Uncommon Sense | The Honest Courtesan

Posts Tagged ‘Uncommon Sense’

In the News (#1183)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged agency denial, Austria, cell phones, censorship, Checklist, cops, Droit du Seigneur, Eavesdropping, Facebook, genitalia, hysteria, language, North Carolina, pimps, psychology, rescue industry, Spain, surveillance, Swedish model, The Prudish Giant, The Widening Gyre, TikTok, Twitter, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, video, Virginia, yin and yang on October 26, 2021| 2 Comments »

I’m not entirely sure why society collectively agreed that sex traffickers operate in a similar fashion to Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the Roadrunner. – Jessica Dean

Droit du Seigneur

It’s good to see this lurid narrative turned against cops for a change:

A woman who…filed a lawsuit in…Virginia…alleges that in 2010…[when] she travel[led] to the U.S. to work as an…escort…she was…[somehow unaware that the job involved] sex…and…[that] her new boss, Hazel Marie Sanchez Cerdas…[used threats to force her into unsafe and exploitative situations, and stole] all of [her income]…local [cops]…protect[ed] the [abusive pimps] in exchange for sexual services [for which the escorts were not compensated]…In April 2015, the plaintiff [got fed up with the exploitative arrangment]…and went to [the cops]. In 2019, Sanchez was charged with—and eventually pleaded guilty to—felony charges related to sex trafficking and was sentenced to 30 months in prison…

Unfortunately, the reporter is a “sex trafficking” fetishist who credulously parrots lots of copaganda in the article, but I’ve extracted what appears to be the important information from amongst the dysphemized descriptions, agency denial, and outright fantasies.

Big Dick Energy

“Even reasonably intelligent, sophisticated men seem to believe deep down that their phalluses…have the ability to damage women’s bodies and destroy our souls.” Just in case some of you thought that was an exaggeration, please allow me to present this recent screenshot from Twitter, which also illustrates the concept of “science worship” as diagrammed here. Compare to the bizarre claims of “sex trafficking” fetishists and other prohibitionists, and I think you’ll admit my point that both feminists and denizens of the “manosphere” are part of the same continuum of wackadoo.

The Prudish Giant (#895)

Anything that demonstrates the absurdity of internet censorship is good:

Vienna’s tourism board has started an account on OnlyFans – the only social network that permits depictions of nudity – in protest against [other] platforms’ ongoing censorship of its art museums and galleries. In July, the Albertina Museum’s new TikTok account was suspended and then blocked for showing works by the Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki…This followed a similar incident in 2019, when Instagram [censored] a painting by Peter Paul Rubens…In 2018, the Natural History Museum’s photograph of the 25,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf figurine was deemed pornographic by Facebook and [censored]…The Leopold Museum has likewise struggled to promote its collection of nudes by the expressionist Egon Schiele, with [its ads censored by bureaucrats] in Germany, the UK and US…A short video featuring the painting Liebespaar by Koloman Moser, made to mark the Leopold Museum’s 20th anniversary this year, was rejected by Facebook and Instagram as “potentially pornographic”…the Albertina’s current exhibition, by the Italian portrait artist Amedeo Modigliani, [is also terrifying to puritans]…

See the city’s YouTube ad below.

Checklist (#927)

A whore-snitching app that skips the middlerat:

Police Scotland [has] adopt[ed] a simple [way to criminalize more sex workers]…by using the Unseen App. The app, which is hosted by the [government]…has been downloaded to [cop]s’ mobile devices to …[give them various excuses they can claim are] signs of…exploitation [so as to arrest sex workers while calling it “rescue”]…the app will provide [cops] with [legally-admissible excuses for the harassment]…Assistant Chief Constable Judi Heaton [shared some of her favorite BDSM masturbatory fantasies about passive, doll-like sex workers]…

Eavesdropping (#1069)

Remember, Amazon eagerly hands data from internet-connected devices to cops:

A woman…requested all the information Amazon has on her through her two Amazon Dot devices and one Amazon Echo device as well as smart phones. Several Zip files came through and when she clicked on the audio file she says she discovered…3,534 audio files in a single Zip file alone…Amazon [also] has a copy of all her phone contacts…

The Widening Gyre (#1116)

The “things on cars” branch of “sex trafficking” scarelore has expanded to include things near cars:

“So have you ever seen this type of car seat just out of nowhere?” the woman in the TikTok video asks…pointing to a photo of an abandoned baby car seat in a parking lot…“that’s not an ordinary car seat…[it’s a] sex trafficking car seat”…placed as bait by sex traffickers to kidnap and enslave unsuspecting victims…The woman who posted the video is…a TikTok creator with 122,000 followers who bills herself as a “spiritual gardener” who offers Tarot intuitive readings on social media. [She has the typical] lack of credentials [of those billing themselves] sex trafficking expert[s, so as usual] her video has gone massively viral…the Wilkesboro [North Carolina] Police Department…[has so much spare time it actually] investigated this incident and…deemed…[it non-]criminal…but…Parker appears to be doubling down…[saying] “I still feel that there is something going on in our society”…

Uncommon Sense (#1143)

Politicians the world over promise the same evil, impossible things, and stupid people just keep believing them:

[Spanish] Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez…pledged [once again] to “abolish” prostitution in the country, [even though no such prohibitionist campaign has ever done anything but increase]…violence a[gainst]…women…Sanchez took office [again] in January 2020 as head of a minority coalition government after his Socialist Party won two inconclusive national elections in 2019…

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In the News (#1143)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged activism, advertising, agency denial, asset seizure, bogus studies, brothels, California, censorship, condoms, cops, Disaster, Don’t Take My Word For It, drugs, fantasy, Full of Themselves, Imaginary Victims, internet, language, law, Louisiana, male prostitutes, neofeminism, New Zealand, Ohio, politicians, prisons, racism, rape, Rough Trade, Safe Position, Spain, Stop faking!, surveillance, Swedish model, Torture Chamber, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, Washington DC on June 9, 2021| Leave a Comment »

It was not just that their perspective was discarded. Their perspective wasn’t even heard. – Ro Khanna

Torture Chamber

Stop faking!

…in…March 2014…19-year-old Nimali Henry was booked [into the St. Bernard parish jail] on charges of simple battery, disturbing the peace and unauthorized entry of an inhabited dwelling…she was living with a rare…blood disorder and…in desperate need of her medication…[but] did not have [it] with her [when arrested and screws made no effort to obtain it for her]…Two days later, other [prisoners tried] to…talk…to the guards on duty about her. In a…video from March 31, 2014, Nimali [can be] seen stumbling and…barely [able to] walk as…guards [shout “stop faking!” at her]. Later that same day, another video shows her lying on a prison bunk with no mattress covered with what appears to be nothing more than a blanket…[she] died hours later…[as the direct result of] jail…[staff refusing to obtain] her medication and [intentionally leaving her] in excruciating pain for 10 days. The[y]…never [even] called an ambulance….St. Bernard Parish Sheriff James Pohlmann [called the willful murder a “]shortfall[” and]…declined….to look at the video [because “he does not want to see anyone…die in jail”]…Four jail workers pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges…Andre Dominick…Timothy Williams…Lisa Vacrella and Debra Becnel…

What the story doesn’t tell you: St. Bernard dramatically expanded its jail around 1990 so it could make money warehousing human beings for other parishes who lacked the room to cram any more people into their own cage stacks.

Don’t Take My Word For It (#541)

When a “study” makes silly claims like this, look for the reasons:

…Some researchers…seem obsessed with the idea of proving that sex work isn’t gendered and that women pay for sexual services in increasing numbers…from men…This…claim [is]…based on the number of profiles on [adult service websites, but]…most of these male-owned accounts have no feedback which suggests that they’re not escorts, but fantasists who set up a profile pretending to be an escort as part of their fantasy. They’re attracted to the idea of anonymous sex as well as the misguided belief that someone would be interested in pursuing them sexually and even paying for the privilege. Men who typically pay for sex are turned on by the idea that someone might want them enough to offer them money for it. The male-owned profiles which do have feedback often have it because they pay for sex, get feedback from sex workers, then switch their profile around so it looks like women have paid for their services….client posing is commonly known amongst sex workers; if sex workers had been consulted on the research, that claim would have been contested…

This is an excellent article which explains a number of other silly “study” claims as well.

Full of Themselves (#831)

Racist persecution of massage parlors is a popular pastime for California “authorities”:

…the [victim of California] officials[‘ crusade against mundane businesses they ludicrously defamed as] “an organized crime sex trafficking ring operating across California” has been sentenced to 10 years and 8 months in state prison…Jing Chiang Huang was also ordered to pay $557,391 in [back taxes] to the California Franchise Tax Board [thus revealing the true motive behind the joint pogrom]…by federal, state and local [cop shops]…More than a dozen [employes] were [arrested and deported] in the process, according to a press release [calling the violence “rescue”]…

Uncommon Sense (#898)

The Spanish high court says the government has no power to suppress a sex worker union:

Spanish sex workers have the right to form their own union, the Supreme Court ruled…overturning an earlier court decision ordering [its] dissolution…OTRAS…was discretely set up in August 2018 but was [attacked] three months later by…[prohibition]ist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez….and [his Swedish-criminalization cultist followers even though the law clearly states] that sex workers “have the fundamental right to freedom of association and the right to form a union”…

Imaginary Victims (#902)

A celebrity accomplished what do-nothing “safe harbor” laws couldn’t:

…in…April of 2020…Ohio’s governor…grant[ed] the release of a 22-year-old…Alexis Martin…[from prison] after Kim Kardashian visited [her there]…after six years, five months and 13 days…she…wi[ll]…be…track[ed by ankle monitor]…every second…[and] on parole, being [spi]ed on and drug tested until at least 2034. Her record w[ill] always show a murder conviction, [with] all the limitations [that] bring[s]…

The article has some good information, but you’ll need to pick around the wads of ugly prohibitionist propaganda and chunks of infantilizing, agency-denying language as you would pick around slimy green things in a casserole that’s otherwise edible.

Rough Trade (#923)

In the US, the victim would’ve been arrested:

Jessie Campos was found guilty of raping a sex worker in a [New Zealand] brothel in late 2018, and sentenced to three years and nine months in prison…he was made aware on several occasions a condom was legally required and he agreed to use one…but…the[n]…removed [it]…The woman indicated he had acted inappropriately and made him put the condom back on. Without her knowledge, Campos again removed the condom and ejaculated inside her. The woman ran to her manager’s office and the police were called…Judge Stephen Harrop…rejected the defence claim that the stealthing was not premeditated and that cultural factors [Campos emigrated from the Philippines] were relevant to the sentencing…

Yes, this is rape. No, I don’t want to “discuss” it.

Safe Position (#991)

Even journalists are beginning to recognize what a huge backfire FOSTA was:

Sex workers have gained the backing of a small group of Democratic [politicians] after…being [entirely] shut out of the policymaking process [for decades]. The turning point was…FOSTA…also referred to as SESTA…which was [intended] to punish online platforms facilitating [sex work]…Despite the best efforts of sex workers to dissuade [politicians], the bill passed through both chambers easily…in 2018…“until very recently [no politician] wanted to be seen as facilitating…or encouraging sex work,” said Mike Stabile…of…the Free Speech Coalition…[anti-FOSTA politician Ro] Khanna [said]…his colleagues “didn’t even want to take meetings because of the possible images or pictures” with sex workers that could have been taken. Stigma also hurts [civol rights] organizations’ funding because consumers of pornopgraphy are “embarrassed” to publically back them, says sex worker and writer Cathy Reisenwitz…

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In the News (#1044)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged brothels, censorship, Choke Point, cops, disease, Germany, Illinois, internet, Like Houses, politicians, porn, racism, Robocops, Secret Squirrel, Social Distancing, surveillance, Swedish model, Switzerland, The Course of a Disease, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom on June 3, 2020| 3 Comments »

To tell you the truth, erotic services could have resumed earlier.
– Alain Berset

Secret Squirrel (#715)

For every weapon, there is a defense:

YouTube has plenty of videos on how to fake your GPS location, and teens are doing it…[spokespig] Grady Thigpen [oinked a lot of ridiculous nonsense about how privacy from intrusive surveillance]…can actually be really dangerous for teens. [He infantilized]…young adult[s as]…child[ren and pretended that total violation of their privacy and trust is]…about their safety…

Choke Point (#723)

…[sex worker] Sophie Ladder noticed that different…platforms had different notions of what they considered “restricted content.” So [she]…decided to compile the variations in the form of a shareable spreadsheet…“It was interesting to see how different types of sites are, as a whole, more or less restrictive. The free tube sites overall are the most open, banning few things. The clip stores are somewhat restrictive. And the live camming sites are the most strict”…One challenge…was determining exactly what a particular site’s rules actually are….“many of these sites’ rules are vague to avoid the crackdown from their payment processors that would come with explicitly allowing X, Y, Z content, so instead their rules just don’t really mention X, Y, Z”…

Social Distancing (#1037)

Scotland out-Herods Herod, not only refusing relief money to sex workers but giving it to prohibitionists:

A sex worker charity [w]as…excluded from a Scottish Government pledge of £60,000 to support women affected during the Covid-19 pandemic…the government [instead gave the money]…to…nine [prohibitionist] organisations…[activist] Molly Smith…said…”That the Scottish Government sees organisations which campaign to harm us as appropriate vehicles for our ‘support’ during this crisis shows just how screwed up policy-making on sex work is in Scotland”…

Robocops

One of the greatest legal abominations ever conceived:

The Supreme Court created qualified immunity in 1982. With that novel invention, the court granted all government officials immunity for violating constitutional and civil rights unless the victims of those violations can show that the rights were “clearly established”…th[is]…is a legal obstacle that’s nearly impossible to overcome. It requires a victim to identify an earlier decision by the Supreme Court or a federal appeals court in the same jurisdiction holding that precisely the same conduct under the same circumstances is illegal or unconstitutional. If none exists, the official is immune…in February, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals held that a Texas prison guard who pepper-sprayed an inmate in his locked cell “for no reason” did not violate clearly established law because similar cited cases involved guards who had hit and tased inmates for no reason, rather than pepper-spraying them for no reason…In the last year alone…courts have granted qualified immunity to [cops] who stole $225,000; a cop who shot a 10 year old while trying to shoot a nonthreatening family dog; prison officials who locked an inmate in a sewage-flooded cell for days; SWAT team members who fired gas grenades into an innocent woman’s empty home; medical board officials who rifled through a doctor’s client files without a warrant; county officials who held a 14 year old in pretrial solitary confinement for over a month; a cop who body-slammed a 5-foot-tall woman for walking away from him; and police who picked up a mentally infirmed man, drove him to the county line, and dropped him off at dusk along the highway, where he was later struck and killed by a motorist…

Social Distancing (#1042)

Compare to the contrived prohibition in Australia & the Netherlands:

Swiss politicians have decided that sex workers can soon get back to business while activities and sports involving close physical contact such as judo, boxing and wrestling will remain prohibited. Prostitution …can resume from June 6, along with cinemas, nightclubs and public pools…Swiss Health Minister Alain Berset [said]…“To tell you the truth, erotic services could have resumed earlier.” Switzerland has dramatically slowed its Covid-19 infection rate while avoiding the strict confinement imposed in neighboring countries…It was among the first countries in Europe to reopen shops, restaurants and schools earlier this month…The [good sense of the] Swiss…contrasts with [the official whore stigma of]…the Netherlands…

The Course of a Disease (#1043)

German sex workers answer the ugly lies of prohibitionist politicians:

The coronavirus ban on sex work, including the closure of brothels must be lifted, said Germany’s Federal Association of Sex Services (BSD) in an open letter…to 16 [prohibitionist] members of Germany’s parliament who recently [demanded imposition of the Swedish model]…The sex work industry must also be able “to generate income again and to offer customers a good service that is human and grounding for them,” states the letter [which] presents a “hygiene concept” that outlines how sex work could continue while minimizing infection…German states [have begun] to ease restrictions such as reopening restaurants, swimming pools and non-sexual massage parlours. Yet the blanket ban on all types of sex work remains in place…

Like Houses (#1043)

It’s just to keep people SAFE!

Despite the mayor’s claim that police have enforced social distancing equally across Chicago…almost all arrests and citations for congregating have been issued on the city’s South and West sides. All 13 arrests and 11 of 13 citations have been issued in majority-Black and Latino neighborhoods…Between March 20 and May 21, 13 people were arrested for violating the stay at home orders. Ten were Black, one was white and two were juveniles whose race and arrest reports were withheld…

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In the News (#1021)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Tale That Grew in the Telling, activism, Arizona, California, cops, dehumanization, drugs, End Demand (updates), FBI, Follow the Leader, Full of Themselves, Germany, Having and Eating Cake, hysteria, If It Were Legal, language, Massachusetts, Ohio, Out of Control, politicians, prisons, propaganda, psychology, Pyrrhic Victory, rape, rescue industry, scams, Stop faking!, stripping, surveillance, Swedish model, teachers, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state) on March 14, 2020| 2 Comments »

Fuck the patriarchy — but not for free! – protest sign in Berlin

If It Were Legal

Do prosecutors think scoring points trumps five women’s harassment lawsuit?

LA Direct agency owner Derek Hay has made arrangements to travel to Los Angeles to face criminal pandering charges in California, stemming from accusations made during [a] recent…case involv[ing] five of his former models petitioning against him and his agency before the California Labor Commission…Charlotte Cross, Shay Evans, Sofi Ryan, Andi Rye and Hadley Viscara…[are suing] Hay and two other individuals [for sexual assault, but apparently]…California [prosecutors think the fact that he paid]…Viscara…and…Ryan [for sex in]…2017 [is somehow more important]…

Follow the Leader

Costumed hooligans regularly abduct and torture people in ways that would be charged as crimes for anyone else:

PJ Starr’s chilling documentary “No Human Involved” recounts the 2009 [murder] of Marcia Powell by…Arizona [screws]…and condemns the criminalization of prostitution…the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office…[did] not…prosecute [the screws who intentionally and maliciously locked] Powell outside in a human cage for several hours without water as temperatures soared to 107 degrees…[a lying pig] who had already arrested Powell twice before for [prostitution]…entrapp[ed] a…schizophrenic woman…[and terrible laws were used to] turn…what would normally be a…misdemeanor…into a…felony…In the film, retired [Arizona] Deputy Warden Carl Toersbijns reviews Powell’s…file…and observes its tone of “retaliation” and “pettiness” toward the woman. Powell was written up for things like drinking coffee out of the wrong cup and…shackled…every time she got out of her cell…[the torture escalated until screws respnded to suicidal ideation by locking her in the cage where she was found four hours later, covered in her own shit with a body temperature of 108^o]…

On the Simultaneous Having and Eating of Cake (#724)

Given that dancers win every one of these suits, the old strip club business model is a dead duck:

…a judge at an employment tribunal ruled that dancers in a London strip clubs Browns and Horns have worker status. Until now, dancers were misclassified as “independent contractors” [despite being treated as employees], which means they had no access to even the most basic rights at work. The new ruling now opens the door for dancers to claim workers’ rights such as paid annual leave, a guaranteed pay for all hours worked, the right to take maternity or sick leave without the risk of termination, protection against workplace harassment and the right to organise through a trade union…

Full of Themselves (#787)

”‘Happy endings’ have apparently become a matter of national security“:

The FBI has launched an investigation into how applicants with phony or questionable credentials were able to get Massachusetts massage therapist licenses…[the FBI is claiming jurisdiction over a minor state regulatory issue using the excuse of] sex trafficking…the state Board…approved the applications of candidates who reported getting their training at Axiom Healthcare Academy in New Jersey, after the school closed in 2014…Axiom’s founder pleaded guilty in 2018 to charges he sold fake transcripts and phony graduation certificates to [sex workers to get around government busybodies]…

The War on Whores

Here’s a nice review of The War on Whores on an Australian radio program; it starts at the 9:00 mark and is about eleven minutes long, and you can also download it as an MP3. The reviewer called it a “must-watch”, and said some very complimentary things about this blog as well.

Out of Control (#946)

What is wrong with doctors who do this?

An Ohio plastic surgeon used sedatives…to drug and rape multiple women…[since] at least 2013…Manish Raj Gupta…faces [a raft of] federal charges…[including] sex trafficking…The FBI began investigating Gupta…[last year] after a woman who worked as a “high-end escort” reported that Gupta had [raped]…her in September 2016…In the morning, KB drove to the home of a client who is an anesthesiologist, and asked him to administer a drug test…[which] showed she had a tranquilizer in her system…[she wisely] did not report the incident to police…[but] did…[add him to] two [bad date] websites…[several other sex workers had] report[ed him starting in] March 2013…Gupta’s employees at his practice, Artisan Cosmetic Surgery, began to get suspicious of him when [one of his victims]…called the office “stating that Gupta had drugged her, raped her and video-recorded her,” describing him, his phone and his car in accurate detail…

I notice that NBC News felt no compelling need to put “plastic surgeon” or other non-sexwork job titles in scare quotes.

Uncommon Sense (#948)

Because whores are morons whose lives and businesses must be micromanaged by governments:

…the Prostituiertenschutzgesetz…which came into force 1 July 2017…require[s sex workers] to register with a local authority and undergo mandatory [indocrination sessions] and [violations pretended to be for] health…the law does [nothing] to improve working conditions and it fails to integrate sex work into existing labour law…The ProstSchG is…a bureaucratic nightmare for sex workers…if they comply [so most simply do]…not register…the realities of sex workers in [Germany] could s[till] get worse under…Swedish [criminalization], called for by [prohibitionist politicians]…

End Demand (#972)

Mar Brettmann is a sleazy opportunist who will say anything to sell her anti-whore snake oil:

The Port of Seattle is implementing new [indoctrination]…for its 2,000 employees to [encourage] them [to] sp[y on citizens passing through]…the region’s air and sea…ports…The [propaganda was purchased from]…the [highly]…profit[able] group Businesses Ending Slavery and Trafficking…The [propaganda]…is specifically designed [to encourage racists and naifs to summon] law enforcement…[to inflict] violence, threats…and other manipulation…[on brown] people…generating [huge] financial sums [for both propagandists and cops themselves, the latter via the procedure called “asset forfeiture”. The propaganda includes thoroughly-debunked fantasies such as the widely-touted by completely fabricated tale of how]…in 2017, an Alaska Airlines flight attendant…[supposedly] rescue[d] an underage teenager traveling from Seattle to San Francisco who’d become a trafficking victim…

The story was touted in 2017, but supposedly happened in 2011. And “while the news that year is full of stories about a man arrested at the San Francisco International Airport for wearing baggy pants…none mention a human trafficker apprehended at a Bay Area airport that year…SFPD…web archives turn up similarly scant results…”

A Tale That Grew in the Telling (#1014)

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

Twenty-four states plus Washington D.C. mandate statewide comprehensive sex ed, but Washington state is not one of them. In fact…40% of school districts in Washington don’t teach sex ed at all…[but] a…bill [mandating it may]…pass…this year. Republicans…don’t like the legislation because they don’t want their children to learn about sex and consent…so they tried to kill it by adding an obscene 232 amendments…this display ultimately failed, and…[politicians] ultimately withdrew the most salacious amendments…[including one] which would force teachers to reference the “risk” of pornography in any discussion of [the topic]…[another] would…”exclude…any curricula that directs students to resources that discuss BDSM, bloodplay, inserting vegetables into the anus, or similar sexual behavior”…[another] tr[ies]…to prohibit…[one specific] book…and [still another]…”prohibits a teacher or other instructor from…demonstrating how to apply a condom…using…items such as sex toys, fruits, or vegetables”…

I sometimes wonder why politicians in general are so obsessed with plants, especially fruits and vegetables. And in this case I’m specifically wondering how many of these proposed amendments are from the preaching pig.

Pyrrhic Victory (#1020)

Still think this djinni can be stuffed back into its bottle?

Wolfcom, a company that makes technology for police, is pitching body cameras with live facial recognition to [cop shops] across the United States…Axon, the largest manufacturer of body cameras in the United States, declared last year that it would not put the invasive technology in its hardware, citing “serious ethical concerns.” NEC, which sells live facial recognition elsewhere in the world, has also not sold it to U.S. [cops. But] Wolfcom claims to have sold body cameras to at least 1,500 [cop shops], universities, and [spook] organizations across the country. It has been developing live facial recognition for the Halo, Wolfcom’s newest body camera model…

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In the News (#1000)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged A Moral Cancer, activism, agency denial, Arizona, California, Canada, censorship, cops, Delaware, Disaster, Droit du Seigneur, drugs, Facebook, fascism, France, Gingerbread House, Haiti, homosexuality, I Spy, If Men Were Angels, Illinois, Imaginary Victims, internet, language, law, License To Rape, Madonna/whore, McNeill's Law, Missouri, Never Call the Cops, New York, politicians, prisons, racism, rape, rescue industry, scams, statistics, streetwalkers, surveillance, Swedish model, Texas, The Course of a Disease, To Molest and Rape, Uncommon Sense, violence vs. sex workers, Wisconsin on December 28, 2019| 3 Comments »

It is urgent that the sacrifice of sex workers on the altar of morality cease! – Doctors of the World

License to Rape

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

[Cops] in Oak Lawn, a suburb of Chicago, subjected Tylus Allen Jr. to…illegal searches of his vehicle and person, including strip-searching him and ordering a doctor to [anally rape him]…on Dec. 2, 2018…co[ps decided to pretend Allen was]…concealing drugs. They searched him and his vehicle…without his consent…then called for a…dog [to manufacture]…evidence [but it failed. Next they abducted Allen] to [their hideout, where they violated his anus but still found]…nothing…[they] then called an ambulance [to take] Allen [to a hospital, even though he]…was…not in need of medical assistance…[cops] lied [to]…a doctor that they had found drugs in Allen’s vehicle…and [used their magical medical degrees to]…order…the…doctor to perform a digital rectal examination and an abdominal X-ray…Approximately three hours after the initial traffic stop, Allen was charged with reckless driving, [locked in a cage all] night…and…stuck with a bill for the ambulance…

Imagine rapists billing you for your rape.

Gingerbread House

A religious-fanatic cop wants to infantilize vulnerable women in order to brainwash them at a remote and hidden ranch. Reporters think this is perfectly OK:

A Tucson [sow] is determined to return…[sex workers to] childhood…Sarah Haught [refers to her intended victims as] little girls…[and says] “I want to provide a place [to return] them to…childhood again”…Beauty from Ashes Ranch…[is] Haught[‘s]…a[ttempt to cash in on] the $150 billion [rescue] industry…Haught [moaned with her hand in her pants while breathlessly sharing pig fantasies like] “Pimps…can make more profit off of girls than drugs since they can sell the girls over and over”…[she also vomited] “the Johns who participate in these acts…need to be held accountable” [all over the reporter]…She and her board members…signed a lease on a 70-acre property in central Arizona (the location is undisclosed to [isolate their victims])…“I personally believe in the healing powers of Jesus Christ and we can…[force] our beliefs [on these young women because nobody will stop us]”…

If Men Were Angels

A hypocrite and a cheapskate:

A Missouri church leader…tried to pay for sex on the gay hookup app Grindr…with an Arby’s card…Barry Cole Poyner…[also] offer[ed] to pay for gas…a student [he approached snitched on him] and a cop [decided to decieve and entrap him]…Poyner [stupi]dly sent the [pig] a message saying he “would love to have a sugar daddy relationship”…offered to fill up his gas tank in exchange for sex…[and] said…he “might throw in an Arby’s card LOL”…[the pigs then ambushed him] at [a] gas station, where he [initially] tried to flee…the Church of Christ…has made [anti-gay] comments in the past…

I’m always happy to see authoritarians feeding on each other.

Droit du Seigneur (#604)

“Peacekeeper” is just another euphemism for “cop”:

United Nations peacekeeping forces fathered hundreds of children with girls as young as eleven years old while deployed in Haiti…The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) was i[mpos]ed in 2004 [using the excuse of]…political instability and organized crime. The mission continued through 2017…MINUSTAH peacekeepers introduced cholera…causing the infection of 800,000 Haitians, 10,000 of whom died as a result. The organization has also previously admitted that over 100 Sri Lankan peacekeepers were involved in [what “authorities” label a “sex ring”] between 2004 and 2007…MINUSTAH [troops also left many women they raped with]…AIDS…[yet the “authorities” are still trying to blame all this on]…transactional…sex…

The word you’re looking for is “sired”; “fathering” requires more than spooging into some young, gullible girl you manipulated. But I’m sure hundreds of pregnant teenagers is MUCH better for Haitian society than injecting money into the local sex work economy, so Bra-vo. {slow clap}.

Imaginary Victims (#903)

As I’ve said repeatedly, the state’s pretended sympathy for “sex trafficking victims” applies only to imaginary “perfect” ones, not real young women with complex lives:

Attorneys for Chrystul Kizer…were seeking to use a law that shields sex trafficking victims as part of her defense…[against a] charge[s of] first-degree [murder]…for the June 2018 shooting death of Randall Volar III…[who] at the time…was under investigation for child sex trafficking…The case…is slated to go to trial in February…

The Course of a Disease (#911)

A decision in favor of human rights could be a powerful blow to Swedish criminalization:

250 sex workers petitioned the European Court of Human Rights to recognize the violation of their fundamental rights to health, safety, and privacy…Faced with a government…that denies their lived reality and remains oblivious to the violence of its policies, they have decided to attack the state…Whether in Sweden, Ireland, Canada or France, we have the necessary hindsight to assert that the Swedish model implementing the penalization of clients endangers all people engaged in sex work. This is why we…give them unfailing support in the fight against France’s…repressive laws…

To Molest and Rape (#915)

Yet another rapist gets away with it thanks to his magic clown costume:

…a…jury [let a rapist Delaware cop go free after he orally raped a woman]…Thomas Oliver Jr. was [only] convicted of official misconduct, a misdemeanor…[after] his attorneys…[used] the [“she wanted to suck a random pig’s dick on the side of the road” defense]…as…the [prosecutor pointed out]…”He had the power to arrest her, and she had no choice but to submit”…the [jury also ignored that]…after Oliver [blew his load in his victim’s mouth] he threw $3 at her and [shoved] her…out of his p[igmobile]…

Uncommon Sense (#920)

Yet another large union declares support for sex worker rights:

MoveUP, [a Canadian union with] over 12,000 B.C. members, declared that it formally supports the decriminalization of sex work…The union news release cited the work of Amnesty International…[and] the Lancet, one of the world’s most respected peer-reviewed medical journals…MoveUP plans to work with groups, including WAVAW Rape Crisis Centre, on actions to advance the decriminalization agenda…

I Spy (#961)

Anyone who doubts that politicians are deranged megalomaniacs should be following this:

Even the Defense Department is now pointing out that the government’s quest to weaken encryption lies somewhere between counterproductive and downright harmful. Attorney General Bill Barr and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham have been on a tear lately in a bid to undermine encryption standards. Those efforts culminated in a hearing…whose primary purpose appears to have been to demonize encryption by falsely proclaiming it “poses a risk to public safety.” Many [spooks and bureaucrats] have joined the festivities, arguing that encryption enables all manner of nefarious behavior, from human trafficking to child exploitation as they push for the inclusion of [pig gates] in everything from routers to smartphones. Actual security experts…have long highlighted the foolishness of such efforts…[a very few bureaucrats] seem to understand the benefits of retaining strong encryption…the Defense Department’s Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy…notes that all DOD issued unclassified mobile devices are required to be password protected using strong passwords, and that any data-in-transit on DOD issued mobile devices be encrypted via VPN…Deasy wrote… “maintaining a domestic climate for state of the art security and encryption is critical to the protection of our national security…Facebook sent a letter…to Bill Barr, in which the company made it clear that it would not backdoor its encrypted messaging apps at the government’s [demand]…

A Moral Cancer (#972)

Because obviously prohibition doesn’t ruin enough lives yet:

Imagine a building where drug-sniffing dogs roam the corridors, air-quality sensors alert officials if anyone is inhaling a controlled substance, using the bathroom is a privilege rather than a right, clothing is searched in case anyone is hiding contraband up their sleeves, and those who are caught breaking the rules could face life-derailing punishments…I have just described a public school in Texas…so obsessed with stopping teenagers from vaping that they are perfectly willing to treat them like inmates…That 17-year-olds in Texas are considered insufficiently mature to vape, but plenty old enough to go to prison, is an absurd and unconscionable hypocrisy…

Disaster (#986)

Does any media outlet other than local news fail to recognize what a disaster FOSTA is?

How many of us would think being jailed is a form of help?…that’s the twisted rationale faced by…sex workers, forced to endure the constant threat of imprisonment by people who claim it’s “for their own good.” At a time when the American political establishment is witnessing a…revolt against the waste and destruction of mass incarceration, one area of the carceral state is [still] headed in the wrong direction: the war on sex work. Not only is this puritanical crusade endangering sex workers’ lives, but it created yet another justification for the over-policing of communities of color…[and] the…undocumented..and… expanding the surveillance state. Guised in the language of combatting…“sex trafficking,” new measures have given law enforcement agencies sweeping powers to take down websites used by consenting, adult sex workers. Federal measures like SESTA-FOSTA…have driven many sex workers offline and…some have even died, because of the laws that were purportedly passed to “protect” them. The impact has been so disastrous that [politicians] are now pushing a bill to study just how much damage their own law did…

Disaster (#991)

In the past two years, the EFF has emerged as one of our most powerful allies:

…EFF fought [SESTA/FOSTA] in Congress, concerned that its vague, ambiguous language and stiff criminal and civil penalties would drive constitutionally protected content off the Internet. And we represent organizations and individuals that are challenging the law in federal court. Activists and organizers from within the sex working community made it clear from the beginning…that…it…would…deprived a community of many of the online tools they used to stay safe and to organize. 2019 has brought us the unfortunate statistics to prove that they were right. In a recent study of sex workers completed by the grassroots sex worker advocacy organization Hacking//Hustling…40% of participants reported experiencing increased violence after FOSTA became law…these grim statistics aren’t an outlier: last year the San Francisco Police Department reported…street-based sex work offenses had spiked 170% since FOSTA’s passage…

To Molest and Rape (#995)

Rapist cops make sure they’re exempted from “sex offender” registration if possible, because they know it’s really an unending punishment:

A [typical and representative] San Diego [cop] who groped, hugged and tried to kiss more than a dozen women…was sentenced…to 44 months behind bars followed by 16 months of p[robation, but]…Richard Fischer will not have to register as a sex offender…he…attack[ed his 16 victims] between 2015 and 2017…some [after]…he arrested [them] and others…while responding to 911 calls the[y] made…Fo[rtunately]…he’ll be…barred from obtaining another [cop] job in [California, though rapist cops often simply move elsewhere to regain the power they crave]…

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In the News (#964)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged Across the Pond, agency denial, Between the Lines, censorship, China, cops, Disaster, Ecuador, end demand, fascism, FBI, Germany, harm reduction, hysteria, Iowa, Ireland, law, politicians, Pyrrhic Victory, racism, rescue industry, Soap Opera, streetwalkers, surveillance, Swedish model, Torture Chamber, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers, Welcome to the Future, Where Are the Victims? on August 21, 2019| 1 Comment »

This is how the United States of America, the mightiest and richest nation there is or ever has been, treats incarcerated people. – Ken White

Torture Chamber

Ken White on the inhuman abominations that the US calls “correction”:

Jeffrey Epstein’s name and face are everywhere following his death…Americans who believe in their justice system assert that it is obvious that he was murdered, and that jailers could not possibly be so incompetent, cruel, or indifferent as to let such a high-profile prisoner commit suicide. Here, to help you evaluate that claim, are 32 short stories about in-custody deaths or near-deaths in America…

Regular readers know these stories are nauseating, but you really need to read them all. Every last one.

Uncommon Sense (#435)

The correct term is “tippelzone”, not “sex booth” or some other snickering adolescent coinage:

The mayor of [Berlin]…is proposing “Verichtungsboxen”…at Tempelhof Airport. His proposal for the establishment of the sex booths…came as part of a discussion about street prostitution in his district and how to improve the safety of Berlin’s sex workers…

Across the Pond (#757)

UK cops are increasingly using the jolly, kumbaya word “team” to mean “vice squad”:

More than 200 letters have been delivered to residents [near a stroll] in…Nottingham…to [intimidate] residents…in[to informing on their neighbors]…the…letters were hand delivered to [make the]…int[imidation feal more real]…Since 2004, Nottinghamshire Police’s Prostitution Task Force has been working to find ways of [pretending that harassing and stigmatizing] sex workers [is] get[ting] the[m] help…whilst gradually removing the[ir income. The cops bizarrely imagine harassing people and choking off their income will]…break down the barrier between sex workers and the police…

Soap Opera (#809)

Magical stickers, secret-squirrel codes…this is like a bad episode of Get Smart!

An Iowa newspaper employee recently [claimed to have] helped save a[n unnamed] woman trapped in a sex trafficking ring…after she flagged the delivery driver down on the side of the road…a 25-year-old East Dubuque Woman was arrested and charged with pimping….[a Cedar Rapids, Iowa] Bar…[posted a] sign in the woman’s restroom [reading]…”are you in an uncomfortable situation, do you need our help?”…[and] lists a code word drink…that customers can order to alert the bartender they’re in need of help… Teresa Davidson…of Chains Interrupted [wants] more …stickers that read “Are you safe” in bathrooms across the state….The organization is also working to [indoctrinate] convenience store employees…

Pyrrhic Victory (#931)

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

…Beijing has gone to [great lengths to] identify and control Uighurs…Within Kashgar…residents must line up to…swipe [ID cards] at each checkpoint….[and] expose their faces to [omnipresent]…facial recognition…[cops] need neither probable cause nor a warrant to detain Uighurs and check their phones for the surveillance software that they’re legally required to install….”re-education” camp[s imprison]…hundreds of thousands, or even millions of Muslims…[now] Ecuador is using a “national emergency response and video surveillance system built entirely by Chinese companies and financed by Chinese state loans”…As this technology improves and gets cheaper, it will likely become affordable to every two-bit dictator on Earth…

Disaster (#935)

The sweet smell of schadenfreude:

Verizon is set to sell the social network Tumblr to Automattic Inc, the owner of online publishing tool WordPress. A source familiar with the deal puts the price-tag…below $10 million…Tumblr…was…considered a major player in the social media space.[when it]…was acquired by Yahoo for $1.1 billion in 2013, before moving under Verizon’s umbrella through the carrier’s acquisition of Yahoo in 2017. [But] Verizon…[intentionally destroyed the network by ill-considered censorship]…last year. Automattic’s Chief Executive Matt Mullenweg told the Wall Street Journal that he plans to maintain the ban [so as to use the dying site as a tax write-off]…

Where Are the Victims? (#945)

Despite their pious posturing to the contrary, this is exactly the outcome prohibitionists wanted:

Fianna Fáil has called for an anti-prostitution law to be reviewed, because of the consequences it has on sex workers who live together. The main opposition party has suggested that it would be open to considering decriminalising sex workers who live together. The majority of Irish political parties want the government to review and possibly scrap a law which punishes sex workers who live together under a harsher “brothel keeping” offence which was brought in two yeas ago…It follows a high profile case earlier this summer where two migrant sex workers were both jailed for nine months after they were prosecuted for brothel keeping. One of the women was pregnant when she was jailed…Sex worker advocates had warned at the time that most of the people who were being prosecuted for brothel-keeping were independent sex workers…B[u]t…Fianna Fáil had voted down the amendment…now…it wants the law to be reviewed, after…the “[wholly]…intended consequences” [became public]…

Pyrrhic Victory (#956)

More on Amazon’s campaign to end privacy forever:

Amazon Web Services…has rolled out more terrifying features for its cloud-based facial recognition system—including, it claims, the ability to detect fear…Emotion recognition is a facial analysis technique that…works by training a machine learning system to look for certain features on a detected face which indicate emotional content…Amazon has updated the range of detectable emotions for Rekognition’s face analysis to include “fear,” adding to a list of seven other emotional states: “Happy”, “Sad”, “Angry”, “Surprised”, “Disgusted”, “Calm”, and “Confused”…the efficacy of emotion recognition is in dispute…[but used by] government agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement…and Customs and Border Patrol…

Between the Lines (#962)

Liz Brown tries to assess the damage from the rebranded “Operation Cross Country” pogroms:

…The FBI no longer reports the number of adult sex workers whom these initiatives claim as collateral…However, local news and law enforcement agencies often do..in Alabama, 49 “sex workers and their facilitators” were arrested around the Birmingham area…[and] 14 [in Homewood]……Northern Ohio [arrested nine] women…Pennsylvania [two]…Mississippi [five]…In South Carolina [five]…In…Florida [three]…In the San Diego area, six…Louisiana…25…in Shreveport…and…seven…in Baton Rouge…Police have portrayed the 4-year-old [abducted from one of their victims] as being rescued from “human traffickers”…

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In the News (#948)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged adolescence, agency denial, Alaska, Backpage, brothels, Censor Chic, censorship, China, Colorado, Dangerous Speech, Germany, Google, If Men Were Angels, internet, language, Opting Out, politicians, porn, rape, sex offender registry, Shazam!, The End of the Beginning, The More the Better, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, Watershed, Where Are the Victims? on June 26, 2019| 4 Comments »

The state may not use a butcher knife on a problem that requires a scalpel to fix. – Judge John T. Nixon

Where Are the Victims?

It’s always a “gang”, even when it clearly isn’t:

Hu Shuangyan…was part of a[n imaginary] gang that [rented] flats [to sex workers] in Kent, Essex and London…[she and her parter Zhang Dongning] tricked estate agents by posing as employees of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei…[she] was also convicted of money laundering…

A couple is not a “gang”, and if there wasn’t a stupid law against renting rooms to people engaged in a legal trade, there would have been no need for them to lie.

The More the Better

“Mommy whores” are good, but “gramma whores” are even better:

…grandmother-of-seven Abby Roberts is…working six days a week selling sex to make ends meet. With disabled husband Sorren unable to work, the 58 year old spends eight hours a day…[working] via…webcam…[and] also shoots six adult movies a month…”As an average I work about eight hours a day. Some people call me a workaholic but I just love it actually,” she says…that’s the way it has been for 18 years because when I fell in love with my husband I knew he had a very heavy disability”…She and Sorren…were regular swingers before he suffered a heart attack and was told he couldn’t have sex again…

If Men Were Angels

“Youth pastors” are as bad as cops:

A youth pastor at a Colorado Springs church has been arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a child…Stephen Michael Houlihan…[of] Fellowship of the Rockies church, was booked June 8 on charges of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust, internet luring of a child, and obscenity…

Censor Chic (#894)

Google is now so big it isn’t even accountable to its own shareholders:

A shareholder resolution aimed at halting Google’s efforts to bring a censored version of its search engine to China has failed. Shareholders tabled a resolution to demand Google put the brakes on its controversial search engine efforts in China. The program, internally dubbed “Dragonfly”, is…a censorship-friendly search engine with the capability to hide results at the behest of Beijing…Google chief Sundar Pichai…describ[es] China as an “important” market…

Whereas just not being evil (as Google used to claim in its motto) is not so important.

The End of the Beginning (#915)

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

The Supreme Court of Alaska ruled on Friday that Alaska’s sex offender registration statute violated the due process rights of out of state offenders by requiring them to register as sex offenders without allowing them to be heard. The court…concluded that the statute…was overbroad and violated due process because it did not provide them an opportunity to demonstrate they were no[t]…a threat to the public. The court elected not to invalidate the ASORA but rather to allow…the individual who brought the case…to file a civil action in the state’s superior court in an attempt to prove that he no longer poses a risk…

Uncommon Sense (#916)

Because whores are morons whose lives and businesses must be micromanaged by governments:

A flurry of recent media reports have suggested the Prostitutes Protection Act (herafter ProstSchG) had failed to achieve its stated goals and would not sufficiently protect people engaged in prostitution. Voice4Sexworkers…firmly rejects that notion: The ProstSchG is well on its way to achieve all of the federal government’s desired goals and effects…Germany’s Basic Law…which grants the inviolability of one’s home…no longer applies to sex workers. Occupational freedom…is being undermined through the registration procedures…It was clear from the outset that the law would be particularly problematic for people from countries where prostitution is illegal, such as Bulgaria or Romania. If they register as sex workers in Germany, they risk receiving mail in their countries of origin, despite the promised option to have any related mail delivered to a different mailing address…Tax offices flout this provision knowingly and deliberately, and in doing so, they greatly endanger the lives of sex workers in their countries of origin…The entire construct of the ProstSchG is intended to deter people from entering prostitution and render sex work impossible in most places…

Opting Out (#926)

Any non-politician would have given this up as a bad idea by now:

The government is under pressure to delay its controversial online pornography age verification scheme for a third time [from July 15^th to October 15^th], or risk “nefarious” companies “using this opportunity to harvest and manipulate user data”…the Digital Policy Alliance…[ex]plains that…unless the scheme is delayed there will be “less protection for public data”…

Here’s more detail on that from the Open Rights Group:

New age restrictions on pornography…are a “privacy timebomb”…[because in typical government fashion] the data protection in place to protect consumers is “vague, imprecise and largely a ‘tick box’ exercise”…The UK government claims the new measures are necessary in order to prevent children and young adults from accessing adult content online…[even though] the new rules are unlikely to prevent tech-savvy children from reaching restricted websites…

Watershed (#934)

It took prohibitionists two months to freak out over an article saying everyone has human rights:

Teen Vogue tweeted an article titled, “Why Sex Work Is Real Work,” and many clutched their pearls at the audacity of talking to teens about sex work…sex therapist Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng[‘s]…central argument was that sex workers provide services that help people meet and understand their sexual needs in the same way that her sex counseling does…[prohibitionist] talking heads quickly posted their disdain: “Why is a teen magazine promoting prostitution to their 13-year-old readers?” Others falsely equated sex work with sex trafficking…One commenter pointed out that Teen Vogue is a part of Condé Nast in [a bizarre stretch] to falsely equate discussing sex work with pedophilia…Of course, Dr. Mofokeng’s article defends nothing other than the safe exchange of sexual services between consenting adults…Furthermore, scandalized reactions to teens learning about sex work are out of touch with reality. About 40% of high school teens report to be sexually active, making conversations about sexual health and women’s issues crucially relevant in teens’ lives…

Dangerous Speech (#942)

Another deep dive into the facts of the persecution of Backpage:

…In the years before their arrest, Lacey and Larkin had successfully beat back charges like these in court. They took refuge not only in the First Amendment but also in Section 230…Congress’ great gift to the internet….[which] wouldn’t exist without it. After all, you can’t build or sustain a giant network if you’re getting sued every time a user says or does something objectionable…Lacey and Larkin…won case after case, with the support of Big Tech and civil libertarians alike. But by the time the Feds descended on Paradise Valley that morning in the spring of 2018…the tech industry…had thrown them under the bus. Their top lieutenant had flipped. And Congress had used them as an excuse to finally accomplish what it had been trying to do for more than 20 years—tear a hole in Section 230…Silicon Valley had better hope they win. United States v. Lacey is a dangerous case, with potential consequences far beyond the freedom of two aging antiauthoritarians…

There’s a lot of good info here, but watch for the writer’s bias; she seems to be a crypto-prohibitionist and it’s visible in a few places (such as calling Lacey & Larkin “digital pimps”). That’s hardly unusual for Wired, which seems unable to publish an article about sex work that lacks major issues.

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In the News (#920)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged activism, adolescence, agency denial, asset seizure, Australia, California, cell phones, censorship, cops, dehumanization, dirty, disease, drugs, False Witness, Florida, HIV Cure, hysteria, internet, law, left-right myth, McNeill's Law, Nebraska, North Carolina, Out of Their Tree, politicians, psychology, rape, Saving Them from Themselves, sex offender registry, shame, Stalkers in Blue, Surplus Women, surveillance, The Clueless Leading the Hysterical, Top Cop, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, video, violence vs. sex workers, Washington (state), Wise Investment on March 13, 2019| 1 Comment »

Be wary of people in the media trying to sell you on the idea that sex traffickers, hate criminals, migrant caravans, and Momo are coming to get you. – Robby Soave

Surplus Women

Naturally this monster preyed on whores; the state put them directly in his path:

A [North Carolina] jury sentenced Seaga Gillard to death…for the hotel-room fatal shootings of a pregnant woman and her boyfriend…Gillard…and co-defendant Brandon Hill targeted [sex workers]…robbing and sexually assaulting them…across the Triangle…prosecutors placed a long string of victims on the stand, nearly all of whom described the same scenario: advertising themselves on Backpage or PlentyOfFish, expecting a single customer but finding two at the door, being tied up with phone cords, robbed and sexually assaulted…Details that spun out of that testimony painted a cruel picture of Gillard: ordering a woman to remove her clothes and then twirling a gun inside of her, instructing another women to show her teeth and then putting his gun to her mouth…

HIV Cure (#31)

For just the second time…a patient appears to have been cured of infection with H.I.V…The news comes nearly 12 years to the day after the first patient known to be cured, a feat that researchers have long tried, and failed, to duplicate. The…success now confirms that a cure…is possible, if difficult…Both milestones resulted from bone-marrow transplants given to…treat cancer…Bone-marrow transplantation is unlikely to be a realistic treatment option in the near future. Powerful drugs are now available to control H.I.V. infection, while the transplants are risky, with harsh side effects that can last for years. But rearming the body with immune cells similarly modified to resist H.I.V. might well succeed as a practical treatment…

Out of Their Tree

While some politicians are beginning to side with sex workers and others are pretending to, the majority are still unreconstructed prohibitionists and a few, like Los Angeles councilwoman Nury Martinez, are dangerous authoritarian fanatics. Last week, this nut bar talked about going on a whore hunt with the pigs, then vomiting out her totalitarian wanking fantasy that all sex workers should be considered children under the law:

…What became very apparent to me is that the girls they were calling prostitutes were children…the women we were…actually children…we need to stop calling them women…they’re children….[and] victims…We want…to…help prosecutors go after these guys and…put [sex workers] away for good…

This is not the first time Martinez has spoken in favor of legally nullifying the human rights of people who have consensual sex, which she has called “sickening”. Martinez is pro-universal surveillance, pro-censorship, and pro-asset seizure, and supports the State treating the poor who dare to go out in public as though they were plague rats, so I’m sure she has a long, bright political future ahead of her as a “progressive” political star.

False Witness (#752)

Those who wish to manufacture “sex trafficking victims” can use exactly the same methods:

For years, a group of outcasts in Beatrice, Neb., were convinced they had brutally raped and murdered an elderly woman named Helen Wilson one night in February 1985, even though they couldn’t remember any of it. That was only [the fantasy dreamed up] by the detectives and [pushed on them by] the police psychologist at the Gage County Sheriff’s Office…[who claimed the group had magically] repressed the traumatizing memories. The [pig-enabling] psychologist, Wayne Price, assured them the memories of the murder would probably come back in dreams…[eventually he brainwashed] three of the six suspects — [Ada] Taylor, Debra Shelden and James Dean [into] wholeheartedly believ[ing] in their [nonexistent] guilt. But for at least one of them, Joseph White, it was a different story. Convicted on nothing more than his friends’ false memories and dreams, he would spend the next 20 years seeking to prove his innocence — a pursuit that finally came to an end [last] week [when]…the Supreme Court upheld $28.1 million in damages to the wrongfully convicted, now known as the Beatrice Six. The judgment comes as a result of a civil rights lawsuit that White filed in 2009, the same year the group was pardoned and declared innocent beyond all doubt after DNA evidence exonerated them. They had collectively served more than 70 years in prison…

Uncommon Sense (#774)

The GMB follows up on the support for sex worker rights it first announced 18 months ago:

The GMB union has launched a new adult entertainment branch, which will invite members from across Scotland…The sex workers who fought for the creation of the branch now hope to shape future prostitution legislation…Rhea Wolfson, GMB organiser for Glasgow, was instrumental in setting up the branch. She [said]…”Sex work is work and it should be safe…People are waking up to the reality that if sex workers are treated differently then that is discrimination”…The GMB’s adult entertainment branch is open to anyone in the adult entertainment industry, including strippers, burlesque and go-go dancers, video cam workers, people who make pornography – any form of sexual labour…

Wise Investment (#779)

Sex workers, clients & everyone else harmed by “prostitution stings” needs to keep suing over them:

…Sandipkumar Patel was wrongly accused of soliciting sex from a massage parlor during [the recent]…prostitution…busts in South Florida….the Martin County Sheriff’s Office [maliciously pretended] Patel…was connected to the operation because [they claimed] he owned a blue, four-door Porsche [parked] in the parking lot…Patel…doesn’t own a Porsche. Later [pigs admitted] the car actually belonged to a woman with the same last name….Patel…says his life, and his family’s life, has been turned upside-down [due to pigs’ releasing names and pictures for the specific intent of publicly shaming people who by law are presumed innocent]…The David Golden Law Office [is representing Patel] to sue the Martin County Sheriff’s Office…

Stalkers in Blue

With modern surveillance and data processing, no woman is safe from cops:

Adrian Trevor Moore was a [cop in Western Australia who]…pleaded guilty to 180 charges of using a secure police database to access the information of 92 women he had met, or interacted with, on dating websites including Tinder and Plenty of Fish. A third of the women were checked by Moore multiple times over several years…Defence barrister Mark Andrews [claimed]…Moore[‘s violation of almost a hundred women’s privacy was OK because he] was motivated by “curiosity”…But…Magistrate Geoff Lawrence…said a jail term was necessary…”people can’t trust the public officials…they [should] lose confidence in the system”…

Saving Them From Themselves (#846)

Another bad law giving prosecutors more ways to charge teen sexters rather than simply exempting them:

…a bill that would [offer prosecutors less punitive charging options for]…teen sexting passed off the floor of the Washington State House, but not without resistance from Republican representative Brad Klippert, who spent a lot of his time screaming about the depravity of anal sex and other acts after legislators rejected his amendment…Noel…Frame’s bill would prevent kids from being charged with a felony for possessing naked photos of themselves. Minors sharing… photos…could [still] be charged with a…misdemeanor [unless the subject is]…12 and under [even if the sharer is the same age]…Brad Klippert, a school [pig] and Pentecostal preacher…[wanted to] only…protect…kids who sent nudes that didn’t offend his delicate sensibilities…

Take a look at the video, and consider that this screaming lunatic is both a fundie preacher and a pig, whose job is (no surprise) spying on and lording it over high schoolers. McNeill-Rule examples like this are the ones who decide whether to hurl life-destroying charges at teens for normal adolescent sexuality:

The Clueless Leading the Hysterical (#918)

Robby Soave correctly classes “sex trafficking” as an absurd moral panic:

Palm Beach County finally unblocked Youtube on its school computers…after falling for the…Momo…hoax…[that] a shocking number of journalists are guilty of spreading…but this should surprise no one…people of all ideological persuasions should beware the frequent spread of nonsensical, sensational, conspiratorial, and utterly false news stories—everything from obvious fakes like Momo to the slightly more robust yet equally absurd contentions that sex trafficking and hate crimes are ever-worsening epidemics…the media, particularly local media, falls for these kinds of hoaxes all the time. Every year around Halloween, news outlets prey on parents’ unreasonable fears of sex offenders abducting their kids, or malicious strangers feeding them poisoned candy, even though neither of these things ever happen…Sometimes the hoax gets an assist from the police or schools…Trump promoted a Washington Examiner article about ranchers finding prayer rugs at the souther border, an indication that…Muslims…were entering the country illegally…At the Conservative Political Action Conference…Sara Carter…[repeated] a reboot of something called a pharming party; Politico‘s Jack Shafer has debunked its existence over and over again…the so-called sex-trafficking epidemic…has been carefully refuted…over and over again…

Top Cop (#918)

Could it be that sex work decriminalization will actually be an issue in the next presidential election? Though Swedish model devotee Copmala Harris is lying through her teeth when she claims to support decriminalization, the very fact that she thinks claiming to support it will get her votes says something. Believe it or not, the chronically-stoned Rolling Stone actually seems to have hit on one of the reasons:

…Given the newfound visibility of sex workers’ rights, and the overlap the movement has with women’s rights and workers’ rights as a whole, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are in the position of having to address an issue that has previously been on the margins of the national conversation. But it’s unclear how many of them plan to do that…A major driving force behind this increased visibility has been the backlash to SESTA/FOSTA, a controversial piece of legislation that was [pre]tended to combat sex trafficking on websites like Backpage…[but] had the opposite effect…

Meanwhile, in Vice, sex worker Liara Roux wrote:

…you can’t be upset at people for being single-issue voters when that issue is their literal survival. If Democrat[s]…are worried about our complaints, they would be better served by making sure there is better policy around sex work in the Democratic platform than by asking sex workers to stop fighting for their survival. We are asking to stop the bleeding. Hell, we are asking for people to even acknowledge the wound. This shouldn’t be considered a high bar…a Democrat who believes in increased criminalization will sign the death warrant for countless sex workers. A Democrat willing to examine their mistakes and work towards decriminalization, decarceration, and destigmatization will help just as many people survive…

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In the News (#916)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Tyranny, tagged activism, An Example to the West, asset seizure, blogging, Blunt Instrument, brothels, California, cell phones, censorship, comics, cops, cult of the child, dehumanization, dirty, Disaster, drivers, ethics, fantasy, Feminine Pragmatism, Germany, Held Together With Lies, Japan, law, Mind Reading, Mongolia, Policing for Profit, politicians, porn, pragmatism, propaganda, psychology, Pyrrhic Victory, racism, rescue industry, robots, Secret Squirrel, See No Evil, sex toys, sex work is work, South Carolina, surveillance, The Pygmalion Fallacy, The Spiral of Absurdity, Top Cop, Uganda, Uncommon Sense, violence vs. sex workers, Virginia, Welcome to the Future on February 27, 2019| 3 Comments »

Harris’s contempt for sex workers lies at the heart of her hypocrisy. – Stephen Lemons

Feminine Pragmatism

Wherever there are men making money, there will be enterprising women working to get some of it:

…Mongolia’s mining boom started in the early 2000s and mining now accounts for around 20 per cent of Mongolia’s gross domestic product. The growth…has created a spike in internal migration to mining areas – most notably Ömnögovi…The coal route from the Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit to the Chinese border is synonymous with sex work fuelled by the mining industry…In contrast to the stigma…in the city…the border area [i]s accepting and open…four or five women travel to the border area with a driver and rent a ger (a traditional round felted tent) to stay…If [truck] drivers don’t have cash, they pay in fuel: 40 or 50 litres of diesel for one act, 100 litres for one hour. The women then resell the fuel when they can…Ulaanbaatar…is [by contrast] a harsh environment for women working in the trade…sex [workers] in…sauna[s] in the capital…[are beaten by] police and customers…ultra-nationalists target sex workers on the street and shave their heads to disgrace them…

Despite the obligatory “sex trafficking” disinformation and nonsense sprinkled throughout, the article is not a bad look at sex work in a part of the world few Westerners know anything about.

See No Evil (#25)

Are the Japanese the only people left on Earth who can tell fantasy from reality?

The United Nations has proposed an international initiative…to tighten…restrictions and prohibition of…child pornography…However…child pornography…”is defined…as ‘any representation of a child engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities…includ[ing]…visual material such as photographs, movies, drawings and cartoons…including when…such material represents…non-existing children”…

Blunt Instrument

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

One South Carolina [politician] is working to shut down massage parlors…Mandy Powers Norrell proposed legislation that could close those places for good. “It will give labor, licensing, and regulation the authority to close them down and prosecute any [women] found there,” [she bloviated]…

Policing for Profit

Cops will never stop doing this as long as the state keeps giving them pretexts:

…In case after case, [motorists were robbed by cops claiming]…the cash was found near drugs. Yet few…ever were arrested. They were caught in one of the most aggressive [robbery] operations in [South Carolina, where the]…police…[stole] nearly $50,000 from…motorists over a two-year period…$135 for every person living in Nichols. That’s six times more per resident than any other police department in the state…

An Example To the West (#636)

Ugandan sex workers demand their rights:

Human and women rights activists have appealed to Members of Parliament not to criminalise prostitution as they debate and pass the pending Sexual Offences Bill of 2015…”These arrests are mostly carried out to solicit bribes from sex workers and harass them. Few of them get to trial. The provision, is therefore, unnecessary since it is unenforceable,” [said] Macklean Mary Kyomya…of Alliance of Women Advocating for Change…activists brandished placards reading…”outlaw poverty not prostitution…rights not rescue…my body, my business”…

Secret Squirrel (#686)

Conditioning squares to accept intrusive monitoring of every aspect of their lives:

…Devices worn on employees’ bodies are an increasingly valuable source of workforce health intelligence for employers and insurance companies. It’s fueling a boom in the use of wrist-borne health and fitness monitors such as those made by Fitbit, Garmin and Apple…the information is not covered by federal rules that protect health records from disclosure. And when it’s combined with data such as credit scores, employees are giving up more insights about themselves than they realize…In general, employees in such programs [“voluntarily”] sign up for digital health monitoring. They are lured by cash, reduced premiums, or reimbursements for co-payments and deductibles…Fitbit is moving aggressively to sign up companies. It added a call service that [nag]…workers…via text messages and phone calls…whose data shows they are falling short of their [assigned “fitness goals”]…

You amateurs really think being spied on like this is OK? No wonder fantasies of whores “enslaved” by exploitative bosses who spy on their every move are so popular; it’s just amateurs projecting their work conditions onto us.

Pyrrhic Victory (#697)

The dystopian future of Minority Report has arrived:

The use of PredPol—a predictive policing software…is far more widespread than previously reported…PredPol claims to use an algorithm to predict crime in specific 500-foot by 500-foot sections of a city, so that police can…surveil specific areas more heavily…PredPol [has] contract[s or] negotiation[s]…with…South Jordan, UT; Mountain View, CA; Atlanta, GA; Haverhill, GA; Palo Alto, CA; Modesto, CA; Merced, CA; Livermore, CA; Tacoma, WA; and the University of California, Berkeley…Los Angeles, Elgin [CA], Oakland [CA], Richmond [CA]…Milpitas [CA]…Santa Cruz, CA; Morgan Hill, CA, Fairfield, CA, Los Gatos/Monte Sereno, CA; Campbell, CA; Salinas, CA; Alhambra, CA; Lansing, MI; Seattle, WA; San Francisco, CA; Columbia, SC…Manhattan, KS…Little Rock, AK; Kent, England; Reading, PA; “and many more”…Predpol explicitly encourage[s] police departments to dedicate their resources towards petty crime…Shahid Buttar, the Director of Grassroots Advocacy for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)…[explains] it’s impossible to expect unbiased results from predictive policing technology, because the data it analyzes is structurally biased. Predictive policing is “driven by…data that itself reflects longstanding and pervasive bias…If you overpolice certain communities, and only detect crime within those communities, and then try to provide a heat map of predictions, any AI will predict that crimes will occur in the places that they’ve happened before”…

The Spiral of Absurdity (#743)

“Sex trafficking” fetishists are still masturbating to the fantasy that emojis are part of some mysterious pimp “code”:

Bay Area prosecutors were trying to prove that a man arrested during a prostitution sting was guilty of pimping charges, and among the [supposed] evidence was a series of Instagram DMs he’d allegedly sent to a woman…with high heels and money bag emoji placed at the end…[a hired gun claiming to be] an expert…in sex trafficking…[fantasized under oath that] the high heels and bags of money supported the interpretation that the defendant was accused of sex trafficking, essentially translating to “wear your high heels to come make some money.” Another message from the defendant included the crown emoji, which was said to signify that the “pimp is the king”. Ultimately, the ruling didn’t hinge on the interpretation of emoji, but [that didn’t stop prosecutors from trying to destroy lives based on the masturbatory fantasies of people who’ve never done sex work in their lives]…

Uncommon Sense (#745)

Yet another registration regime fails miserably, as we keep telling y’all:

Only 76 of the reportedly 200,000 women (0.038%) who work as prostitutes in Germany have registered for state services [and of course politicians can’t understand why]…sex workers [can] register for state-run health insurance, pensions and unemployment benefits…[but the price after a new and paternalistic] law was enacted…in 2017 [is] regist[ration with pigs, mandatory “counseling”, prying into their private lives by social workers and compulsory] regular health [inspections]…most prostitutes…register under some different professional category in order to continue working anonymously…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#848)

Never underestimate the human capacity to obsess about things that don’t exist:

…sex robots are rapidly becoming a part of…national [fantasies] about the future of sex and relationships….a number of companies are currently developing [human-shaped sex toys]…with a few already on the market…A 2017 survey suggested almost half of Americans think that having sex with robots will become a common practice within 50 years [the same fraction who think Donald Trump is intelligent and genetically-modified foods are dangerous]. As a [pompous windbag]…I’m interested in the legal and policy questions that sex robots pose…How will [masturbating] with a sex [doll] affect the human [soul]? Would sex with a child[-shaped toaster] be ethical?…

These articles are so deeply stupid, I just can’t take them at all seriously any more. Despite the claims in the title, “sex robots” are not here, and never will be in the form envisioned by both fetishists and prohibitionists. And the dolls (that’s all they are, silicone dolls) which people insist on incorrectly calling “robots” are inanimate objects which raise no more “ethical issues” than a Baby Alive or a tablet computer.

Held Together With Lies (#858)

We haven’t seen this concentration of ludicrous claims in a couple of years now:

[The rescue industry] is the business of stealing freedom for profit. [Sex workers labeled against their will as] victims of trafficking are deprived of their basic human rights, dehumanized, brutalized and objectified [by police]…Human trafficking business is [fantasized] to generate $100 billion annually, more than Apple, Starbucks, Microsoft, and Nike combined…there are 40.3 million victims of human trafficking globally…we [masturbate furiously while fantasizing] that there are countless victims, some only young teens…in our own communities…Sex trafficking data is scarce and has many gaps, due to [our making it up as we go]…

As usual, ridiculous numbers are slung about in self-contradictory fashion, mis-citing sources (the 40.3 million fantasy is from the NGO “Walk Free Foundation”, not the ILO as claimed) and claiming knowledge while admitting there is none. So naturally I had to correct the wording a bit.

Top Cop

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

It’s the hypocrisy, stupid. That’s what pundits from The Nation to the Washington Post fail to grasp about the onetime romance between former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and California Senator and Democratic presidential hopeful Kamala Harris. Harris’s apologists would have people believe that discussion of the relationship, which occurred two decades ago when Brown held the powerful post of Speaker of the California Assembly and Harris was a lowly deputy district attorney in California’s Alameda County, is sexist, racist, or both. Viewed in light of Harris’s ongoing war on sex workers, however, her advantageous liaison with Brown indicates that she has no problem applying different rules to herself than she does to others…Maggie McNeill [said]…“I have absolutely nothing against the fact that she used her sexuality to get by in the world…What I do have a problem with, is that having gained that power, she used it to attack other women for doing the same thing”…

Disaster (#909)

The successors of Tumblr:

…with Tumblr’s strict adult-content ban…kinky bloggers fled the site–searching for, and trying to build, new communities. One of the fastest growing of these sites is relative newcomer newTumbl, which has gained about 40,000 blogs since it launched on December 31. True to its name, the site closely resembles Tumblr–at least the NSFW parts that are now banned…MojoFire, a site created by members of the BDSM community but aspiring to host all types of content, has not yet launched. Yet others were already in the works before the Tumblr porn ban and have seen a large influx of refugee bloggers. For instance, Pillowfort–another site meant for a broad community–has been straining with the arrival of former Tumblr users, forcing it to limit new sign-ups…MakeLoveNotPorn…[has] provided a hub for user-generated “social sex” videos since 2009…

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In the News (#898)

Posted in Current Events, Miscellaneous, News, Perception, Tyranny, tagged activism, condoms, Dirty Whores, disease, fascism, Google, homosexuality, hysteria, I Spy, If Men Were Angels, illegal aliens, India, Montana, porn, Pyrrhic Victory, rape, robots, Spain, Surplus Women, surveillance, The Pygmalion Fallacy, Things We Choose To Do Together, Torture Chamber, Uncommon Sense, United Kingdom, violence vs. sex workers on December 23, 2018| 1 Comment »

You don’t see Superman holding Lex’s sister hostage in return for an orderly surrender. – Stephen Robinson

Dirty Whores

Whores understand the need for STI prevention; amateurs, not so much:

In 2002, a major report predicted an AIDS catastrophe in India. The country would have 20-25m…cases by 2010…But 2010 came and went…That victory – India’s biggest public health achievement – has remained uncelebrated…[because] the people…[who] were crucial in guiding India away from its seemingly inescapable destiny [were] the country’s sex workers…Ashok Alexander spent a decade at the helm of [Avahan,] the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s campaign against HIV. In his book, A Stranger Truth: Lessons in Love, Leadership and Courage from India’s Sex Workers, he says the miracle would never have happened without [them]…Avahan opened drop-in centres where…[sex workers] could unwind, have a hot shower and rest on a mattress on the floor. There was also the chance to be checked for sexually transmitted infection by a doctor without fear of being identified and stigmatised. For Avahan, the centres were a way of collecting the women in one place to be able to give them the information, support and condoms they needed…Avahan…had a presence in 550 towns in just two years; within three, it had become the world’s largest privately sponsored HIV prevention programme…The women knew what was best for them. All Alexander had to do, as he says, was tap into “the strength inherent in even the most marginalised of people if they are enabled to come together in a common cause”…

Surplus Women

What does her income have to do with her murder?

A murdered escort known as a party girl by her “posh friends” told them she was an IT consultant to cover up her double life as a sex worker…Christina Abbotts…charged $2,500 [a night]…She was beaten around the head 13 times in a brutal attack and strangled, allegedly by a banker who was a regular customer…Zahid Naseem…is accused of the 29-year-old’s murder, at around midnight on her birthday…she…[used] the [stage name] Tilly Pexton…

$2500 for an overnight is a fairly typical rate for “high end” escorts; this detail is not noteworthy in any way. It’s only purpose is to appeal to prurience.

If Men Were Angels

Go on, keep raising your kids to respect authority:

A former high school athletic trainer in Montana accused of sexually assaulting up to 100 boys during a nearly 30-year span has been arrested on multiple counts of child pornography possession…James Eric Jensen…78…groomed and sexually assaulted up to 100 male students, prompting an admission of guilt…after at least 18 victims were identified…Jensen…promised to increase the physical prowess of the teen athletes as young as 14 with a training regimen that he dubbed “The Program” and included routine clinical exams that escalated to massages to oral sex and digital anal penetration…the…incidents…occurred outside the statute of limitations…[but] Jensen [also] had images of child pornography…[which] were discovered after a housekeeper at a retirement community…where Jensen lived told police she saw images of nude boys on his computer…

Pyrrhic Victory (#615)

All too often, evil arrives cloaked in the mantle of expediency:

…Hertz rental cars [has entered a]…partnership with Clear, the biometric face and fingerprint scanning company you’ve seen at airport security checkpoints…At the…Atlanta International Airport this month, you can check out and drive off in your rental car with just a scan of your face (or a fingerprint reading)…if you’re a Gold Plus Rewards program member who’s signed up for Clear…The Fast Lane service will expand to 40 other airport rental locations in the next six months…The rental car scans come less than a week after Microsoft president Brad Smith warned about the dangers of facial recognition tech…government misuse…stem[s] from this convenience. Granted, the Hertz use-case is fairly harmless. But that’s how it always starts…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#684)

I think it’s kinda hilarious that these dumb sex doll conferences keep getting cancelled:

…the Fourth International Congress of Love and Sex With Robots had the rug pulled out from under it when co-conference Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology abruptly canceled its own event in what it [hilariously and self-importantly] called “a tragic moment in the history of human civilization”…Even before its demise, Love and Sex With Robots was shaping up to be something less than a remarkable affair. The conference appears to have been a nonstarter going back months. Springer Nature pulled the plug on the planned publication of the conference proceedings when it learned back in July that only about 10 papers had been submitted for the planned two-day conference…As of last week, only five academic papers appeared on the schedule, including one paper by Adrian David Cheok in which he apparently asked 15 people if they would like to have sex with a robot…

Pyrrhic Victory (#810)

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

…the Electronic Frontier Foundation…filed hundreds of Freedom of Information Act…requests…[to investigate] Vigilant Solutions, the largest private company selling [Automated License Plate Reader] technology and data…173 entities (largely police departments and sheriff’s offices, but also some federal agencies) in 23 states scanned a total of 2.5 billion license plates in 2016 and 2017…99.5 percent of scans belonged to cars that weren’t associated with crimes…on average, each agency was directly sharing this information with 160 other jurisdictions at various levels of government…Vigilant…[also] sells access to this dataset to an undisclosed list of entities. What that means is even if your plates were shot in Georgia, your location data may be accessible to cops in say, Illinois. Or it may be bought by private companies or Immigration and Customs Enforcement…

Torture Chamber (#878)

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

(ICE) announced…that federal authorities have arrested 170 immigrants who came forward to sponsor migrant children in government custody. This is the result of a new, fun rule the Department of Homeland Security put into effect…[which] allows immigration authorities to examine the criminal background and legal status of anyone who attempts to sponsor the unaccompanied minors — usually parents or close relatives already in the country. They can even check the papers of any other adults living in their home…It’s a masterclass in evil: Use defenseless children as bait to lure immigrants to the authorities…109 of the immigrants arrested had no criminal record. The remaining 61 had criminal records, but ICE wouldn’t specify [whether they were]…violent offenses…

The article is marred by the fact that author Stephen Robinson, who apparently opposes locking people in cages for things that aren’t violent crimes, praises scumbag prohibitionist Kamala Harris…whose entire career is based on locking people in cages for things that aren’t violent crimes and then using them for slave labor.

Pyrrhic Victory (#884)

Though Amazon isn’t listening to shareholders, it seems Google is:

Google…made a pretty clear statement about how its facial recognition technology will and won’t be used for the time being…civil rights groups as well as its own investors and employees have urged [Amazon] to stop providing its facial recognition technology to police…

I think it unlikely Google has decided to stop being evil; it’s probably just too busy developing an internet censorship engine for the Chinese government.

Uncommon Sense (#892)

More on the Spanish sex worker union the government wants to suppress:

…APROSEX falls somewhere between a social network, support group, and day-care system. The women check in on one another to make sure they’ve reached and left their dates safely, take turns watching each other’s children during night shifts, and meet…to vent about work and clients. APROSEX counts about 150 members…Two years ago, the women of APROSEX decided it was time to unionize. Once they were a legal entity, they’d have a fighting chance to demand basic workers’ rights and challenge the criminal code. Under a 2015 public-safety law—colloquially known as the “gag law” and widely considered draconian—sex workers can be fined from €600 to €10,400 (roughly $680 to $11,800) for committing “obscene acts” or, more vaguely, for “disobeying authority” in public spaces close to places frequented by minors…Last year, law enforcement reported an average of 1.3 women per day for prostitution, 60 percent of whom were fined…

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Posts Tagged ‘Uncommon Sense’

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