The Honest Courtesan

A country cannot develop based on fear.  –  Truong Huy San

Censorship Ascendant

Hordes of useful idiots want this kind of repression in the US:

The authorities in Vietnam have arrested one of the country’s most prominent journalists and accused him of “abusing democratic freedoms” by posting articles on Facebook that “infringed on the interests of the state”…Truong Huy San — known to many by his pen name, Huy Duc — was taken into custody last week…but there…were no details on the content of the posts…Journalists have long been a target for the country’s ruling Communist Party, which frequently crushes dissent.  But Mr. San had for years managed to navigate the very small space for independent thought, often publishing articles that criticized the government.  His connections with high-level officials were thought to have been a buffer — until now.  Mr. San’s case is part of a sweeping repression of civil society that…has expanded in scale and scope in recent years.  The law [used against him]…is an “overly broad” one that the authorities frequently use against critics of the government…After Mr. San…disappeared on June 1…Facebook [obediently deactivated his] account, w[hich had] more than 350,000 followers…

Social Distancing (#1244)

Oh look, it’s what I was saying FOUR FUCKING YEARS AGO:

…Under questioning by a congressional subcommittee, top officials from the National Institutes of Health, along with Dr. Anthony Fauci, acknowledged that some key parts of the public health guidance their agencies promoted during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic were not backed up by solid science…[and] inconvenient information was…suppressed, denied or disparaged as crackpot nonsense…the rule that we should all stay at least six feet apart…“sort of just appeared,” Fauci said…As for the repeated assertion that Covid originated in a “wet market” in Wuhan, China, not in an infectious diseases laboratory there, N.I.H. officials were privately expressing alarm over that lab’s lax biosafety practices and risky research…Instead of circling the wagons, these officials should have been responsibly and transparently informing the public…Failure to acknowledge the basic facts of Covid transmission led the authorities to pointlessly close beaches and parks…delayed the opening of schools and caused untold millions of dollars to be wasted on plexiglass barriers (that likely made things worse) rather than effective air filters…the most severe ramifications of these failures may last for decades, because they gave people cause to doubt the word of scientific and public health authorities…

No Escape (#1312)

Government reform policies, like other political promises, are almost totally worthless:

The Justice Department announced in 2022, amid several damning investigations into sexual assault by staff in federal prisons, that it was working to expand a program for early release to include women who’d been abused behind bars, but…federal prosecutors are now routinely fighting to disqualify [victim]s because of an unreasonably narrow definition…the…new policy passed in April 2023…included a major caveat that…a prisoner’s claim of sexual abuse “must be established by a conviction in a criminal case, a finding or admission of liability in a civil case, or a finding in an administrative proceeding”…but…victims of abuse have no say over when a case against their abuser will be brought, if it will be brought, and who will be [included] as the victims…And…from 2016 to 2018, perpetrators of staff sexual misconduct were only convicted, sentenced, fined, or pleaded guilty in 6 percent of substantiated incidents in federal and state prisons…

Thought Control (#1328)

Llano politicians are so mindlessly censorious they actually imagined they could win this appeal:

Schools and libraries in [Llano] Texas…can no longer ban books just because they’re about “butts and farts,” a court has ruled…[humorless politicians beshat themselves over public library] books…including I Broke My Butt! and Larry the Farting Leprechaun…then ordered them to be pulled from library shelves, along with others they labeled “pornographic filth,” including a memoir about a transgender teen and two books about the history of racism in the US.  However, seven peeved patrons sued to reinstate the books…with a district court siding with them, ruling that books could not be banned or censored by government entities just because they did not like them…the [clueless] complainants appealed, [and] the Fifth Circuit…upheld an injunction that required the library to reinstate the removed titles within 24 hours…

A Moral Cancer (#1427)

Crypto-moralists want people to believe they could live forever by simply eliminating every single pleasurable activity from their lives:

…one of the few…things that make modern commercial flying tolerable is a strong onboard libation.  For those lucky enough to travel internationally, the booze is sometimes even free.  But…newly released [bogus] research argues that it should be…[banned because] in-flight alcohol can [supposedly] increase the risk of heart attack…”Even in young and healthy individuals, the combination of alcohol intake with sleeping under hypobaric conditions poses a considerable strain on the cardiac system and might lead to exacerbation of symptoms in patients with cardiac or pulmonary diseases”…as students of the temperance movement know well, prohibitionary brush fires can start with the smallest of sparks.  In fact, the in-flight booze ban movement has already begun to catch on in America…[using the excuse of] unruly and intoxicated…passengers [during the COVID panemic]…numerous federal [politicians have] inevitably joined the booze ban chorus…

Torture Chamber (#1437)

A society can be judged by the way it treats its prisoners:

Eight jailers at a…downtown Los Angeles jail were watching porn when they overlooked a noose hanging in the jail cell of a suicidal inmate…The jail…was extremely hot and humid with no natural light, had trash in the hallways and a whole host of other problems…[inspector Haley] Broder [said]…“There was just continuous neglect and bad conditions…we saw people with giant open wounds.  The trash was just everywhere…it smells.  There are fires.  And…there is just a genuine lack of interest in changing that situation”…When the commissioners reported the noose to [screws] — eight of whom were sitting in an office watching a video on a large-screen TV — they said they’d check on the cell later and continued watching the video…The ACLU, which has served as a court-appointed monitor of LA County jails since 1985, called Men’s Central “a windowless dungeon” long plagued by “savage deputy on-inmate violence”…

The Cop Myth (#1441)

Why are people shocked when men paid and encouraged to behave violently, behave violently?

…a [typical and representative Georgia cop named]…Michael Durieux…shot [a man named] Christian Chestnut several times [on June 7th because he discovered]…his [cop] wife [was having an affair with] Chestnut…Durieux [then fled the scene of the murder]…in his car and…crashed into multiple [innocent bystanders’] vehicles…When [his fellow cops caught up with him]…he…[shot himself as well]….

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!

Read Full Post »