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Posts Tagged ‘Legislators Gone Wild’

A child is three times as likely to be hit by lightning than to be kidnapped…by a stranger.  –  Lenore Skenazy

Monsters 

This timing is very suspicious; will cops care?

Transgender woman Muhlaysia Booker, who was at the center of a viral video where she was beaten near an apartment complex, was found fatally shot in east Dallas [on May 18th]…Edward Thomas was arrested and charged with aggravated assault in the [previous] case…

To Molest and Rape 

Just two typical, representative cops:

Two [Alabama cops] were arrested…at Empire, a Birmingham night club…[after] Markeith Williams and…Jonathan Hill [raped]…an employee in a bathroom…Both were [rewarded with a vacation]…

Permanent Record

Politicians who want to undermine important legal safeguards like statutes of limitations always use especially-awful crimes to get useful idiots on their side:

…A new bill from state Rep. Brett Hillyer…would let people subjected to sexual misconduct by doctors at land grant universities between 1978-2000 sue those universities.  [Dr. Richard] Strauss worked at Ohio State from the mid-1970s into the 1990s.  He killed himself in 2005.  More than 150 men claim Strauss sexually assaulted them while they were students and athletes at Ohio State.  Nearly 50 are part of a lawsuit against the school that is headed for mediation…Ohio State’s lawyers asked a federal judge to dismiss the case in part because the abuse fell outside the statute of limitations.  Hillyer’s bill would remove that limitation for civil claims…

I Saw My Brain (#785)

Yet another pogrom in the pocket police-state that is Polk County, Florida:

A massive [entrapment scheme] in Polk County ended with 154 [human beings brutalized and humiliated by the minions of chief psychopath] Grady Judd…[almost half of those arrested were sex workers]…

This will continue until the majority of those arrested fight back with lawsuits, as they’re doing not far away in Palm Beach County.

Eternal Vigilance (#827)

Rent paid for with sex is not “free”; it has been paid with sex:

…sordid homeowner[s]…are demanding romps, threesomes, S&M, naked photos and a “girlfriend ­experience” in exchange for free rooms from those who cannot ­afford to pay.  And the vile exploitation of potential tenants is still going on despite it being outlawed in January…[puritans trying to stop feminine pragmatism] found ­dozens of sex for rent ads…on…Craigslist…

The level of hysteria this simple arrangement provokes in judgy puritans is hilarious.

License to Rape (#886)

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

…on March 30, 2017…Holly Curry…had all six of her kids — ages 5, 4, 2 (twins) and 10 months (also twins!) in her 10-seater van…Curry parked in front of…a…cafe…[for] less than 10 minutes [and when she emerged she found] two [cops lurking to harass her]…the next day…a [bureaucrat]…from the [infamous] Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services came to the Curry home…with a sheriff’s deputy…[and no] warrant…[the pig and the bureaucrat threatened her]…with an emergency custody order [to abduct] all her kids…Curry [folded and]…the [bureaucrat molested]…each child, male and female, [stripping them] down to the genitals (removing the diapers of the two youngest)…a few weeks later, the [bureaucrat]…told Curry she viewed her decision to get muffins as…a one-time mistake in judgment.  The forced entry, the threat of taking the kids and the strip searches…were not viewed as mistakes at all…

Legislators Gone Wild (#909) 

All prohibitionists have emotional problems, but Guinasso seems to be an unhinged obsessive:

…a creepy Reno lawyer named Jason Guinasso [has] been on an 18-month religious crusade to shut down the brothels…For a year and half now Guinasso has been trying to force Lyon County to give him the full names and addresses of every legal sex worker in the county’s four brothels…District Attorney Steve Rye denied Guinasso’s request…but…In a letter dated February 1, 2019, Guinasso [threatened to sue the county so he can get the information and thereby shame the workers]…All the Nevada Legislature needs to do is amend the current public record statute to explicitly declare that the work card applications for commercial sex workers in Nevada’s legal brothels are confidential, just like gaming employees.  That would put an immediate end to Guinasso’s crusade…and…remove a “gray area” in law that could potentially result in a court overruling District Attorney Rye…

Disaster (#912)

Does anyone other than local news fail to recognize what a disaster FOSTA is?

Stupor Bowl (#918)

Virtually the only people who still profess to believe this nonsense are cops and politicians:

A $1 million campaign will be launched this week to combat prostitution and human trafficking during the Super Bowl in Miami…State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said her office is looking to develop a “rapid intervention response team” to attack what [politicians keep pretending is] a persistent problem for major sporting events [despite plentiful evidence to the contrary]…“Our concern is that a lot of predators will bring other dancers and their victims that work in strip clubs. We have seen that with other major destinations”…the [fascist] effort…which also will involve [surveillance and profiling of customers of] the ride-share services Uber and Lyft, taxi companies and the hotel and restaurant industries…

To Molest and Rape (#939) 

Cops don’t “act as” sex predators; they are sex predators:

…Police Scotland’s Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) has [finally decided to admit] that [cops] are [routinely] abusing their position to carry out “predatory sexual behaviour”.  The ACU said it had received 22 [complaints about] sexual misconduct [in the first quarter of this] year…and…[is] monitoring 13 serious organised crime groups (SOCGs) amid fears they could be attempting to corrupt [already-corrupt cops]…Scottish Greens justice spokesman John Finnie…said he intended to raise the issue of sexual misconduct in the Scottish Parliament next week…

The fairy tale that cops need to be corrupted by “organized crime groups” in order to become rapists would be almost charmingly naive if it weren’t so dangerous to women.

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Chinese workers…would probably prefer not being deported to a religious text they can’t read.  –  Red Canary Song

Above the Law 

Yet another sociopath with a title:

The [Washington] state Attorney General filed charges…against Hells Canyon Circuit Superior Court Judge Scott Gallina…Nine women…have reported varying degrees of sexual misconduct by Gallina…[since] 2014…[including] charges of second-degree rape, fourth-degree assault with sexual motivation, and indecent liberties…Gallina can return to his elective duties until the Supreme Court and the Judicial Conduct Commission stop him…To help protect [women]…the County Board of Commissioners called an emergency meeting…and signed a resolution…

Oooh, a RESOLUTION!  I wonder if that’s any more effective than a “restraining order”?

Policing for Profit

Governments are reining in these depredations much too slowly:

More than a year after police raided an Alabama couple’s house, upturned their lives, and seized thousands of dollars from them over a small amount of marijuana…a…state circuit judge dismissed the misdemeanor drug charges against Greg and Teresa Almond…and ordered that their property be returned to them…the Almonds filed a federal civil rights lawsuit earlier this year against the Randolph County Sheriff’s Department [because]…in January of 2018, the…narcotics [gang] busted down their door, threw a flashbang grenade at Greg Almond’s feet, detained the couple at gunpoint, and ransacked their house…[while they] were trying to refinance the loans they had taken out to start a chicken farm, and as a result, they say they missed a crucial bank deadline, resulting in their house being foreclosed upon.  They now live in a utility shed…The Alabama legislature is currently considering a bill that would essentially abolish civil asset forfeiture by requiring a criminal conviction before property could be forfeited by police.  It would join four other states that have passed similar laws…

Torture Chamber 

A “school” where scores of boys were “reformed” to death:

…a company doing pollution cleanup at the old Dozier School for Boys property in Marianna, 60 miles west of Tallahassee, has discovered 27 “anomalies” that could be possible graves about 165 yards outside the reform school’s Boot Hill cemetery…forensic anthropologists have already turned up far more burials on school property than the state knew about…anthropologists…found…a total of 55 graves…of…boys who died in state [cages]…The brutal…reform school was open from 1900 to 2011, when the state shuttered it under mounting public pressure…[due to] terrible, unceasing abuse and neglect of [caged] boys…and on a number of suspicious deaths…The [newly found] possible graves do not follow any obvious pattern…“This randomness might be expected in a clandestine or informal cemetery, where graves were excavated haphazardly and left unmarked,” the report says…

To Molest and Rape

Just protecting and serving:

…LaFayette [Alabama cop]…Quantavious Lakeith Lockhart was arrested Thursday, April 11th….[for] rape [of a mentally disabled girl]…LaFayette Police Chief George Rampey…will not confirm [that Lockhart]…worked [as a] School [pig]…Lockhart [has been rewarded with a paid vacation]…

Japanese Prostitution (#819) 

A Japanese historian says the comfort woman phenomenon was complicated:

Ikuhiko Hata…is one of Japan’s leading historians and…is no nationalist…Most allegations that Japanese troops kidnapped women for the comfort stations are untrue, Hata [said]…abduction of local girls by foreign troops would have ignited local resistance…the IJA did carry out abductions in a small number of “isolated criminal cases…in the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies…where…women were seen as kinds of POWs…The comfort women mainly worked at comfort stations run by private citizens.  They were recruited by brokers and had fixed-term contracts…Bankbook and bank transfer records prove that the comfort women wired money home to their families to buy homes or start businesses…Many comfort women…were the envy of other women attached to the military, such as nurses…daughters of farm families often had no choice but to go with a broker when her father sold her.  So, when we talk about free will, we have to take into account the range of choices available to women”…Hata said “slave” is the wrong word to describe women who had contracts, received relatively good pay – a commission of what soldiers paid – and, unlike soldiers, could go back to their hometowns after a year or two, even though the war was still continuing…

Pyrrhic Victory (#864)

When it comes to mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down:

…a…Google database employees call Sensorvault…turn[s] the business of tracking cellphone users’ locations into a digital dragnet for [cops]…Technology companies have for years responded to court orders for specific users’ information.  The new warrants go further, suggesting possible suspects and witnesses in the absence of other clues.  Often…the company responds to a single warrant with location information on dozens or hundreds of devices…The practice was first used by federal agents in 2016…and…has since spread to local departments across the country…This year…the company received as many as 180 requests in one week…Sensorvault…includes detailed location records involving at least hundreds of millions of devices worldwide and dating back nearly a decade…

Scapegoats (#901) 

Now we know why they wouldn’t say what kind of animal before:

A [typical and representative] Louisiana [cop] arrested last December for…[bestiality] has now been charged with more than 30 counts of child pornography.  Terry Yetman…was…charged…after…officials…discovered electronic evidence showing Yetman’s…bestiality with a retired police dog…

Pyrrhic Victory (#913) 

I’m afraid it’s far too late to put this evil djinni back into its bottle:

Axon, the largest supplier of body cameras to US police, has filed [three] patents to develop, surprise, surprise, facial recognition software…One patent is for a system to automatically detect and blur out personal information, probably for things like license plates and such, another matches faces to ones in a database, and the third detects objects like guns in video feeds.  The software also analyses faces to guess the person’s age, race and gender…

Legislators Gone Wild (#923) 

Looks like the anti-whore brigade couldn’t get politicians to support them, either:

State Sen. Joe Hardy’s bill (SB413) to ban Nevada’s legal brothels statewide died on Friday [April 12th] after it failed to get a committee hearing by the midnight deadline…as longtime watchers of the Legislature know, “dead” bills can become “zombie” bills that come back to life as amendments to other bills right up until the time the Legislature officially comes to an end (“sine die”) several weeks from now…we’ll remain vigilant and let you know if SB413 somehow joins the walking dead…

Blunt Instrument (#926)

It’s great to see Asian sex workers fighting back against the racist “sex trafficking” narrative:

…The public is fed the racist myth that all Chinese massage parlors are involved in human trafficking.  In fact, most Chinese workers do this work because it is the most sensible work for them to do…it is simply the fastest way to send money home, and it makes the most practical sense at this time of their lives…The Chinese hukou system, which restricts people to living in the rural area where they are born…is a huge driver of internal “migrant sex workers” with no working rights in China.  It is also a huge driver of migration out of China under Deng Xiaoping’s policies, which actively promoted rural migration out of China rather than overcrowding Chinese cities…Yet these migrant sex workers also do much to support Chinese economic development by sending a large portion of their money home.  It’s ironic and laughable in the darkest sense when Christian charities in “international development” work travel to countries like Cambodia and Thailand to convert sex workers into garment workers.  Do they recognize how much “international development” these sex workers are already doing?  Much more than a charity promoting the sale of handmade trinkets could ever manage…

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You’re giving all your data to the pornographic equivalent of Mark Zuckerberg.  –  Jim Killock

Above the Law 

If only there were a concise word for “sexually assaulted an incapacitated woman”:

Rep. Brian Ellis has resigned, effective immediately…Pennsylvania state House Republicans stripped Ellis of his Consumer Affairs Commitee chairmanship in January after allegations that he sexually assaulted an incapacitated woman…[who] was drugged while having a drink and was sexually assaulted at Ellis’s home…more than three years ago…

I’m gratified to see that nearly every commenter is as disgusted as I am with KDKA’s avoidance of the word “rape”.  But Ellis isn’t our only rapist government actor this week:

…Wisconsin probation-parole agent [Reynaldo Rosalez, who]…sexually assault[ed] a…10 year…old [girl]…pleaded no contest…to…sexual assault of a child…on July 12, 2018…the victim…said “she was scared to tell him to stop because she has heard people who drink alcohol can become violent,” and he had been drinking…after the…assault, she “hid in the bathroom,” before Rosalez sexually assaulted her a second time…the next day, she told her mother what happened “because if she didn’t tell the truth, this could keep happening and nobody would know”…

Blunt Instrument

Massage parlors are popular targets of “anti-trafficking” pogroms because they’re low-hanging fruit:

[Pigs raided] Ace Spa, Golden Spa and Sun Spa…[and] the Prosecuting Attorney’s office [claimed without the slightet scrap of evidence that it was about]…sex trafficking…in…Honolulu.  Two women were [molested and caged]…But, less than 24 hours…[later] all three businesses had their open sign lit up and front doors wide open [because they are businesses with bills to that don’t go away when pigs attack while prohibitionists wank]…Kathryn Xian, the executive director of the Pacific Alliance to Stop Slavery [vomited out a lot of disgusting, racist filth which reporters eagerly lapped up as though they were dogs]…

Bad Girls (#540) 

Caty Simon on overlapping prohibitions:

…Street-based sex workers, in particular, are commonly viewed as one-stop vice shops by their clients…we’re pressured to not only procure drugs for our clients, but also to babysit drug culture naive middle-class men on their benders…in 2015, sex worker Alix Tichelman was arrested and convicted for manslaughter for the overdose death of her sugar daddy, Google exec Forrest Hayes…The way in which this young sex worker was portrayed as a heartless killer is an example of how drug-induced homicide laws perpetuate the madonna/whore complex…drug-using women…are either innocent white damsels led astray and murdered by the shadowy men who initiate us into drug use, or conversely…we are the amoral, seductive temptresses who lead upstanding men to their deaths…Global trends in laws around sex work…keep us isolated and working alone…Similarly, drug-induced homicide laws which promise a murder charge if you happen to hand your friend a bag they then OD on also encourage drug users to use alone, even though doing so is itself the most dangerous risk factor for overdose.  These legal frameworks…encourage drug users, sex workers, and. most relevantly, drug-using sex workers, to die alone rather than form communities in which we protect each other…

Between the Ears (#719) 

Why do men want to put stupid gadgets on their dicks?

…the “Cock Cam” from UK company Julz…[is] “the world’s first cock ring with a camera,” available now for $160…the camera in Julz’s “stretchy yet tight” wearable ring records up to 90 minutes of 1080p, H.264 video in MP4 format.  It features night vision, too, as well as a rechargeable lithium battery…there’s Wi-Fi to worry about in this thing too, complete with a companion app that lets users view their videos or share them with a partner…the Cock Cam is one of a growing field of internet-connected sex toys, and perhaps the most concerning one yet given that we aren’t just talking about remote controls or usage statistics, but video…Julz [claims] your videos are never transmitted to the cloud, but are instead stored locally on your phone…[however] the company is currently working to update the app to allow for FaceTime-style live streaming…

Yes, ladies, soon we may not just have to endure static dick pics, but also unwelcome wanking videos.

The Widening Gyre (#800)

Fact:  3-year-old suspiciously vanishes. Conclusion: sex trafficking!

It’s been almost 12 years since [3-year-old] Madeleine McCann…vanished from her British family’s vacation villa in…Portugal…Gerry and Kate McCann…faced suspicion and intense media scrutiny after their daughter first went missing in May 2007…The couple later won a libel suit against a Portuguese detective who wrote a book claiming the McCanns were involved…A new 8-part Netflix docuseries, The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann…advances the [fantas]y that Madeleine was abducted and…sold into a trafficking ring…[because] Madeleine’s body was never found and there is scant evidence pointing elsewhere…

Abducted?  Sure.  But when a three-year-old is abducted from a fancy resort, the most likely motive is ransom, not “sex slavery”.  A far more likely possibility is that something went wrong and the child was killed.

Elephant in the Parlor (#831)

It’s dangerous to be a woman who knows the sexual secrets of powerful men:

…prosecutors have opened an investigation into the possible poisoning death of a Moroccan model who was a key witness in the trial against ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi over his infamous “bunga bunga” parties.  Imane Fadil…died March 1 at a Milan-area hospital, where she had been treated since Jan. 29 for exhibiting “symptoms of poisoning”…Berlusconi was initially convicted of charges that he paid for sex with an underage woman…[but] was ultimately acquitted by Italy’s highest court in 2015…Fadil had testified against Berlusconi during the initial trial, and then with two other women had sought civil damages in a spinoff investigation over allegations that Berlusconi paid witnesses for their silence…by January, the Milan court had thrown out their claims altogether.  Two weeks later, Fadil was hospitalized…

All-Purpose Excuse (#857)

Trumpists and anti-Trumpists continue to fight for control of the “sex trafficking” narrative:

To justify his border wall, Mr. Trump is fond is [repeating] the [common prohibitonist trope] of sex trafficking victims brought over the southern border.  “Women are tied up, they’re bound, duct tape put around their faces,” he said — a garish but apparently imaginary scenario that people who [profit from] trafficking [hysteria invented and frequently use in their propaganda]…“The administration appears to view trafficking as a convenient tool to justify its border policies, rather than as a [convenient tool to expand the police state and enrich NGOs like ours]” said [fetishist] Martina Vandenberg…Beginning late last year, applicants for visas were put on notice that they may be subject to deportation proceedings in immigration court if their bids for humanitarian visas are denied.  That was a shift from earlier practice under which applicants were exempt from summons to immigration court, a policy designed to incentivize [people to declare themselves] victims [so as] to [inflate the “victim” numbers]…In [furtherance] of [increased violence against sex workers]…Mr. Trump sheds crocodile tears…

Legislators Gone Wild (#879) 

The anti-whore brigade couldn’t get the people to support them, so politicians want to overrule the people:

[Politician] Joe Hardy said he plans to introduce a bill that would ban licensed brothels in Nevada…Hardy said [a lot of misogynistic, infantilizing nonsense claiming that brothel workers]…“are…being abused.  In some cases, raped”…[he also bizarrely referred to attempting to police individuals’ sex lives as being] “…grown up”…“The bill is based on falsehoods,” former sex worker [and brothel researcher] Christina Parreira said…

Given that fewer than 1% of Nevada sex workers operate from the brothels, this is absolutely nothing more than political showboating.

Opting Out (#893) 

The UK’s long-deferred surveillance/censorship scheme is finally about to begin:

The government will next week confirm the launch date for…UK-wide [censorship of]…online [content] as privacy campaigners continue to raise concerns about how websites and age verification companies will use the data they collect.  The plan for implementing the long-delayed age block, which has been beset by [the problems intrinsic to all censorship schemes]…is expected to be announced alongside the government’s other proposals for tackling online content [politicians dislike]…although it could be several months before the system is fully up and running.  The age block will require commercial pornography sites to show that they are taking sufficient steps to verify their users are over 18, such as by uploading a passport or driving licence or by visiting a newsagent to buy a pass only available to adults…Jim Killock, the executive director of the Open Rights Group, said he remained concerned about the [inevitability] of a major data leak as a result of people handing over their personal identification…[about] sexual preference[s]…

Pyrrhic Victory (#898)

When it comes to mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down:

…through its Vigilant Solutions contract…ICE has access not only to 5 billion records gathered by private businesses, but also to 1.5 billion data points contributed by over 80 local law enforcement agencies from more than a dozen states…these…arrangements may violate ICE [claimed] privacy policies and state and local data-sharing laws—particularly in cases where the data originates from sanctuary cities…Automated license plate readers…are…mounted on overpasses, bridges, road signs, public vehicles, or on private property such as malls or parking lots.  They can record thousands of license plates per minute and capture the location coordinates, date, and time along with each photo for long-term aggregation and storage.  The data they accumulate can be used to create a detailed picture of where a car has been over time…

Backwards into the Future (#902) 

I wonder how long it will be before the US abandons “re-education” for sex workers and clients?

When Chinese legislators recommended the abolition of “education” detention centres where prostitutes and clients can be held without charge for two years, activists hoped the facilities’ days were numbered.  They will have to wait longer…police have unilateral power to detain sex workers and their clients for up to two years in “shelter and education” centres…[which] have little to do with education…testimonies of ex-detainees collected by [human rights group] Asia Catalyst…revealed the harsh…conditions in the centres…includ[ing]…forced labour…and the obligation to pay for subsistence and forced medical examinations at prohibitive prices…“it is just a way of extorting money on behalf of the state and the police,” one of the women told the group…

So, basically the same as the US.

The Course of a Disease (#911)

Like anti-vaxxers who not only neglect their own health, but actively spread contagion:

France and Sweden have launched a new common strategy for combatting…[consensual] sex…which specifically calls on other countries to [infanti]lise the [sellers] of sex…The strategy is a response to [women’s economic freedom and increasing recognition of individual rights]…that every [police state] has a duty to combat…

Rough Trade (#914) 

Imagine this actually going to trial in the US:

A sex worker…yelled, pushed and stabbed a client with her thumbs after he ignored her attempts to withdraw consent…Norman Ariate Alonzo denies being told to stop, [claiming the idiotic “she wanted to be barebacked by a stranger” defense]…Alonzo​…faces a charge of rape…[because] the woman noticed the condom had fallen off and she asked Alonzo to stop so she could retrieve another.  Instead, he continued to [rape her until she]…jabbed her thumbs into Alonzo’s throat and hit him across the face.  She ran out of the room, told her manager and waited in the bathroom until police arrived…

Condoms don’t “fall off” during active penetration unless they break or the man goes soft (unless he has a micropenis); they can, however, be stealthily pulled off by the kind of guy who thinks “she wanted it” is a believable defense for rape.

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If it really were as easy to get a sex slave as it is to order a pizza, then every cop, every FBI agent, every ICE agent, every law enforcement officer at every level needs to be fired immediately. –  Mike Siegel

To Molest and Rape (#729)

This is rape and armed robbery, not “sex trafficking”; see how the stats get padded?

A [typical and representative] Washington D.C. [cop] pleaded guilty to two counts of sex trafficking of a minor…Chukwuemeka Ekwonna…faces up to 20 years in prison…and will be required to register as a sex offender…Ekwonna was charged in April 2017 with [raping] a 15-year-old girl in Glen Burnie and then robbing her at gunpoint…Ekwonna [offered] the girl…money…[so she submitted to the rape, but] as she tried to leave, Ekwonna pulled out a…gun and demanded his money back…Ekwonna also paid for sex with a 14-year-old girl numerous times…[getting her to agree by threatening her with his status]…as a [cop]…Ekwonna and his father…were [previously] accused in a federal lawsuit of beating an inmate…while the two were [screws] at a Washington D.C. jail…

Checklist (#859)

The rescue industry is trying to expand its surveillance net:

The New York City-based NoVo Foundation has announced a three-year, $10 million commitment in support of [anti-sex, anti-migration] programs in the United States…The new  program will focus on those who are disproportionately [involved in]…sex…[work] but are [not harrased by cops often enough for prohibitionists’ liking]…including…girls and women of color, immigrants, and trans women…With the goal of…closing “on-ramps” to [economic freedom]…the program will support [surveillance by]…teachers, social workers, bus drivers, [cops], emergency room doctors, and [ICE thugs]…

Safe Position (#865)

Coming from politicians, this is very big:

We must end the criminalization of sex work now…most people trade sex out of economic need: to pay bills, make rent, and put food on the table…LGBTQ, black and brown, immigrant and disabled communities engage in sex work at higher rates because they are locked out of jobs in the formal economy.  Criminalization encourages rampant abuses by law enforcementNine out of ten people arrested in sex-work-related massage parlor raids are immigrants, most of them undocumented Asians…People arrested for prostitution are then diverted to the Human Trafficking Intervention Courts (HTICs), which conflate all sex work with sex trafficking and claim to treat sex workers as “victims” while essentially treating them as “criminals”.  ICE uses these courts to stalk and deport immigrant sex workers…we, along with Sen. Brad Hoylman and Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, are working with Decrim NY to introduce a bill to rewrite the state’s penal code to decriminalize the sex trades in New York State…

The Clueless Leading the Hysterical (#870) 

What this article omits is that until recently, cops were the primary vectors of this hysteria:

The “Momo challenge” is a recurring viral hoax that has been perpetuated by [irresponsible] news stations and s[tupi]d parents around the world.  This entire cycle of shock, terror, and outrage about Momo even took place before, less than a year ago:  Last summer, local news outlets across the country reported that the Momo challenge was spreading among teens via WhatsApp…The Momo challenge wasn’t real then, and it isn’t real now.  YouTube confirmed that, contrary to press reports, it hasn’t seen any evidence of videos showing or promoting the “Momo challenge” on its platform.  If the videos did exist, a spokesperson for YouTube said, they would be removed instantly for violating the platform’s policies.  Additionally, there have been zero corroborated reports of any child ever taking his or her own life after participating in this phony challenge…”A lot of this relies on people believing their local school or police force knows what they’re talking about when it comes to the internet.  Unfortunately most don’t have a clue and are sending letters to parents warning of non-existent issues like YouTube videos being ‘hacked’”…“Momo” itself is an innocuous sculpture created by the artist Keisuke Aisawa for the Japanese special-effects company Link Factory.  The real title of the artwork is Mother Bird, and it was on display at Tokyo’s horror-art Vanilla Gallery back in 2016.  After some Instagram photos of the exhibit were posted to the subreddit Creepy, it spread, and the “Momo challenge” urban legend was born…

O, Canada! (#885)

Canadian cops continue to try to sell their grotesque sex worker intimidation tactics as “helping” them:

Some of the work done by human trafficking detectives is proactive…about four or five times a month they set up “dates” where they book a time with a sex worker, but when she gets to the hotel room, she finds a cop who asks about her safety and gives her resources…[they] looks for keywords in listings — such as young, new to the area or no restrictions — as possible flags for human trafficking…

In other words, they waste a sex worker’s time (she may have turned down actual work because she thought this busybody thug was a real client) and travel expenses in order to browbeat and intimidate her; in incall situations their visit also sends the message “we know where you live”.  They specifically pick on inexperienced sex workers who may be easier to fool and frighten, and their so-called “resources” usually consist the phone number of the welfare office and some cheap, insulting garbage like flip-flops, toilet paper & religious tracts.

A Broker in Pillage (#896)

Perhaps Michigan will shut down its marauding cops before SCOTUS is forced to:

The Michigan Senate passed a civil asset forfeiture reform bill…that would require police to obtain a criminal conviction to seize assets valued under $50,000…police, particularly in Wayne County, Michigan, seized thousands of cars in 2017 under the auspices of marijuana enforcement…by…surveill[ing]…medical marijuana dispensaries…Wayne County’s asset forfeiture program is now the subject of a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by a woman whose car was seized after Wayne County Sheriff’s deputies found $10 worth of [legal medical] marijuana in it…[cops are of course] pushing back against the reform efforts…

Top Cop

Another police-state advancing lie from Copmala Harris:  “Harris says she is open to seeing sex work decriminalized. For those who have criticized her support of SESTA…and FOSTA…her willingness to explore decriminalization may be welcome news—or not“…Let’s go with “not”.  What Harris actually supports is the Swedish model, whose supporters often try to sell as “decriminalization” of sex workers: “I was advocating…that we have to stop arresting these prostitutes and start going after the johns and the pimps…Backpage was providing advertisements for the sale of children…And so I called for them to be shut down.  And I have no regrets about that“…As regular readers know, it’s very easy for cops to charge sex workers with “pimping”, and even when they don’t the Swedish model is pure awful.

Legislators Gone Wild (#909) 

All prohibitionists have emotional problems, but Guinasso seems to be an unhinged obsessive:

A woman who [pretends] she was sex trafficked through a Nevada brothel filed a federal lawsuit…that seeks to overturn the state’s legalized prostitution…Rebekah Charleston, who was born in Texas, [claims] in the lawsuit that a man she initially considered her boyfriend trafficked her…[through] the Moonlite Bunny Ranch in Northern Nevada [at a time she claims she is unable to remember, but sometime during the period when the brothel was featured in the reality show Cathouse.  Neither brothel records nor the sheriff’s office has any record of Charleston under that name or any of her aliases.  She is represented by prohibitionist]…attorney Jason Guinasso, who [has previously backed both legal initiatives and propaganda campaigns against]…Nevada’s legal brothels and [has also tried to get prostitutes’ personal information so he can out them]…

The War on Whores

From The Stranger:

Maggie McNeill…has been a sex worker, writer, and advocate for more than three decades, and her new documentary, The War on Whores, which was produced by Paul Johnson…[was] screened at the Rendezvous on March 2, during the Seattle Annual Sex Work Symposium (SASS).  In addition to covering the King County prosecutor’s shady dealings with an anti-sex-work group that paid the office more than $140,000 to arrest and prosecute a bunch of grown-ass men who were having consensual sex with adult sex workers, the film details just how politicians, law enforcement, and activists drummed up a panic against sex trafficking that…has expanded government powers from internet surveillance to asset forfeiture.  It’s a film that should be seen by everyone with an interest in civil liberties, but the people who really need this film are those who’ve never heard sex workers talk about their work and their lives for themselves…

Stupor Bowl (#914)

Virtually the only people who still profess to believe this nonsense are cops and politicians:

For Miami-area officials preparing to host the 2020 Super Bowl, the high-profile bust of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft…served as a poignant [sic] reminder of the [prohibitionist fantasy that there are] connections between big sporting events and sex trafficking.  Sex traffickers often converge on big-ticket events like the Super Bowl…[Prohibitionists are trying to salvage this moribund myth by now claiming without any supporting evidence] that sporting events like the Super Bowl don’t increase trafficking per se…the events can increase concentration of trafficked sex workers in the host city in the days surrounding the event…

An Avalanche of Bullshit

This tissue of lies is unraveling in record time:

From the very beginning, people who write about sex work were skeptical of these claims.  We were skeptical because the cops took six months to rescue these women from supposed sexual slavery.  We were skeptical because these narratives are often spun around racial minorities doing sex work (particularly those of Asian descent).  We were skeptical because the prosecutors and police started to quickly distance themselves from the narrative.  We were skeptical because the rhetoric — particularly the eight men a day thing — sounded like the same old hysterical narrative that has been building over the last decade…every time the media hypes “sex trafficking ring broken”, the merest due diligence shows that no trafficking charges are brought; only prostitution charges…if it really were as easy to get a sex slave as it is to order a pizza, then every cop, every FBI agent, every ICE agent, every law enforcement officer at every level needs to be fired immediately.  It’s a scandal that only a quarter of the murders in Chicago are cleared.  But it’s not a scandal that only one in a thousand purported sex slaves are found?…

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Speaking for myself and my…Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from [Kamala’s] travesty.  –  Donald Harris

Rough Trade 

Cops wait a year to arrest a dangerous, violent serial rapist.  Guess why?

…a 31-year-old [Dublin] tradesman…imprisoned, stripped, beat…and [raped a sex worker], who escaped out a window and ran naked onto a main road, where she flagged down a taxi…he al[so] pulled clumps of hair out of a second prostitute’s head and raped her, as well as robbing both women.  Judge Bryan Smyth [gave him]…bail [anyhow.  The first attack took place]…in June, 2016…and…the second…in [sic] February 4, 2018…

Amsterdam

Note that this positive article appeared on CNN, one of the major pushers of “sex trafficking” hysteria:

Amsterdam…isn’t as liberal for sex workers as many believe.  Sex work has been legal in some form in the Netherlands since 1830, but it was recognized as a legal profession in 1988.  In 2000, a law made the job subject to municipal regulation, requiring a license to operate and following certain rules set by a municipality…so each can differ.  For example, they can decide how many licenses to give out…The only places that have decriminalized sex work are New Zealand and the state of New South Wales in Australia.  In both places, sex work is not penalized through punitive laws, and regulation are premised on worker health and safety, as with any other profession…The reform in New Zealand…reduced violence against sex workers, increased their comfort in reporting abuse to the police and improved police attitudes toward sex workers, according to the country’s Ministry of Justice.  Research also showed that decriminalization in New Zealand resulted in sex workers being better able to refuse clients and insist on condom use. One study showed that decriminalization has the potential to reduce discrimination as well as denials of justice…

To Molest and Rape 

It’s rare and surprising to see the acts of a rapist cop actually called “rape”:

A…Wilmington [Delaware cop]…was charged with second-degree rape at the conclusion of a four-month [attempt at a cover-up]…Thomas R. Oliver Jr…on October 16, 2018…pulled up alongside a woman and told her to get into the front seat of the vehicle.  Oliver exposed himself to the woman, and told her she had active warrants for her arrest, but he would allow her to leave if she [sucked his disgusting pig dick]…Oliver grabbed the victim by the head and [orally raped her]…

The End of the Beginning (#772) 

Maybe we’re about to witness the beginning of the end of these evil laws:

“Sex offenders are not second-class citizens,” writes U.S. District Judge W. Keith Watkins in a recent decision overturning two provisions of the Alabama Sex Offender Registration and Community Notification Act (ASORCNA)…The lead plaintiff…pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges of indecent exposure in the early 1990s, when he was living in Wisconsin.  He received a six-month suspended sentence for each charge and was not required to register as a sex offender, even after moving to Alabama in 1994.  But 14 years later, Alabama expanded its registry, forcing Doe to comply with ASORCNA’s numerous demands and restrictions under threat of imprisonment.  Among other things, that meant his driver’s license was marked with the phrase “CRIMINAL SEX OFFENDER” in bold red letters…Judge Watkins ruled that Alabama’s branding of registered sex offenders’ identification cards is a form of compelled speech prohibited by the First Amendment…Another aspect of Alabama’s “debilitating sex-offender scheme” is a requirement that people in the registry report “email addresses or instant message addresses or identifiers used”…”An offender must report to the police every time he connects to a Wi-Fi spot at a new McDonald’s, every time he uses a new computer terminal at a public library…Every time he walks into a new coffee shop, he must determine whether opening his laptop is worth the hassle of reporting”…the demand for information about online activity applied to…the…plaintiffs even though their offenses had nothing to do with the internet or children…

Lack of Evidence (#805)

All cops or prosecutors will need to do to get around this law is say the magic words “sex trafficking”:

San Francisco’s [largely-cosmetic] policy protecting sex workers is now being pitched on the state level.  California Sen. Scott Wiener…introduce[d] legislation Monday that would prevent law enforcement from arresting and charging sex workers who come forward as victims or witnesses to serious crimes [unless they decide to charge the sex workers with “trafficking” instead].  The proposed law, SB233, would also prevent [cops] from using condoms as probable cause to arrest a sex worker…Wiener said…“We want to [fool]…sex workers [in]to feel[ing] safe in reporting crimes”…

San Francisco, which as the article states first enacted this “policy”, took only two months to get around it by declaring a “sex trafficking” exception and forming a vice squad specifically intended to “abate” sex workers.  You know, like a disease.

Overdue

Another example of our culture’s obsession with form over substance:

They used chopped-up chalk as fake crack cocaine and cloaked their white skin in blackface makeup.  Then the two [pigs] hit the streets of Baton Rouge, hoping to fool interested drug buyers in the predominantly black neighborhood into believing they were dealers.  “Not only do they not know we’re cops — they don’t even know we’re white!” then-Detective Frankie Caruso told the Advocate newspaper in 1993, the year the undercover blackface operation took place.  Now, 26 years later, the Baton Rouge Police Department is apologizing for the tactics after a police yearbook photo of the two disguised cops surfaced, marking the latest blackface scandal to ensnare authority figures and the first this year involving undercover police…

They’re not apologizing for intentionally destroying lives, or for specifically targeting black people for something that shouldn’t even be illegal; nope, they’re just apologizing because they did so inappropriately.

Safe Position

Though these legislative “studies” are useless, perhaps they’ll normalize the topic:

Bella Robinson…and her organization, COYOTE – RI, are working with Brown University and advocating for a new bill…sponsored by Rep. Anastasia Williams [which] proposes a commission to study the health and safety impact of sex work laws.  “Crackdowns against sex workers…[are because] we prioritize [religious] morals over the safety of people involved in the sex industry,” said Meghan Peterson, a Brown University researcher…one prominent opponent…is Donna Hughes, [architect of the]…[re-]criminalization [of sex work] in 2009…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#868) 

At least they’re not calling this an “escort service”:

…the advertising for Doll Next Door brings a host of questions about how this latest trend in sexual services will be regulated in Edmonton, if at all…the service offers customers the choice of a two-hour booking or overnight rental with one of five doll models…the doll is then sent in discreet packaging to the customer’s home or a specified hotel…Kelly Jenny, a sex therapist at Insight Psychological, said she can see the benefits associated with sex dolls, but says they can also be used [as magical transformation devices] to objectify women

Pyrrhic Victory (#894) 

More on Amazon’s campaign to end privacy forever:

…Amazon…Ring products come with access to a social app called Neighbors that allows customers to not just to keep tabs on their own property, but also to share [accusations]…with the rest of the block…Forming decentralized 19th-century vigilance committees with 21st-century technology has been a toxic move, as shown by apps like…Nextdoor, which tends to foster lively discussions about nonwhite people strolling through various suburbs.  But Ring stands alone as…an avowed attempt to merge 24/7 video, ubiquitous computer sensors, and facial recognition, and deliver it to local police on a platter.  It’s no surprise then that police departments from Bradenton, Florida, to Los Angeles have leapt to “partner” with Ring…

Just a reminder that the word for such authoritarian corporate/government “partnerships” is “fascism”.

The Prudish Giant (#895)

Facebook can’t even follow its own “standards”:

For years, King Cake Snob…has used visitor feedback to choose the best king cakes in various categories in the lead up to Mardi Gras.  So…the site decided to build some interest with a sponsored Facebook post…featuring ten tiny plastic king cake babies — all of which were, as usual, in the buff.  However, though the image remains up, Facebook decided to flag it as ineligible for a paid “sponsored” post…“This ad isn’t running because it includes an image or video depicting excessive skin or nudity…This kind of material is sensitive in nature”…

Top Cop

Copmala tried to sell her dad’s heritage for political coin, and he’s not happy:

United States (US) presidential hopeful Kamala Harris faced scathing criticisms from her father for attributing her support for the legalisation of marijuana to her…heritage.  “Half my family is from Jamaica, are you kidding me?” Kamala Harris responded when asked if she smoked marijuana during an interview…Donald Harris has “categorically” disassociated himself and his family from “this travesty” and slammed his daughter for stereo-typing her heritage for political gain.  “My dear departed grandmothers as well as my deceased parents must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected…with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker…in the pursuit of identity politics”…Harris [said]…

Legislators Gone Wild (#909) 

This story just keeps getting uglier and filthier:

Former Lyon County Sheriff Al McNeil was the largest campaign contributor to the End Trafficking and Prostitution political action committee before the 2018 election, campaign finance records show.  McNeil made contributions totaling $1,499.  Each of McNeil’s two contributions were under $1,000, which avoided mandatory reporting before the election under state campaign finance law…

Worse Than I Thought (#914)

Condemning consenting adults to the “sex offender” registry is the latest “monkey see, monkey do” fad:

Pennsylvania…[politician] Kim Ward wants…a change to state law that would require those convicted of [any sex work related “crime”]…to the…sex offender…[registry]…

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The system isn’t in place to help you. It’s in place to keep you where you are.  –  Sophie

Thought Control (#137)

I’ve written on several occasions about arch-censor Fredric Wertham, a prohibitionist busybody who used Melissa Farley-style tactics to lobotomize the comic book industry in the 1950s; here’s a short video (courtesy of Kevin Wilson) showing him in action.

The Course of a Disease (#729)

There is no “debate”; this terrible law was unilaterally imposed by politicians despite vociferous opposition from everyone who is affected by it:

French sex workers have lodged a constitutional challenge to [the Swedish model]…reopening a debate on whether people should be free to [have consensual sex without government interference]…around 30 sex workers backed by nine associations, including [the prestigious Médecins du Monde], went to the Constitutional Council to argue the law infringed their sexual and commercial freedom and made them more vulnerable to attack…the law…[i]s an infringement of “constitutional rights to personal autonomy and sexual freedom, respect of privacy, freedom of contract and freedom to do business”…

The Course of a Disease (#796)

Prohibitionist scum understand that decriminalization is the only moral framework for sex work; that’s why they keep trying to trick people into thinking the Swedish model is decrim:

Rep Kay Khan of [Massachusetts is at it again with]…two [Swedish model] bills…One…n[orm]alizes [the persecution of] young people involved in sex work by [subjecting them to indefinite detention under the pretense of “protecting” them]…the other [pretends] to decriminalize adult sex workers [in order to confuse people into backing a campaign to choke off their income, get them evicted and persecute their families]…The two bills evolved from an earlier bill, HB 3499, which was submitted to to the Massachusetts House and Senate in early 2017…Any step towards decriminalization [would be] a win for sex workers’ rights.  But unfortunately, these bills [are not such a step and intentionally] leave in place statutes, language, funding, and institutional infrastructure which…[enables cops to] aggressively pursue…sex workers…

The Swedish model is NOT a step toward decriminalization; it infantilizes women, demonizes men, and defines consensual sex as “violence against women”.  That is a giant step away from decriminalization.

Signs (#886)

The public seems to have finally noticed that hotels are training their staff to harass women:

…Marriott International said it has reached a goal of training 500,000 hotel workers to spot and [harass sex workers]…Marriott President and CEO Arne Sorenson [said] “By…[indoctrinat]ing our global workforce to say something if they see something, we are [licking the boots of our masters and] protecting associates and guests [from dangerous sex rays]”…It collaborated with [prohibitionist] anti-[whore] groups ECPAT-USA and Polaris to create the program, which has been translated into 16 languages as well as English so it can be taught to employees throughout the 130 countries in which Marriott does business…

Legislators Gone Wild (#887) 

Oh, what a surprise:

…an annual Campaign and Expense…report filed by the End Trafficking and Prostitution (ETAP) PAC revealed…what appears to have been an outrageous abuse of power and conflict of interest by an elected government official…In December 2017, Reno lawyer Jason Guinasso  filed a public records request with the Lyon County recorder’s office demanding copies of the work card applications submitted to the Lyon County sheriff’s office by professional sex workers at all four of Lyon County’s legal brothels.  He filed the request on letterhead from the law firm at which he works – Hutchison and Steffen – which happens to be owned by then-Nevada Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison, a political opponent of then-Assembly candidate Dennis Hof, who happened to own all four of Lyon County’s legal brothels…my guess is he wanted to make the addresses public in an effort to shame the adult women who were engaged in a legal business he has personal objections to…A couple months later Mr. Guinasso registered “End Trafficking and Prostitution” as a PAC with the Nevada Secretary of State…to place initiatives on the November 2018 ballot to shut down the legal brothels in Nye and Lyon counties – the two counties, not coincidentally, where Mr. Hof owned brothels…On June 7, 2018 the Lyon County Commission voted to place an “advisory question” on the ballot despite Mr. Guinasso’s failure to obtain enough signatures from Lyon County voters to do so himself…[this] was ultimately and overwhelmingly rejected in November by 80 percent of voters…

As we’ve seen before, crap like this is one of the primary reasons sex worker licensing schemes have such abysmally low compliance rates (below 1% in Nevada):  very few women are interested in being on a shaming & stalking list.

Why I Wait (#889)

Another dumb article about a phenomenon that probably doesn’t even exist:

…In her December 2018 cover story for The Atlantic warning that Americans—Millennials in particular—are having “so little sex,” senior editor Kate Julian soberly framed the drop as a “sex recession”.  Drawing from a 2017 study…[and methodologically-poor] evidence from the 2016 General Social Survey…sex for all adults dropped from 62 to 54 times a year, on average…mainly among white, middle-aged, married couples…the fear of a “sex recession” is misdirected.  A drop in sexual encounters from 62 to 54 times per year means that the average adult is still having sex more than once a week.  Current research suggests that having sex more than once a week does not have any positive impact on relationship satisfaction

That’s enough to show you the weaknesses in this turd sandwich, which, while skeptical of the worry, is not at all skeptical of the crap evidence itself.  Regular readers may recall that, as I’ve written on multiple occasions, the GSS is conducted face to face and is a terrible source for any sexual data (such as “have you ever paid for sex?“) because people simply lie about sexual questions.  These surveys don’t find anything about what people are actually doing sexually; what they measure is people’s relative comfort with the question, which is a horse of a different color.  The innate moralism of this article is visible in its assumption that the only important factor in talking about sex is “relationship satisfaction” (because obviously everybody has to pair off in vanilla monogamous amateur couples), not to mention the author’s asinine and moralistic statement that “There’s also a bit of a dark side in framing sex as economic given the realities of sex work“; I suspect this dumb bunny wouldn’t know one of the “realities of sex work” if it sashayed up and kissed her on the nose.

Stupor Bowl (#899) 

There’s very little point in bothering to quote this ridiculous mess because it’s the same garbage we’ve seen countless times: Theresa Flores selling her magical anti-pimp soap (designed to “help” women too stupid to remember the numbers “9-1-1”) and retelling her masturbatory fantasy of ninja pimps who managed to sneak her out of her home to “sell her for sex” every single night for two years without any member of her family ever noticing or any of her teachers wondering why she was falling asleep in class.  Politicians posturing so spasmodically one has to wonder how they don’t dislocate something.  Prohibitionists lovingly drooling over fantasies of enslaved thirteen-year-olds.  The magnification of a few prostitution arrests into an army of invisible “traffickers”.  I’m only mentioning it for two reasons: First, note that the opportunists now wait for mere days before the event in the forlorn hope that we won’t have time to debunk them (they used to start crowing about this idiocy as much as a year ahead); and second, that debunking is now so widespread that a refutation of this foofaraw appeared in the very same paper, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Disaster (#899)

Tumblr made its bed, and now look who’s lying in it with them:

One month ago, Tumblr made the wildly unpopular decision to ban pornography and adult content from its website.  The move was greeted with outrage…and…critics accused the site of attempting to please larger tech corporations…Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio, however, maintained that the changes were made to foster a more “inclusive” community…however…the website is currently littered with pages promoting Nazism, white supremacy, ethno-nationalism, and far-right terrorism.  Despite their often flagrant violation of Tumblr’s Community Guidelines, these pages remain largely active and easy to find…

Well, at least Tumblr users are safe from “female-presenting nipples”.

On Tape

Trump has finally made it acceptable to question “sex trafficking” porn, at least when he spreads it:

…Trump[‘s]…human trafficking hyperbole is barely distinguishable  from the melodramatic “modern slavery” narratives put forth regularly by Barack Obama, Loretta Lynch, Hillary Clinton, and others during their tenure in power.  Or the stories stories spun by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) during her time as California attorney general.  And none of those stories were any less out of touch with reality…Ye[t]…CNN—which has rarely met a fact-free sex-trafficking melodrama it wouldn’t publish uncritically—ran an article titled “Experts: Trump’s tape-bound women trafficking claim is misleading“…and…at Vox, Dara Lind…reports that a top Border Patrol official emailed agents last week seeking information to back up the president’s claims…Seeking post-hoc justification for wild human trafficking claims is also a bad habit that predates Trump.  For many years, numbers spread by Justice Department and administration officials were more or less made up out of thin air, as The Washington Post‘s Glenn Kessler has pointed out. (See also: “The War on Sex Trafficking Is the New War on Drugs“)…

Top Cop

Another look at the odiousness of the police-state operative Hillary fans have anointed as their savior:

…any Democratic women who reject the feminist label would kill her campaign before it even started.  This may be why it’s especially galling that all four [female] candidates signed a piece of legislation that is making life harder and more dangerous for some of society’s most vulnerable women…SESTA/FOSTA, which was widely advertised by its proponents as a way to fight human trafficking.  What the legislation, which was co-sponsored by Sens. [Kamala] Harris and [Kirsten] Gillibrand, actually did was amend the Communications Decency Act, which, until last year, prohibited websites from being held liable for content posted by the site’s users…prominent sex-work marketplaces either shut down voluntarily, like Craigslist’s Casual Encounters section, or, like Backpage, were seized and shut down by the Feds. This is exactly what Harris intended…“from my earliest days as a prosecutor, I’ve led the fight against Backpage and other sex [work advertising] platforms”…There was one group…that has roundly condemned SESTA/FOSTA, and that’s the group most impacted by it: sex workers…

The article, by Katie Herzog of The Stranger, includes interviews with me, my friend Sophie and other sex workers.

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What we’re seeing is not so much a war on trafficking as a full-on frontal assault against…sex workers.  –  John Blaylock

Buried Truth 

Yet another perfect example of the McNeill Rule:

Norman Goldwasser, by day, is an Orthodox Jewish therapist at Horizon Psychological Services who compares homosexuality to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and misleads clients by claiming that their sexual orientation can be changed with his special brand of quack therapy, which is rejected by every respected medical and mental health association.  By night…he solicits sexual partners on Manhunt, a gay dating App, using the profile “Hotnhairy72”…Goldwasser also had a profile on Bear Nation by the same name…

Moving Pictures 

Another “sex trafficking” hysteria film for future generations to mock:

Doing Money aired tonight on BBC Two as the drama, based on real life events, explored the horrors of sex trafficking happening in the UK…Central character Ana (played by Anca Dumitra) was abducted off of a London street before being taken to Ireland where she was used a sex slave. The first ten minutes of the film saw Ana resisting her captors when they forced a “customer” on her…The story of Ana is based on the lived experiences of a woman who was held as a sex slave for 10 months and trafficked around both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

This is “based on real life events” like Roger Corman’s Vincent Price vehicles of the early ’60s were “based on” Poe stories.

Perquisites (#556)

Should we tell them most adult businesses bill under different names and business-classification codes to avoid bullshit like this?  Naaaaah.

Under Armour Inc. employees received an email earlier this year that upended a longstanding company practice: They could no longer charge visits to strip clubs on their corporate cards.  Over the years, executives and employees of the sports-apparel company, including Chairman and Chief Executive Kevin Plank, went with athletes or co-workers to strip clubs after some corporate and sporting events, and the company often paid for the visits of many attendees…Strip-club visits were symptomatic of practices women at Under Armour found demeaning…

Rough Trade (#682) 

This headline and lede are stigmatizing bullshit:

India’s Supreme Court has ruled that sex-workers have a right to refuse their services and seek redress when [raped]…The ruling came as the court overturned a 2009 Delhi High Court judgment that acquitted four people accused in a 1997 gang rape case.  The four defendants were previously freed on the grounds the victim was “a woman of bad character who indulged in prostitution”.  The Supreme Court restored the trial court’s conviction in the case and ordered that the four people accused must surrender within four weeks to serve the rest of their 10-year sentence…They also said if there was evidence to show that the victim was “habituated to sexual intercourse”, it cannot be inferred that the victim is of “loose moral character”.  The…ruling [also] reverses a 2016 Supreme Court ruling which said that a sex worker cannot file a case alleging rape if their customers refused to pay…

Indian sex workers already had the right to refuse services; what this judgment does is eliminates the “But she was a whore!” defense for rape, which is not at all the same thing.

Signs (#775)

Motel 6 gets some comeuppance for its eager copsucking:

Motel 6 has agreed to pay $7.6 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by a Latino civil rights organization after the motel chain systematically shared guest information with [ICE]…The company will compensate Motel 6 guests who were questioned by ICE or [subjected to] deportation proceedings…[the] practice…le[d] to the arrest of at least 20 undocumented guests in Phoenix…It’s unclear how many…may be eligible for compensation…but…they may be numerous…

There is a similar lawsuit pending in Washington state.

Between the Lines (#788)

Here’s the first propaganda from this year’s “Operation Cross-Country” pogroms:

A human trafficking and prostitution sting in [Houston]…netted 75 arrests…[only 32 were men, 11 of which [cops decided to charge as] pimps…28 were woman [and the other 15 apparently were asexual organisms of some kind]…Sheriff Rand Henderson [bragged] he was “so proud” of [destroying people’s lives for desiring consensual sex or doing honest work for a living]…Henderson [fantasized that]…prostitution has evolved into human trafficking with most of the sex workers being trafficked individuals…

Bread and Circuses (#800) 

The time for men’s magazines to come on board as active supporters of sex worker rights is long overdueHustler‘s December issue contains this very supportive article which quotes Missy Mariposa, Liara Roux, Jessica Raven and Arabelle Raphael, mostly on FOSTA/SESTA but also on decriminalization, the War on Whores and sex worker rights in general.

To Molest and Rape (#830) 

Rapists argue that their rape isn’t rape because they should be held to a “different standard” than decent human beings:

…An…immigration detention center is trying to avoid responsibility for sexual violence within its walls by arguing that the detainee “consented” to sexual abuse.  E.D., an asylum-seeker and domestic violence survivor from Honduras, was sexually assaulted by an employee while she was detained with her 3-year-old child at the Berks Family Residential Center in Pennsylvania. At the time…E.D. was 19 years old…her assailant coerced and threatened her, including with possible deportation, while the defendants stood by and made jokes.  Although the employee pled guilty to criminal institutional sexual assault under Pennsylvania law, the defendants contend that they should not be liable for any constitutional violations.  Their argument rests in part on their [pretense] that the sexual abuse was “consensual” and that they should be held to a different standard because…Berks…is an immigration [prison]…rather than a jail or prison [for citizens]…there were 1,448 [incidents of rape or other] sexual abuse [reported to] ICE between 2012 and March 2018.  In 2017 alone, there were 237 [incidents of rape or other] sexual abuse in immigration [prisons]…

Legislators Gone Wild (#879) 

Prohibitionists trot out the Marxist “false consciousness” excuse when people won’t support their bans:

Groups looking to [ban] prostitution in Nevada [refuse to stop trying to impose their will on]…Lyon County voters [who] reject[ed]…an advisory question to rescind the county’s brothel ordinance.  [Prohibitionist] Brenda Sandquist…said…“The people of Lyon County — this is their normal. It’s that mentality – it’s normal that those brothels are there.  To have them removed could be a little scary…They believe the lie of the brothel myth.  That’s all they know…They just have to become more aware”…

And just for good measure, they got rid of their anti-brothel sheriff, too.

The Widening Gyre (#879)

Cop denials of “sex trafficking” scary tales would be more effective if unaccompanied by recitation of the usual myths:

[Cops] and [other prohibitionists fantasize]…that children and teens in Michigan are sold for sex, but it doesn’t happen the way many think.  The most common myth…is…spread on social media.  Someone [fantasizes about other shoppers]…in a store and goes online…to [share the fantasy.  But cops find this inconvenient to dissemination of their pro-surveillance, pro-censorship myth that prepubescent]…Children are more likely to be targeted inside their own homes…”It’s someone who has [magically teleported] into your house, on your couch or in your kids bedroom via their smart device,” [fantasized sow Jolene] Hardesty…the most common age range for sex trafficking victims is 13- to 16-years-old…[cops also fantasize that criminal cartels have a]…recruitment process [which] spread from social media into schools…[yet] YWCA Jessica Glynn…said…Most of the cases she’s seen involve one victim and one suspect, not a chain of victims…She said the Hollywood portrayal of sex trafficking also makes it difficult to prosecute [sex workers and their associates as] traffickers…

R.I.P. Dennis Hof

Too bad we can’t elect more dead politicians:  “Dennis Hof defeated Democratic educator Lesia Romanov on Tuesday in the race for Nevada’s 36th Assembly District…County officials will appoint a Republican to take his place in the seat…”  As regular readers know, I’m no Hof fan; furthermore, they’re going to negate the benefits of electing a corpse by putting a living windbag in his place.  But wouldn’t it be great if dead politicians were forced to be seated & finish their terms?  All of their votes would automatically count as “no”, and their salaries would go to paying any government debts.  It would be like those towns who elect dogs and cats as mayors.

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[Politicians] who insisted they were [censoring escort ads] to save women’s lives…have only served to put more women in potentially mortal danger.  –  Mike Masnick

Bad Girls 

This wasn’t a very wise thing to do, but cops being humiliated is always funny:

To the rest of the world, Ali Sheppard is a [pig], but to prostitute Taquanna Lawton, he was just “a trick”…Lawton…was arraigned for stealing the cop’s Jeep and gun when he ran off to an ATM so he could pay for her services…[she said] she and Sheppard may have done business before…Lawton is charged with grand larceny…Her attorney Paul Giovanniello said Lawton has mental health and substance abuse issues and the full story of what happened between her and Sheppard has not been told…Sheppard has been suspended without pay for 30 days and is facing disciplinary charges

The More the Better

Anything that helps demystify sex work is a good thing:

…Lia Holmgren…[is an] intimacy coach [who]…thinks a little power play can benefit a relationship.  “Once you open your mind to [BDSM], you will open your mind to other things in the relationship”…In her Chelsea office, she charges clients up to $500 for 90-minute intimacy counseling sessions.  There, she helps couples open the lines of communication about having submissive or dominant roles in the bedroom…to improve their sex lives and bring them closer…Before she started counseling couples two years ago…[she] was a professional dominatrix…Her résumé also includes stripping and organizing sex parties, as well as…vanilla…work in real estate…

The Truth About “The Truth About…”

Another of those nonexistent false sexual assault accusations:

Several high school girls…claimed a male student sexually assaulted them because they “just don’t like him”…neither [the school nor the state] punished the young women at all.  Now the boy’s parents, Michael J. and Alicia Flood, are suing the parents of the five girls and the Seneca Valley School District in Pennsylvania over their son’s treatment…One of the girls decided…in October 2017 “she would do anything to get [the boy] expelled” so she accused him of sexually assaulting her at the pool [where he worked as a lifeguard the previous summer].  A friend of [hers] who worked at the pool, Megan Villegas, claimed she was present during the assault…the boy was charged with indecent assault and…agreed to a consent decree that allowed him to avoid admitting guilt and required him to stay out of trouble for six months while on probation…in March 2018, a friend of the first accuser, identified only as C.S., claimed the boy entered her house without her permission and sexually assaulted her.  Two more friends, identified as E.S. and H.R., backed up her claim.  In April, the accused student was charged with another indecent assault, criminal trespass, and simple assault.  He was expelled and arrested and identified as a threat to his community. He spent nine days in a juvenile detention center and then placed on house arrest…In May, three of the girls admitted they lied, but it took until August 30 for Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger to dismiss the second accusation, and until September 10 to close the charges related to the first accusation…

The Widening Gyre (#663)

The deeply-racist “Nigerian sex slaves” wanking fantasy has crossed the Alps:

Hundreds of Nigerian women have been trafficked into Paris as sex workers, lured by the promise of a new life only to find themselves in a cycle of abuse and exploitation…The women are physically branded with scars that identify them back in Nigeria as cursed women…there’[s] been a nearly 600-percent increase in potential sex trafficking victims arriving in Europe through Italy since 2014 and 80% of them were Nigerian…police [fantasize] that most of the women who work at the Bois de Vincennes are slaves…[prohibitionists claim] the women who walk these streets are [magically] getting younger and that their apparent freedom is a [magical] illusion…[because] they have [magically] lost their identity…

Given all the childish claims of magic (zombie “sex slaves” who grow ever-younger while cloaked with spells of illusion), this one could’ve just as well been filed under “Mumbo Jumbo“.  These fantasies appear to have been invented to shore up a campaign to deport as many Nigerians as possible using claims of a “prostitution ring”, “money laundering” and the “Nigerian mafia”.

Stalkers in Blue

Interesting buried detail: she’s a cop herself.  Birds of a feather

A former Woodland [police]woman who accused [another cop] of abusing his police power to stalk, threaten and improperly investigate her has settled her lawsuit against him for $275,000…Jody Wattier…lost custody of her children, aged 9 and 10, and had to rebuild her life because officer Brad Gillaspie orchestrated a campaign of intimidation and slander against her while she was divorcing her husband, who was Gillaspie’s friend…Woodland…[Washington]’s insurer will pay the settlement…An investigation…recommended charges of malicious mischief and telephone harassment against Wattier, but the city prosecutor declined to file them…Wattier, who has remarried and lives in Tacoma while working in the state Attorney General’s office, was a [cop] herself in North Plains, Oregon.  She said she resigned from the department in June 2015 after talking to her chief about how the investigations into her had complicated her job…the Woodland police department knew Gillaspie was a problem…[he had] a history of inappropriate…behavior…such as…taking a juvenile female’s phone into his office and viewing her private, sexually explicit photographs.  Afterwards, [other cops] began locking up cell phones so Gillaspie couldn’t access them…

Checklist (#852) 

It looks like that mind-bogglingly absurd claim that 4% of the world’s population per decade magically vanish without anyone noticing wasn’t just a typo or a one-time idiocy.  Liz Brown snapped this pic of an ad from “Airline Ambassadors” in an inflight magazine, and there it is again:  68,000 per day, which comes to the “almost 500,000 per week” claimed in Forbes back in June.  Even for “sex trafficking” profiteers, this claim goes beyond the ridiculous to the completely unhinged; are these people really unable to multiply at a 9-year-old’s level, or do they simply know that the average American is too stupid to perform the calculation and/or too intellectually lazy to bother?  After all, this is the same organization which begs for funds using that dopey “air hostesses vs. pimps” story which the press repeated endlessly without bothering to check the news archives (which show no “sex trafficker” apprehended at SFO in 2011).  Note also that whoever darkened the hand with Photoshop to achieve a subtly racist effect left the thumb white.

Legislators Gone Wild (#868) 

Still believe that Nevada politicians are pro-sex work?

In an article published…[by] Reuters…Lyons County Sheriff Al McNeil charged that Dennis Hof…was implicated in “immigration violations” regarding some of the prostitutes working at Hof’s brothels, and even claimed that an investigation conducted by his office in concert with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) found “indications of possible human trafficking” among the sex workers…There’s just one problem: It’s McNeil and his office whose job it is to vet all of the women wishing to work in brothels, to make sure that they are citizens or lawful permanent residents with green cards, and after doing their due diligence in vetting the women, to issue licenses to them to work in the brothels…

Naturally, the lying douchebags at Morality in Media used this as an excuse to attack decriminalization, moronically claiming that Hof is a proponent of it despite the obvious fact that he absolutely is not, and in fact vomits out “sex trafficking” propaganda at every opportunity so as to argue against decriminalization on the grounds that whores are too stupid and incompetent to be allowed to work outside of brothels.

Disaster (#869)

I’ve never seen anything galvanize public support for sex workers like FOSTA has:

Before FOSTA became law, plenty of experts in the space tried to warn everyone that a bill that was frequently promoted as being necessary to help “save the lives” of vulnerable women…would actually put more lives at risk.  And we’ve already had…evidence to support that this prediction was entirely accurate.  Various law enforcement officials have been complaining that it’s now more difficult to catch sex traffickers.  And, now the Associated Press has a big article looking at the impact of FOSTA and it’s not pretty.  The closing down of various online forums for sex workers has driven more sex workers into the street, where their lives are at significantly higher risk…

Disaster (#876)

Good news about the FOSTA challenge:

…attorneys for the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, and other Plaintiffs appealed the ruling…dismissing the FOSTA case for lack of standing. Joining in the appeal are The Internet Archive, Human Rights Watch, Jesse Maley, and Eric Koszyk.  The case will now be considered by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal…Ricci Levy, President…of…Woodhull [said]…“This law is a clear First Amendment violation…We’re in this for the long haul and you can count on us to continue to fight illogical and unconstitutional laws, like FOSTA, which hamper our mission and restrict free expression.”  The District Court never reached the constitutional issues, instead deciding that the Plaintiffs were not sufficiently impacted by the law in order to justify a legal challenge.  However, each Plaintiff demonstrated how its activities were affected once the law went into effect…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#876) 

Despite the hilarity of the hysteria, at least politicians correctly classified the dolls as “arcade games”:

The Houston City Council voted to change city rules [to] effectively ban the use of sex [dolls] in shops…The owner of Kinky Dolls sex robot shop in Toronto announced weeks ago that he would open a second shop in Houston…[In response, politicians] hastily changed [a] city ordinance [to prohibit] customers…touch[ing] a [doll] inside a store…[the] ordinance deal[s] with “arcade” games, which in this case, the [dolls were] classified as.  The ordinance does not stop the sale of the [dolls], it just stops the use of them for [masturbation] in [retail stores.  Council member Greg Travis lied that]…”We’re not legislating morality”…

The Widening Gyre (#878)

The more cops are forced to deny “sex trafficking” scary tales, the harder it will be for them to spread such tales themselves:

[Hysteria over] women’s encounters with [people they fantasize are involved in] sex trafficking and kidnapping [has] surged on social media and have left some students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln feeling unsafe…John Backer said the University Police has received multiple calls from people concerned about the [fantasy].  “Sex traffickers gain the trust of their victims, it usually doesn’t happen spontaneously”…Polaris, a [prohibitionist group] that strives to [profit from the moral panic over] human trafficking, [fantasizes] that traffickers often target women by promising a high-paying job, a loving relationship or new and exciting opportunities…

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It’s time to stop letting zealots…not only destroy the lives of innocent people but hijack police and media focus for their weird authoritarian ends.  –  Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Lack of Evidence 

They were “safeguarded”, no doubt at a “safe house”.  How stupid do these pigs think we are?

Police have busted what they believe to be a suspected brothel in Moseley…[they] discovered dozens of condoms and…around £200 in cash in…[a woman’s] purse…Sparkbrook Police tweeted… “SparkbrookWMP have raided a suspected brothel in Moseley today.  Two females have been safeguarded…often you find organised Sex Trafficking behind them”…

This is your regular reminder that massive police operations in the UK have never found more than a single-digit number of “sex trafficking” cases.  Plus condoms and pocket change as “evidence” of “sex trafficking”.  What a pathetic, misogynistic wanking fantasy.

Dirty Amateurs

Amateurs are a menace to public health; they should be licensed and heavily regulated:

Rates of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia have climbed for the fourth consecutive year in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced…Last year, nearly 2.3 million US cases of these sexually transmitted diseases were diagnosed…That’s the highest number ever reported nationwide, breaking the record set in 2016 by more than 200,000 cases…

Change a Few Words

A good example of why “legalized” sex work is a bad idea:

In November 2016, Massachusetts voters approved a ballot initiative legalizing marijuana for recreational use.  But nearly two years later, there are still no stores licensed to sell pot to the public.  One business owner now she faces criminal charges for trying to find a way around the roadblock…Humble Bumble, a since-closed health and wellness store, would overcharge for regular items.  In return, customers were “‘gifted’ specific amounts of a green, leafy substance consistent with marijuana”…Humble Bumble…wasn’t technically selling marijuana to customers, and it seems like the store did its best to comply with local regulations…Under Massachusetts law, it’s not illegal to give away weed for free.  The transfer simply can’t be “advertised or promoted to the public.”  Other companies in the state have been taking advantage of this loophole as well.  But…only Kattar has been prosecuted…

Torture Chamber 

“Correcting” people to death:

Another inmate has died in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, making 12 deaths this month.  Troy Pittman…died at Promise Hospital…The manner and cause of death are pending autopsy but [Coroner David] Ruth [claimed] Pittman likely died of “natural causes”.  Pittman was an inmate at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, making him the fifth inmate death at the facility this month…The ages of the 11 other deceased inmates in August  range from 24 to 78.  Three were housed at the South Mississippi Correctional Institution, four were at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility, three were at Parchman and one was housed at the privately run Wikinson County Correctional Facility…

Dirty Laundry (#438)

More on child abuse by nuns at US orphanages:

…for all the…[recent] revelations [about abusive Catholic clergy] — including this month’s Pennsylvania grand jury report on how the church hid the crimes of hundreds of priests — a darker history…remains all but unknown.  It is the history of unrelenting physical and psychological abuse of captive children.  Across thousands of miles, across decades, the abuse took eerily similar forms:  People who grew up in orphanages said they were made to kneel or stand for hours, sometimes with their arms straight out, sometimes holding their boots or some other item.  They were forced to eat their own vomit.  They were dangled upside down out windows, over wells, or in laundry chutes.  Children were locked in cabinets, in closets, in attics, sometimes for days, sometimes so long they were forgotten.  They were told their relatives didn’t want them, or they were permanently separated from their siblings.  They were sexually abused. They were mutilated…[some] entered orphanages but did not leave them alive…these deaths…were not natural or even accidents, but were instead the inevitable consequence of the nuns’ brutality…

To Molest and Rape 

Another prosecutor claims he let a serial rapist cop off to “protect” his underage victim:

…Georgia [cop Richard Gooddine]…accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl…has been fired…and is under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation…Gooddine detained the girl [on August 19th] for violating curfew…he…drove [her] around for hours and sexually assaulted her at an apartment complex before driving her home…GBI previously investigated Gooddine over a 2011 sexual assault [of]…a minor.  The case wasn’t prosecuted.  Fulton County D.A. [pig mouthpiece claimed]…the office was concerned about traumatizing the victim in that case…

Victimless “crimes” such as curfew violations exist for the sole purpose of giving cops excuses to harass and victimize peaceful people who are harming nobody.

Vendetta (#664)

Liz Brown on this year’s Swanee Hunt psychodrama pogroms:

Last week concluded the latest “National Johns Suppression Initiative”, an appropriately draconian name for a coordinated cross-country targeting of sex workers and their customers…The [ChicagoTribune headline describes it a “national sex trafficking crackdown”.  But let’s do the math from the figures it gives us:  473 people arrested for attempting to pay for sexual activity…6 people arrested for pimping…0 people arrested for sex trafficking…This “national sex trafficking operation” has a zero percent success rate if the goal is, you know, actually catching sex traffickers.  Even counting the six alleged pimps, these arrests make up less than 1.3 percent of the total arrests reported (and that’s without including sex workers arrested in the course of these stings)…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#837) 

If this is a “brothel”, then a room with a foosball table is a “stadium”:

…Aura Dolls is launching what it claims is the first sex doll brothel in North America on Sept. 8…Names, photos and descriptions of the dolls can be found on the company’s website along with rates which range from $80 for one doll for 30 minutes to $960 for two dolls for four hours…the customers will only interact with the dolls when they visit the business, which will have a private entrance at the back and a buzzer system to exit.  “They put their payment down on the counter and they go straight to their room,” [marketing director Claire] Lee said…“We don’t have staff there, just a camera”…The company also encourages the use of lube and condoms and said the dolls will be cleaned after each customer using a three-step routine to get them as clean as possible…

Not for Any Reason Whatsoever

Do I really have to add, “Not because a 30-year-friend touched your butt”?

…”Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for eight years under President Obama, was arrested…and charged with groping a woman in his apartment in October 2017″…Before the vicious attack occurred, the “survivor” was deeply involved in the #metoo movement as an artist creating #metoo art…In April, she wrote an article in an online publication describing her transition from activist to victim, and related the events of that night without naming her abuser.  What was this horrifying act of depravity that cause her to go to the police ten months later to seek criminal charges against this person she’s known for more than 30 years?  He touched her butt…She said Dr. Frieden groped her while their spouses were not looking, and apologized later…It was certainly prescient of Judge Yavinsky to order the surrender of his passport to avoid him fleeing to a tropical island to avoid prosecution, and issue a no contact order, since there was a grave chance that Frieden might stalk her to touch her behind one more time…

What kind of mind files criminal charges against a lifelong friend who got a little handsy?  Especially a YEAR after the incident?  Wouldn’t it have been enough to say, “Whoa, hands off!” and ask for an apology?  Or at most to tell his wife?  What justice is served by feeding non-criminal people into the police state sausage grinder?

Legislators Gone Wild (#862) 

Judge slaps down two out-of-control politicians:

A federal judge ordered Nye County to restore and reinstate Dennis Hof’s brothel and liquor licenses for his Love Ranch South brothel…Judge Richard Boulware ordered a preliminary injunction based on perceived First Amendment retaliation by Nye County Commissioners Dan Schinhofen and Andrew “Butch” Borasky.  Hof has lawsuits against both commissioners for comments and actions they’ve made about him…Boulware banned the pair of commissioners from voting on any action regarding Hof and his brothel licenses while pending litigation goes forward…

Hof is a complete douchebag, but these little power games hurt the sex workers and other employees of the brothel.

Business As Usual (#866)

More on the rapist cop who murdered a sex worker in Columbus, Ohio:

…Andrew Mitchell…has already made 80 prostitution-related arrests in 2018, overwhelmingly of women…he is the subject of an internal affairs investigation, opened before the shooting, and multiple previous complaints…Though [cops gave the victim’s married name, Castleberry, to the media]…she went by Donna Dalton…a…CPD spokesman…[referred to the victim as] a nuisance to the neighborhood…[and her murderer] as a 30-year veteran.  It declined to discuss the dozens of arrests he made for prostitution-related offenses like “soliciting” and “loitering soliciting”…Mitchell faced at least eight complaints since 2006…in two he was found be “outside of policy”…In 2018, there have been 17 incidents involving [Columbus cops] shooting people…Seven of those people died.  Between 2013 and 2017, CPD officers fatally shot 28 people.  Columbus officers are also almost always cleared of wrongdoing…In fact, since Franklin County prosecutor Ron O’Brien was elected in 1996, he has never indicted any [cops] for fatal on-duty shootings…

The article also points out that it was the Columbus police who arrested Stormy Daniels on bogus charges in July.

Full of Themselves (#867)

Remember, choosing a massage professional certified by the California Massage Therapy Council is your only protection against “criminals using massage as a front for sex crimes”:

…Massage Envy is facing a rash of lawsuits by women who say…they were sexually assaulted while getting massages in at least five Florida locations.  The Arizona-based company, which has some 1,200 franchises across the country, was the subject of an investigation by BuzzFeed last November that revealed more than 180 customers said they had been sexually assaulted at the spas…attorneys for the…women claim the company knew of these allegations and took steps to make sure they were never brought to law enforcement…and/or state massage therapy boards…The Palm Beach suit comes on the heels of a lawsuit by five plaintiffs in San Mateo County, California, who accused Massage Envy of negligence, sexual battery, gender violence, false imprisonment, fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress, after they they were allegedly harassed or sexually assaulted at franchises…Buzzfeed’s original investigation found…[that] women…were groped, digitally penetrated, and raped [by masseurs] all across the country and that the company either ignored or mishandled the complaints…

The Widening Gyre (#867) 

Here’s another entry in the “sex trafficking” scare story invasion of Twitter; as you can see they’re getting stupider and more dangerous all the time.  This one is an attempt to replace wariness of the very real phenomenon of “phishing” (clicking on the link could download spyware or other malware into your device) with panic over an imaginary peril.  105,000 retweets for this idiotic garbage; is it any wonder the US has turned entirely into a police state, with the enthusiastic support of the Great Unwashed?

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It’s not money laundering when it’s the government.  –  Scott Shackford

A Broker in Pillage

Government is just a word for the things we choose to do together:

In order to get back any of the money that the New Hampshire State Police took from him, Edward Phipps has agreed to let federal prosecutors keep most of it, even though he has not been charged with any crimes.  The cops [stole] the cash during a traffic stop in 2016…[after pulling] the driver over for tailgating and for going one whole mile per hour over the speed limit.  A search turned up a bag full of $46,000 cash in the trunk.  Police then brought in a drug-sniffing dog, which came up empty…As part of the settlement, Phipps not only agrees to give up everything but $7,000 (which will probably have to go to his legal fees).  He agrees never to request that the money to be returned, and he furthermore agrees never to attempt to assert any claim that the government did not have “probable cause” to make him forfeit the money…New Hampshire reformed its civil asset forfeiture laws in 2016 to require a criminal conviction before police or prosecutors could force people to forfeit money or property.  Unfortunately, the state’s reform did not close a loophole that lets local police partner with the feds in a program called Equitable Sharing…The state police can’t seize Phipps’ money on their own.  So they went to the feds to arrange the forfeiture, and then the Equitable Sharing program lets the Justice Department funnel the funds right back to local law enforcement…

Innocence Never Had

Reporter vomits dysphemisms all over a young woman making the best of a bad situation:

Fourteen-year-old Lilian…passes for an innocent girl at first sight.  But a close interaction with her reveals a dark side, apparently a offshoot of a thick skin she as developed in her trade.  Lilian…boasts that she has made a name in sex work…and…has no regrets…[because] her guardians do not support her…

If having a “thick skin” means not being a sentimental idiot, I’m glad I have one.

Bait and Switch (#636)

Why bother looking for actual sex-trafficking victims when cops can just pretend to be them and reap the same rewards?

An Arizona court ruling says it doesn’t violate a defendant’s constitutional rights for a [cop] to [lie about being] a minor during a child prostitution [entrapment scheme]…[the] unanimous ruling…says the law barring a defense based on a [pig’s fantasy role-play] of being a minor is constitutional because it is “rationally related to a legitimate government purpose”…Buren Jarrett Burgess appealed his…convictions stemming from a…[scheme] in which two 27-year-old undercover [sows claimed they were]…16-year-old prostitutes.  Burgess argued that the [women] appeared to be [the] adults [they actually are]…Burgess was arrested in 2014 and the child prostitution crime has since then been changed to “child sex trafficking”…

In other words, a female cop who is obviously an adult can later claim she told a victim she was underage and that’s good enough to convict someone.

To Molest and Rape 

Prosecutors claim they let a child-rapist cop off the hook to “protect” his victim:

Prosecutors gave a plea deal to a[n]…El Paso County [Colorado] Sheriff’s deputy who created a pornographic image involving a young boy and offered to share it on a child porn message board on the Dark Web…Donald Fair…will avoid prison time because of the plea deal [though] he must register as a sex offender and has 10 years to life of sex offender intensive supervised probation…District Attorney George Brauchler is pleased with the deal because [we can’t have members of the ruling class locked in cages like the peons]…“A young innocent child is not further traumatized by testifying and being cross-examined during a trial”…

Funny how nobody worries about traumatizing kids when the rapist isn’t a cop.  Also note we aren’t told the victim’s age; I guess that would anger people even more because it’s probably below 5.

Across the Pond (#757)

Redbridge has a history of harassing sex workers while belching up stupid “crime” rhetoric:

…Redbridge Council has introduced £100 fines for those caught soliciting sex workers.  The move is a bid to [harass and persecute sex workers]…in Ilford Lane…Extra night police patrols throughout the weekend…[increased] lighting, gating alleyways and installing CCTV are other measures put in place to make Ilford Lane a more “hostile environment for [the peasants].”  Cllr Jas Athwal, leader of the [prohibitionists], said…”We want to…create a ‘ring of steel’ around the borough to [harass] our residents and make Redbridge a [more authoritarian] place to live.”  The fines will start being issues from the end of August…

This is one of the places where cops claim they can “build communication with sex workers” via stealing their income by harassing their clients.

The Mote and the Beam (#786)

The government’s latest sleazy trick: attacking with civil suits rather than criminal charges, because the burden of proof is reversed:

…Sex trafficking has become so rampant on this mile and a half stretch that county officials…asked a court to declare it off limits, filing a civil lawsuit that prohibits by name more than 80 pimps, prostitutes and customers from doing business on the infamous “Bissonnet Track”.  The sex trafficking is so open that it’s listed on international websites as Houston’s unofficial red light district.  “For years people in this area have complained about the large number of people buying and selling sex and committing other crimes on or around the Track,” said Mayor Sylvester Turner, who jointly announced the nuisance lawsuit with the county attorney and the city police chief…

“Sex trafficking” has become nothing more than a dysphemism for “sex work”.

To Molest and Rape (#794)

New York pigs are still harassing the young woman who was raped by two of their cronies:

The woman who was…raped by two NYPD detectives while handcuffed in the back of a police van in Brooklyn last year was called a “stupid bitch” by a person attempting to serve subpoena papers from a lawyer for one of the cops.  “THIS ISNT HARASSMENT?!” Anna Chambers wrote on Twitter [last] Wednesday night, along with a video of the man…“There’s your subpoena right there,” the man says on the video. “What are you afraid of[, Anna]?  This isn’t Russia.  I’m not the KGB.”  The man was attempting to hand Chambers a subpoena for photos…show[ing] her mangled wrists following the [brutal] rape by Richard Hall and Eddie Martins.  Chambers repeatedly tells the man to leave.  “[I’m from the sheriff’s office,] I could do whatever I want,” the person says before calling her a “stupid bitch.”  Martins’ lawyer Mark Bederow said he sent the server, but…condemned [his] behavior…

To Molest and Rape (#851) 

It’s rare that politicians’ tendency toward “monkey see, monkey do” actually works for good:

[Politicians] introduced a bill…to prohibit federal [pigs, spooks and g-men] from [raping] people in custody, aiming to close a legal loophole that has let them avoid [rape] convictions by [absurdly] claiming sex with [prisoners] was consensual.  The proposed legislation would direct additional federal funding to local law enforcement agencies in states that close this loophole…Jackie Speier…and…Barbara Comstock…noted that they were “spurred to introduce the bill” following [the rape of]…Anna Chambers…by two New York City detectives…in their police van…

It’s also rare that a “bipartisan” bill actually curtails police power rather than expanding it.

Legislators Gone Wild (#854) 

The anti-whore brigade couldn’t get the people to support them, so politicians overruled the people:

…Dennis Hof has lost the license to his Love Ranch Brothel.  The brothel’s license, liquor license, and the female worker’s cards were all surrendered to the Sheriff’s Office, and the property is currently closed…”It’s more political shenanigans, and it’s at the expense of the people here at the brothel,” said Sonja Bandolik, Love ranch madam…”There’s three federal lawsuits against them.  They’re trying to do a little payback, and what they’re doing is hurting the people that work here.”  County commissioners [claim] they denied renewal permits because the brothel’s application was incomplete.  Commissioner Dan Schinhofen says Hof has racked up a number of violations over the past few years, like having signs in the public right of way and not getting inspections after moving portable buildings…

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