the Maryland Chiefs of Police Association, is the latest criminal-justice official to get caught up in his colleagues’ own undercover prostitution stings…Harmel was arrested after approaching an undercover [sow on a stroll in]…Baltimore…Also…Raymond Edward Bernasconi…a deputy sheriff…[in] Los Angeles…Bernasconi was…arrested on November 21 in a sting…though his hearing has now been postponed until January for unspecified reasons…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling

We haven’t seen claims this ridiculous in quite a while:

…In Atlanta, a sex trafficker can make an average of $30,000 a day, according to Doug Crumbly, one of the organizers of End Slavery Georgia…[which is] raising money to build a safe haven for survivors of the sex trade…near…where Crumbly serves as pastor…Every two minutes, a girl is taken by force or tricked into working in the sex trade, he said…“The average age of a victim of sex trafficking in Georgia is 13. The average lifespan is seven years from the time they are taken”…Susan Roberts [fantasizes]…“I guess I was kind of his prize cow. There was a lot of violence…He poured alcohol down my throat and threatened to kill me and my family”…The pimps have total control, Roberts [fantasized]…“He constantly fed me Xanax, cocaine, whatever drug he could. If I tried to leave the house, he had cameras everywhere and would call me and tell me ‘I’m watching you right now’…They lurk in places like DFCS offices”…

Because farmers beat and drug their prize cows. Why can’t most people see this nonsense as the paranoid delusion it clearly is? Cameras everywhere? Pimps hanging out in welfare offices? Seriously? This woman needs help from psychiatric professionals, not exploitation from religious fanatics trying to make a fast buck.

Gullible’s Travels

The panic industry at work:

You don’t have to buy into the drug panic narratives…to believe that it’s good news that today’s teens are smoking less marijuana. If use of alcohol and smoking among teens went down, we’d see that as a good sign, too. Those substances are legal (as it seems marijuana is destined to become) but it doesn’t mean we want kids using them at such a young age. But when your career involves promoting teen addiction panics as a way of shaping public policy, well, perhaps that’s not the best news…[prohibitionists] were so certain that marijuana legalization would lead to a culture where teens thought toking up was just fine and the numbers would go up. Nevertheless, [Nora] Volkow [of the National Institute on Drug Abuse] was quick to try to turn good news into bad news…”The development of very, very fancy video games has resulted in a pattern of compulsive use…that may serve as a substitute for drug-taking”…It doesn’t take a whole lot of speculating to figure out what could prompt such a quick attempt to redirect. The rest of her response, “it needs to be tested,” says a whole lot. It’s a call for more research, more funding, more spending. The problem can never be “solved”. There’s more to do! If one panic gets disproven, look for another…

The Widening Gyre

Ever more hilarious:

A grandmother who sells painted life-like dolls had to try desperately to convince police she wasn’t selling real babies. Kathy Cadle, who paints and sells the dolls, was reported [by a busybody] as a suspected human trafficker…She later found out that police had spent much of the day questioning her friends…[but the cops were so stupid they still believed the ridiculous “trafficking” story until Cadle handed] one of her realistic dolls to [the pigs to see for themselves]…the dolls…are made from vinyl…and…sold under company name Bunny Bundles Reborns…[they] have featured in front page spreads and are used as therapy dolls for patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s…

Imaginary Evils

Theresa May is really dedicated to competing with the US in using “sex trafficking” as an excuse to destroy civil liberties:

…Theresa May…convinced six Gulf countries to sign up to the WeProtect Global Alliance – a British-led international coalition dedicated to [persecuting sex workers]…Recent [propaganda touts the ludicrous idea]…that there are around 46 million people in some form of slavery around the world…[prohibitionists pretend] that there are currently 10,000 – 13,000 people enslaved in Britain [despite a complete lack of evidence for even 1% of that number]…

An Example to the West (#429)

More than two years after a landmark court decision, Mexico City’s whores are still fighting:

A 2014 court decision recognized…[the] status [of] non-salaried sex worker[s]…A legislative bill seeking to recognize these guarantees in the Mexican capital’s new constitution has opened a fresh breach between those seeking to eradicate [sex workers, whom]…they view as [subhuman], and those who defend [human rights]…The decision said that…authorities are obliged to respect these workers’ decision to sell sex…

The More the Better (#512)

Despite being a humor site, Cracked has a far more realistic view of sex work than the mainstream media:

In movies, prostitutes are either walking tragedies — invariably addicted to drugs and doomed to a life of crime and sadness — or used as comedic relief — pure fodder for a series of wacky misunderstandings. In reality, of course, neither is accurate. We exist, all of us, on a complicated spectrum somewhere between Oscar Bait and Rob Schneider bit. So we spoke to “Felicia,” whose mother worked at a New Zealand brothel when Felicia was a teenager, and she told us…

Ashley Madison (#653)

“…past business practices that may have allegedly been misleading to consumers.”

The Toronto-based parent company of the infidelity dating site Ashley Madison…has paid more than $1.6 million US in settlements as part of an investigation led by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission…half the money went to the FTC and half to the states participating in the probe. The company says that as part of the agreement, it will also…”refrain from past business practices that may have allegedly been misleading to consumers.” But it…neither admits nor denies the [proven fact]…that it resorted to fake profiles of women — commonly known as bots — to lure unsuspecting male customers…

Too Close To Home (#672)

Another round of persecution of TRB users:

At least twelve more men face felony charges in Washington for posting comments to the now-defunct web forum known as The Review Board (TRB). The dozen defendants, most of whom [were] arraigned in King County District Court on December 14, face one count each of promoting prostitution in the second degree—a charge historically used to target people who profit off of the prostitution of others but more recently favored by King County prosecutors to go after people who write positively online about area prostitution…law enforcement needn’t show that defendants actually engaged in pay-to-play sexual activity themselves. All they must show is that the men “advanced” the prostitution careers of others by saying positive things about them online…authorities present no evidence that the women these men “promoted” were being exploited, other than the mere fact that the women were engaging in sex work at all. At least a couple of the “prostituted women” mentioned in charging documents are prominent sex-worker rights activists. In the Certification for the Determination of Probable Cause against one defendant, emails from nonprofit groups such as the Sex Worker’s Outreach Project (SWOP) and Center for Sex Positive Culture are even presented among evidence…Clients of Sex Workers Allied for Change (CoSWAC) issued a Tuesday statement “condemn[ing] this continuing crusade”…

Opting Out (#694)

On the futility of attempts to block porn:

As the United Kingdom considers banning “nonconventional” pornography, xHamster is offering up a warning: It won’t work — or, at least, not very well. The porn site has released new data on the more than 1 billion visits that it received in the past year from countries that have blocked its url. “Despite the best attempts of censors, users are finding their way to [xHamster] using web-based proxies, VPNs, and networks like Tor…porn bans may have the opposite of the intended effect by pushing otherwise apolitical citizens into networks that bypass government blockades.” xHamster looked at nine countries that have reportedly blocked its site — China, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, Thailand, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates — and the number of visitors from these countries accessing xHamster using proxies or VPNs…

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#696)

Americans disapprove of teaching kids about sex, but they’re all for filling their heads with stupid anti-sex propaganda:

Orange County leads the state in reports of human trafficking cases involving children…Florida Abolitionists…[fantasizes that] children are top targets for traffickers–girls between 12 and 14 are in high demand, and boys as young as 10 are targets. That’s why [the group] is in talks with Orange County Public Schools to bring [propaganda] to classrooms…and make human trafficking a part of [indoctrination] in the classroom…“just like bullying and ‘say no to drugs’”…

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In the News (#681)

Posted in Current Events, History, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, The Dark Side, Tyranny, tagged adolescence, agency denial, Arizona, Australia, Bogeymen, Challenge, Checklist, clowns, cops, drugs, end demand, fascism, Gullible's Travels, holidays, hysteria, Illinois, Ireland, Kentucky, law, Madonna/whore, Making It Up As They Go, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, Never Call the Cops, New Mexico, Ohio, One Born Every Minute, Pennsylvania, prisons, prohibitionist myths, psychology, rape, Rough Trade, Saving Them from Themselves, Send In the Clowns, sex offender registry, sexting, Stop faking!, Swedish model, The End of the Beginning, The Lesser of Two Evils, Torture Chamber, underage, Vendetta, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), Whore Madonnas on October 15, 2016| 8 Comments »

We see no constitutionally adequate basis to criminalize sex solely because one consenting adult pays another. – Hayley Gorenberg and Richard Saenz of Lambda Legal

Rough Trade

Be careful out there, my sisters in Philadelphia:

Philadelphia police say a predator who’s attacked female prostitutes earlier this year may be responsible for two more recent attacks…the most recent incident occurred Oct. 1 when a man on a bike propositioned [a street worker] for sex…the man choked her until she lost consciousness…Police believe the same man also accosted another prostitute at gunpoint Sept. 19. He took her to an alley and [raped] her while holding a knife to her face. Police believe the same man attacked a prostitute with a brick then stabbed [to death]…on July 16. She died. The same man, often arriving on a bike, is believed to have attacked at least one other prostitute, slashing her throat April 19.

Finley Fawn’s case has been resolved!

The Lesser of Two Evils

As I’ve pointed out before, most laws governing sex work prior to the late 19th century were aimed at drawing lines between harlots and “good” women, rather than at advancing a quixotic crusade to “eradicate” the ineradicable. Here’s a list of garments prostitutes were required to wear in various medieval European cities:

Beaucaire: a mark on the left arm…
Berne: red cap.
Bristol: striped hoods.
Castres: a man’s hat and a scarlet belt.
Florence: gloves and bells on the head…and high-heeled slippers.
Languedoc: a cord belt.
Leipzig: yellow cloak trimmed with blue.
London: striped hoods.
Mantua: white cloak and badge on chest…
Marseilles: striped tunic.
Milan: black cloak.
Nimes: a sleeve of a special colour.
Pisa: a yellow headband.
Strasbourg: black and white sugarloaf hat.
Toulouse: a mark on their sleeve.
Venice: yellow scarf.
Vienna: yellow scarf.
Zurich: red cap.

Saving Them From Themselves

Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever:

A man [in Australia] who found out that his 15-year-old stepdaughter was sexting her boyfriend proceeded to download the evidence to bring it to the school and the police to ask them to intervene…Now [Ashan Ortell] has been convicted on child pornography charges and placed on the sex offender registry…for eight years…

Frankly, I’m glad this idiot got what he deserved. If anything, anyone who would report his own daughter to the pigs for the “crime” of having a sexual relationship deserves much worse than 8 years on the registry.

Gullible’s Travels

Even if this were true (which it isn’t), it’s a testament to the entrenched stupidity of authoritarians that they refuse to see that binge drinking on US university campuses only became common after the drinking age was raised to 21:

A growing number of college are banning hard liquor on campus in a move to curb extreme drinking — but students are still getting their party on, and some are adding an extra element of risk to their binges…the phenomenon dubbed “drunkorexia”…University of Houston Professor Dipali Rinker said in a study of 1,200 students, he found up to 80 percent were restricting calories, overexercising, purging or using laxatives in combination with binge drinking…

Bogeymen

No, the sex trade in Ireland is no more “controlled” by “gangs” than it is in the US. This is little more than a cop wanking fantasy of there being “bad guys” to target, aided and abetted by the pathological liars at Ruhama:

Five major vice gang members are behind three-quarters of the sex-for-sale business in Ireland, according to data taken from the most popular website used to advertise prostitution. One gang this week has links to 80 advertised women and more than 10 transgender prostitutes, who can each make €1,000 a day. Ireland’s multi-million euro vice trade is set for a massive blow as a new law to make it illegal to buy sex is due before the Dáil this week…

But just for fun, ask yourself: If there really were mobsters behind all the sex work in Ireland, would they want decriminalization or increased criminalization? Did the Mafia like the end of Prohibition? And what happened to Mexican drug cartels’ profits when Washington & Colorado legalized cannabis?

The End of the Beginning

This is what happens when you don’t fight tyrannical laws from the beginning:

A federal class action…challenges a Mississippi statute that requires people convicted of having anal sex to register as sex offenders. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of five Mississippi residents who say they were convicted under various sodomy prohibitions, including the “unnatural intercourse” law, and Louisiana’s “crime against nature by solicitation” law…the [registration requirement] is discriminatory and unenforceable in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas invalidating all state laws against gay sex as unconstitutional…

You know why they can get away with this despite Lawrence? Because the Great Unwashed said nothing when federal courts established the precedent that the horrific persecution and ostracism inflicted on “sex offenders” are not punishments, but merely side effects of a record-keeping process.

Torture Chamber

Stop faking!

[In 1993] Anthony Gay…pled out to violating probation because of a “strong arm robbery.” Gay was convicted of the robbery and hence the violation after nicking a hat and $1, resulting in a sentence of 7 years in prison…he was warehoused at the notorious…Tamms Correctional Center in Illinois [where]…”his actions…driven by his mental illness, resulted in years of solitary confinement and additional criminal convictions, chiefly due to a series of assaults on guards, including throwing feces and urine out of the food slot in his cell door. By 2013, his sentence had been increased to 97 years and his release date pushed back to around 2091…he practiced self-mutilation, even to the point of cutting out one of his testicles and hanging it on a cell door in 2010“…He was literally crying out for help, and no one listened, save for his lawyers who managed to…convince…the court that the sentences Gay racked up while at Tamms had been improperly stacked…his new release date is set for August of 2018…Tamms has closed shop because its blatant incompetence and overindulgence in costly solitary confinement of people like Gay…

Making It Up As They Go

Seattle pretends to be “liberal”, but it’s home to vile bullshit like this:

Escape to Peace launched…a…center for survivors of sex trafficking in Bellevue on Oct. 6….Carol Loya was inspired to create the non-profit after a 2012 mission to Thailand, during which she was shocked to see and talk to young…sex work[ers]…At any given time in King County, 300-500 underage girls are being trafficked. The average age of entry is 12-14 years old, with some as young as 8 or 9…

Yes, they’re actually claiming that Greater Seattle has 20% of all coerced underage prostitutes in the entire US.

Checklist (#612)

More “beauty salon sex trafficking” idiocy from Ohio:

…100,000…cosmetologists throughout the state of Ohio…are now the latest allies in the fight against human trafficking…In Ohio alone, it is estimated that more than 1,000 girls and boys, between the ages of 12 and 17, are involved in the sex trade. Last year, Ohio’s state cosmetology board approved a requirement that human-trafficking awareness training become a mandatory part of obtaining a cosmetology license…[fetishists fantasize that] traffickers or so-called pimps may take a victim to a hair salon in order to change their appearance to avoid detection…If stylists see anything suspicious, there are things they can do like get a license plate number and call police…

In a police state, even your hairdresser may be spying on you.

One Born Every Minute (#645)

I’m pleased for the very small part I played in helping to expose this rapist:

Matt Hickey…has been charged by the King County Prosecuting Attorney with three counts of rape in the second degree. The charges…contain allegations from three women, including two women The Stranger wrote about earlier this year…who said Hickey told them he was working with a female porn recruiter, and asked them to audition for them…Not long after the first piece came out, three more women came forward to accuse Matt Hickey of rape. These women told The Stranger that Hickey got them blackout drunk and raped them while they were unable to consent. Hickey denied all of the allegations…

Vendetta (#664)

A look at the aftermath of one of the private pogroms bankrolled by billionaire sociopath Swanee Hunt:

Cory Walcott, was chair of the Military Science Department at the University of Nebraska Kearney until he was busted in a highly-publicized national sting…Prosecutors have now announced they are dropping the charge against Walcott and another man, Maurice Briggs…Their arrests were both part of the “National John Suppression Initiative”…[in which] police departments across the country pose undercover as either sex workers or their clients, arrest a lot of adult men and women for things like prostitution and solicitation, then put out splashy press releases about all the “sex trafficking arrests” they’ve made…the ultimate arrest/rescue breakdown for Lincoln?

no underage or adult sex-trafficking victims discovered

no force, fraud, or coercion discovered

four women, ages 23 to 36, charged with misdemeanor prostitution

five men charged with misdemeanor solicitation of prostitution

one man charged with felony solicitation of prostitution

one man charged with marijuana possession…

Send In the Clowns

The most interesting part of the clown panic isn’t the hysteria itself (which is kind of a yawn to anyone who’s studied such panics before), nor the copycats trying to get attention by mimicking the imaginary bogeys (ditto), but the bizarre things one finds in news stories about clown incidents. One story says “Three ‘juvenile clowns’ were taken into custody in Albuquerque, New Mexico, under the influence of marijuana“; Holy Reefer Madness, Batman! One wonders what the Kentucky man who “fired a semi-automatic rifle at a woman walking her dog because he thought she was a clown” was under the influence of; like some others, this story tries to blame the clown hysteria on Stephen King, specifically a new production of It which I doubt has anything to do with the panic. Then there’s this Massachusetts Halloween haunted house which features “scary clowns” among its attractions, reassuring the public that “they would know if there was a clown impersonator among them.” Self-important Australian “experts” pronounced the hysteria “dangerous” and “sinister” after it spread to Perth and to cities in Victoria (one wonders why they haven’t opined on the far-more-serious “sex trafficking” hysteria). But those all pale beside the horrifying statements made by cops in (wait for it) Arizona:

The Phoenix Police Department reports five juveniles ages 14 and 15 were charged with scary clown threats. Mesa police [arrested] two juveniles…[one maniac said] “I would call it a hate crime.” To prevent copycats, [pigs] and county prosecutors are taking a zero tolerance approach. “Every image, every text, every mention will be investigated,” said [Commissar] Nik Rasheta…prosecutors plan to prosecute anyone else making scary clown threats to the full extent…[propaganda operatives] say don’t think social media will be a shield to make scary clown threats. Authorities have the technology to see who’s posting and spreading them…

Challenge (#679)

Lambda Legal has honored the commitment it made to sex worker rights last year by filing an amicus brief in the ESPLERP case:

…At the heart of Lambda Legal’s most groundbreaking victories and continuing mission is self-determination, including bodily autonomy. When the Supreme Court struck down laws criminalizing same-sex relationships and gay identity in Lawrence v. Texas, it rightly rejected assertions against us that “public health” justified sodomy laws. The movement for reproductive justice, from which we draw key legal precedents, similarly fights for facts over fiction when government tries to limit the right to contraception, abortion, or other similar personal decision-making. Lawrence explained that the constitutional right to liberty protects all of us when we make our own decisions about adult, consensual sexual intimacy…sometimes relationships are transactional…consider prenuptial agreements, surrogacy, and hook-up websites; the fact that money is involved does not obliterate constitutional protections for marriage, parenting or sexual intimacy. All of these truths animate Lambda Legal’s position that the government may not constitutionally criminalize consensual adult sex solely because it is bought and sold.

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In the News (#668)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged acting, asset seizure, Cambodia, crypto-moralism, cult of the child, drugs, France, Georgia, Gullible's Travels, Harm Magnification, harm reduction, hotels, Islam, Michigan, Monsters, Philippines, prisons, psychology, racism, rescue industry, Romania, Rooted in Racism, Schadenfreude, See No Evil, sex offender registry, Sweden, Texas, The Crumbling Dam, The End of the Beginning, The Enlightenment Police, The Swedish Pimpocracy, transgender, United Kingdom, Washington (state), Whatever They Need To Say on August 31, 2016| 2 Comments »

Pedophiles are not…using the internet like it was an L.L.Bean catalogue to find unknown children. – David Finkelhor

The Swedish Pimpocracy

Sweden, the feminist paradise:

A police investigator has dropped a case against an ice hockey player accused of molesting a woman at a night club in northern Sweden – because she had “gigantic breasts”…investigator Mikael Lundberg said…“[the two women] were standing at a bar table and then he comes along drunk and drapes his arms around both of them from behind, and then he happens to touch one of their breasts. And it should be noted that they had gigantic breasts. It wasn’t hard to brush up against them”…

Hello, Dolly!

Most whores love Dolly as much as she loves us:

…Dolly Parton confirmed that she will play a prostitute in her second made-for-TV biopic, Christmas of Many Colors: Circle of Love…a sequel to Parton’s 2015 film, Coat of Many Colors. “When I was little, I patterned my look after the town trollop…I thought she was the most beautiful thing, because she had all this makeup, hair, tight clothes and everything I wanted”…

Harm Magnification

The Philippines’ new president is carrying the “War on Drugs” to its logical conclusion:

Rodrigo Duterte, the new President of the Philippines…promised to cleanse the country of drug users and dealers by extrajudicial means. Since his inauguration, on June 30^th, he has been following through with a vengeance. In that time, more than eighteen hundred people have been killed—drug dealers, drug users, and in several cases people who happened to be nearby. The youngest was five years old…Duterte has warned drug peddlers to surrender themselves or face summary execution. “My order is shoot to kill you,” he said on August 6^th. “I don’t care about human rights, you’d better believe me”…seven hundred and twelve people allegedly involved with drugs have been killed by police, and another thousand and sixty-seven by presumed vigilantes. Some six hundred thousand…[have] turned themselves in…drug users [are] being dragged out of their homes and shot at close range. The two-year-old daughter of one suspected user was stripped and subjected to an anal exam to see if she was being used to conceal drugs…

The Enlightenment Police

The latest battle in France’s ongoing war on Muslim women’s personal autonomy:

The French burkini scandal exploded into further controversy…when a young Muslim mother was ordered off the beach at Cannes and fined for simply wearing a headscarf. Three armed [cops] pointed a pepper spray canister in the 34-year-old’s face and told her she was in breach of a new rule outlawing swimming costumes that cover the entire body…is a former air-hostess from Toulouse whose family members have been French citizens for at least three generations. “I wasn’t even planning to swim, just to dip my feet”, said Siam, who was wearing leggings, a top, and a headscarf…

And though this isn’t the major issue here, can we please stop referring to any hijab as a “burka”?

The Crumbling Dam

Alas, Seattle “officials” think harm reduction principles only apply to drug use:

Seattle may open America’s first safe heroin injection site…the city’s Heroin Task Force, formed by Mayor Ed Murray and King County Executive Dow Constantine, endorsed the plan to open a homeless shelter that would offer a safe place to inject heroin. The proposal comes at a time when Seattle is dealing with a record-breaking overdose rate—in 2014, it was the highest in 20 years—and a 19% increase in homelessness since 2015…Seattle has already adopted a safe-consumption site for alcohol with great success…

Gullible’s Travels

Holy idosing, Batman!

…Many parents intuitively understand that ubiquitous glowing screens are having a negative effect on kids. We see the aggressive temper tantrums when the devices are taken away and the wandering attention spans when children are not perpetually stimulated by their hyper-arousing devices. Worse, we see children that become bored, apathetic, uninteresting and uninterested when not plugged in. But it’s even worse than we think. We now know that those iPads, smart phones and Xboxes are a form of digital drug. Recent brain imaging research is showing that they affect the brain’s frontal cortex—which controls executive functioning, including impulse control—in exactly the same way that cocaine does. Technology is so hyper-arousing that it raises dopamine levels—the feel-good neurotransmitter most involved in the addiction dynamic—as much as sex…Dr. Peter Whybrow…at UCLA calls screens “electronic cocaine” and Chinese researchers call them “digital heroin”…

The End of the Beginning

“Punitive and stupid” is a good description of all “sex offender” registration laws:

…a federal appeals court ruled that retroactive application of Michigan’s Sex Offender Registration Act (SORA) violates the Constitution’s ban on ex post facto laws. In doing so, the court offered a scathing assessment that suggests such laws make little sense even when they’re constitutional…the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6^th Circuit concludes that the…provisions, although framed as civil regulations, are mainly punitive in their effects. That distinction between regulation and punishment is crucial because the Supreme Court has long read the Ex Post Facto Clause as applying only to the latter…

Monsters

Though most of the items appearing under this heading describe violence against transwomen, transmen are also the subject of violence and discrimination:

On October 28, 2011, the life that Ky Peterson knew came to an end…[when] he…was [raped] by a man who [had previously] made sexual advances toward him…Ky fought back in self-defense, which ultimately led to his attacker’s death…police arrested [Ky and his brothers], charging them with armed robbery and first-degree murder, and threatened to charge the teens as adults. When it became apparent that Ky was injured, the police took him to a local medical center where he was tested with a rape kit. The nurse who performed the examination confirmed that Ky had been brutally raped; yet she felt the need to point out [the obvious fact] that Ky “didn’t act like a woman who had been raped”…[he was eventually forced into] a plea “bargain” of 20 years — a sentence 10 years longer than Georgia law mandates…

Please consider signing the petition against this travesty.

See No Evil (#421)

Because obviously, these “pedophiles” can shoot dangerous “male gaze” radiation through the internet to harm the child:

K. is a cherubic 18-month-old with wispy blonde hair, very pinch-able cheeks, a toothy smile, and delightfully pudgy legs…her Instagram has well over 300,000 followers. The account, which bears her name and is run by her 24-year-old mom, T., features more than 4,000 photos of the toddler dressed up in fashionable outfits, many of which are provided by sponsors…These images…receive hundreds, even thousands, of comments from people all over the world. Largely, they consist of strings of emojis…In a number, the toddler is referred to as “sexy”. This has sparked outrage among many…it reached a fever pitch…after T. posted a series of photos, all of which were [later] removed…showing K. without clothes on the beach…“You are a disgrace…How dare you serve up your child to what is obviously a fanbase of pedophiles? I seriously hope you get a visit from CPS [Child Protective Services] at any moment and they separate you from that innocent child,” wrote one woman, who suggested that K. was being followed by an “international pedo ring.” Wrote another, “She’s a child pornography peddler. She’s not a mother”…

Schadenfreude (#606)

Just another reminder of what “rescue” actually means:

…Prey Speu [is] the notorious detention centre on the outskirts of Phnom Penh designated for “re-educating” the homeless, the mentally ill and those who sell sex…prisoners [are locked]…in a room with 50 people…[and denied baths]…police often solicit money from sex workers [to not arrest them]…the asking price [varies] from $20 to $200 [Cambodian street workers charge $5 a trick]…“If there’s no money to give to the police, they will send us to the centre,” says…a 36-year-old sex worker…

Rooted in Racism (#635)

Remember, this is pretended to be about sex work:

Sixteen people have been detained in Romania, following a joint agency operation [with UK police]…Thirteen men…and three woman…were detained [and cops stole] cars; more than £9,000 sterling; more than 5500 Euros…The Zephyr operation began in the UK, when investigations were launched into a serious crime group suspected to be involved in…“pop-up” brothels across the south west…DI Tony Hubbard…said: “We hope to dissuade…Romanian [whores from coming to England]…will then seek to [steal] their [assets] through the Proceeds of Crime Act. We [will also go after] landlords…[if] their accommodation is…being used as a brothel”…

Whatever They Need To Say (#648)

Houston, TX judge orders hotel to pay off cops & discriminate vs sex workers:

Judge Alexandra Smoots-Hogan…ordered the owners of…the Plainfield Inn…to install surveillance cameras and a security gate, prohibit cash payments without proper identification, eliminate hourly rates for rooms, restrict access only to registered guests and visitors with valid identification and [hire a pig] to provide security…

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