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Posts Tagged ‘yellow journalism’

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I’m…reliably informed by “sex trafficking experts” that “mature” means “underage”, “downtown” means “suburbs”, and “no drama” means the escort and her “pimp” will entertain you with a performance of the climactic scene of Othello.
–  “Not Worth the Paper

A phrase used to mean everything means nothing at all, and a phrase that means nothing isn’t a useful term for serious adults; it’s a fad for the immature and silly.  –  “Meaningless

A society more concerned with…politicians’ language and manners than the fact that they are murdering their own people by the thousands, is long overdue for collapse.  –  “Overdue

Human opinions were never and are never monolithic across a society and era, no matter what authoritarians want you to believe.  –  “Monolith

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Every young generation loves to think it invented extramarital sex, and every older generation loves to condemn them as though it were really true.  –  “All Wet

Law enforcement loves to [claim]…they’re rescuing us.  They’re only rescuing us from being able to pay our bills.  –  “Printed To Fit

Our profession truly is the oldest one on Earth. Older than the pyramids, older than cities.  Older even than Homo Sapiens …We are as eternal as the sea; our enemies are mere insects, who annoy for a season and are then gone.
–  “For My Sisters

The nation’s mainstream press…argue about what size Cinderella’s glass slippers were and consult “experts” about what Teletubbies eat for breakfast.  –  “On Tape

Trying to hide or disguise [my] personality would’ve been almost as difficult as trying to get a new head.  –  “Being Maggie

 

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Fascists, prohibitionists, and other violent busybodies…can always be counted on to use every power at their disposal to inflict as much suffering as possible on those weaker than they are.  –  “NYE 2022

As I first predicted over a decade ago, “sex trafficking” hysteria did not end quietly, but instead violently imploded.  In “The Widening Gyre” I referred to the moral panic as “an increasingly-erratic cultural meme spinning wildly out of control, whose far-flung debris is going to cause a lot more damage before it finally disintegrates”, and boy was I right; though we no longer have to endure endless parades of lackwits with tape over their mouths, and cops’ public masturbation to the “gypsy whores” myth in Super Bowl host cities is more likely to evoke mockery than parroting these days, the toxic fallout of the collapse is everywhere, and will likely poison the social ecosystem for many years to come.  Of course all the terrible laws the hysteria spawned will stay on the books, just as the terrible laws spawned by its previous incarnation a century go (such as 1910’s Mann Act) are still around for the government to oppress people with.  And though the surviving QAnon offshoot of the panic is largely the realm of Trumpists, it’s far too late for belated debunking by prohibitionist media such as The New York Times (which eagerly promoted “sex trafficking” hysteria when it served their authoritarian goals and funneled money into its coffers via clickbait) to have any real curative effect on the paranoid poison which has permeated every part of Western society and may yet engender still-worse laws.  But in the long run, the most dangerous effect of “sex trafficking” hysteria may result from its shifting of the Overton window.  The “white slavery” hysteria of the previous century shifted the public perception of sex work from something which, while distasteful to many, was recognized as normal and even necessary, to a “social evil” which could be eradicated by state violence; similarly, “sex trafficking” rhetoric, by casting women as permanent children wholly unable to view sex pragmatically or even plan travel or place ads without male assistance, paved the way for the ongoing erosion of many of women’s hard-won rights which has already resulted in the widespread recriminalization of abortion across much of the US, the sexual infantilization of women in Canada and much of Europe, and a worldwide war on porn which has made ambitious censorship and surveillance schemes acceptable to useful idiots worldwide.  Where this will end, it’s impossible to say, but one thing is sure:  however destructive a wildfire may be, it’s at least possible to fight it when there aren’t hordes of fools running around throwing lit matches everywhere they go.

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Abortion trafficking is not a thing.  –  Judge Debora Grasham

An Avalanche of Bullshit (#976)

Another high-profile pogrom of an Asian-owned business has been announced in the media by parroting cops’ and prosecutors’ masturbatory fantasies, racist propaganda, and ludicrously-Victorian language.  The use of the word “service” as a verb in the headline is as telltale as the presence of the word “sophisticated”, used by cops for the last decade as an excuse to rape sex workers.  The primary trope of the coverage is the popular pretense that it’s somehow shocking that modern men of means and position are as likely to buy sex as such men have always been since the beginning of human civilization.  Fairly-ordinary fees and costs of doing business are represented as extravagant; extremely mundane practices like screening clients and making bank deposits are described with weird, convoluted language so as to make them seem somehow esoteric and criminal; and adult women are infantilized as passive victims by invoking the “submissive Asian woman” fantasy.  One day, our culture may grow up enough to recognize that pragmatic sexual arrangements are nobody else’s business, but that day is not today, so we can look forward to months of lurid fixation on the prurient details and none on the government’s crime of wasting massive amounts of money and manpower in order to destroy the lives of people who harmed nobody.

Creepy Coppers

Seems like a significant fraction of child porn is spread by cops:

A [cop from] Tennessee was arrested…[for] requesting [nude photos]…from a mother in Virginia who sent him [nude] photos and videos of her juvenile daughter.  Dan Roark…was…charged with…production of child pornography…an anonymous [snitch first reported the daughter]…

I had to aggressively edit this one because it was so larded with obfuscatory language:

A [typical and representative Missouri cop] has been indicted by a federal grand jury…August Price Gildehaus…was charged…with one count of enticing a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity…producing child pornography…and…attempting to distribute child pornography…

Feudalism Redux (#1327)

Politicians don’t even try to make their new laws constitutional any more:

…a federal judge [has] granted a temporary restraining order against…[Idaho’s unconstitutional law inventing a new crime called] “abortion trafficking”…[which] criminaliz[es] any adult who assists a minor in obtaining abortion medication or a lawful abortion out of state without parental consent. [The law essentially allows a] parent…or guardian…to f[orce a]…minor…[to carry an unwanted or even dangerous pregnancy under the rhetoric of]…“parental rights”…the law is [both] unconstitutionally vague [and infringes] on the…right…to interstate and intrastate travel…

Cops and Robbers (#1328)

Of course they’ll never charge the cops who use similar tactics with no more concern for ethics:

Jason Nassr, the man behind…Creeper Hunter TV, [was] sentenced…to…18 months of house arrest…from 2015 to 2020, Nassr posted videos he claimed showed men contacting him for sex when…he was [ageplaying]…he would communicate with men on dating sites and social media platforms, typically portraying himself as an 18-year-old female.  Once the correspondence turned sexual…Nassr would [start ageplaying while yet including hints that] he was [actually ov]er 18 — as young as age 10…Those who continued to communicate with him would end up featured on Creeper Hunter TV.  Nassr recorded in-person confrontations, showed screen captures of text conversations, and included full names and phone numbers…Around 100 episodes were posted…at least two of [Nassr’s victims] have died by suicide…[but] Justice Alissa Mitchell…[let him off with] house arrest, six months of a 10 p.m. curfew and two years of probation…

I Spy (#1376)

Nothing infuriates violent busybodies more than privacy:

On October 26, the UK Parliament passed the Online Safety Act…the government has…admitted there…is no…way to scan E2EE messages or services without breaking their encryption…[so] Ofcom…now…propos[es] to use hash matching…a mass surveillance [technique] that could easily be abused by law enforcement.  Hash matching…compares…videos, pictures or text…to a database of illegal content…by turning the content into “hashes”, a sample of the content a bit like a fingerprint…similar systems already in place have returned numerous false positives that can ruin people’s lives…and bog the system down, forcing companies…to investigate perfectly innocent media…every app you download to share files or access social media could contain spyware to [root through] the media on your device and [snitch to the cops]…the database of illegal material will [certainly expand and]…could very easily become a tool of censorship, similar to how the Chinese government scans for images of the Tiananmen Square protests…

The Cop Myth (#1378)

41% of cops admit to beating their wives; some don’t stop with mere beating:

A [typical and representative Alabama screw named]…David Tolbert was arrested after…he [murdered]…his wife on Nov. 15, 2022…[by shooting her] in [public] outside of a business…

Torture Chamber (#1387)

It does not help young victims of governmental brutality to infantilize them as “children”:

…[young people locked up]…in more than a dozen [prisons] in Illinois…[are routinely] “tased, pepper sprayed…roughed up by [screws]…forced into isolation for days at a time…[and] denied access to…medications…mental health treatment…and…schooling, [in defiance of] state and federal laws”…[at one cage stack] in Benton…Solitary confinement is the rule…[prisoners] spend between 20 and 23 hours per day confined in their cells…[where] fluorescent lights [are left on]…24 hours a day…the cells themselves are f[ilthy] and infested with [toxic] black mold

 

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

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The implication is that [edible] manufacturers want to trick kids into getting high, although it’s not clear why that would be a sensible business strategy.  –  Jacob Sullum

Bottleneck

Worldwide, over 90% of whores prefer to work illegally than submit to “registration”:

The Dutch Cabinet’s plan to register sex workers…will…worsen their situation, the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) warned…The Cabinet’s proposal would allow municipalities to [demand]…sex workers…register their personal data, and to require businesses operating in the space to force their workers to do the same.  The Cabinet [justified] the [scheme by barfing out that all-purpose excuse for violating women’s rights, “]human trafficking[“, but in reality]…sex workers would wind up plying their trade underground “for fear of registration and loss of privacy.”  As a result, they would fall out of view of authorities…

Law of the Instrument (#974)

In a moral panic, ordinary business arrangements get spun into “exploitation” and “crime”:

[Mike Jeffries,] the ex-CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch and his British partner [Matthew Smith]…used a middleman to find young men for…events, [and now eight] of [them] allege…they were exploited or abused…the couple’s middleman denied any wrongdoing and said men went into these events “with their eyes wide open”.  Abercrombie & Fitch…[bloviated pearl-clutching nonsense against Jeffries to protect its] brand…Two former US prosecutors…have called for an investigation to determine whether charges for sex trafficking could be brought…

The Clueless Leading the Hysterical (#1185)

Why do so many morons refuse to grasp that nobody is going to give expensive cannabis edibles to their spawn for free?

It’s October, which means it is time for alarmist cops and credulous reporters to start [attempt]ing [to panic] parents about the purported menace of cannabis edibles in trick-or-treat bags.  KSNT…in Topeka, Kansas, got a jump on that annual rite last month, when it amplified a “community advisory” from the…[local cop shop] about “THC-infused gummies and snacks marketed to children ahead of the holidays”…

Without Let or Hindrance (#1303)

These abuses are finally getting the attention they’ve needed for a generation:

It’s hard to overstate how little mainstream news attention has been paid to…problems with the [“child welfare”] system, which…is more akin to law enforcement than social services, given its ability to surveil parents and hand down the ultimate punishment — terminating the legal bonds between parent and child.  Families ensnared in the system lack many basic due process rights in navigating a punitive bureaucracy, and they typically don’t receive a lawyer until the state seeks temporary or permanent custody of their child in court.  Regardless, children…aren’t actually made safer; the rates of maltreatment for children in foster care are abysmal, and research has repeatedly found that children who enter the system fare worse on multiple measures than children left in their homes…

Unsafe for Human Consumption (#1304)

If you didn’t foresee where this was going, you haven’t been paying attention:

A woman has been [condemn]ed to life in [a cage] after [a gang of whiny-baby cops had panic attacks while rooting through]…Jessica Thomas[‘ possessions without her permission after using]…a…traffic stop [as a pretext]…Douglas County sheriff Dan Coverley [spouted a lot of pseudoscientific nonsense about an “]increase in pressure from transporting the drugs from low elevation to high elevation[” somehow magically changing the physical and chemical properties]…of…fentanyl [so it would behave as cops imagine it does rather than as it actually does in the real world]…

Checklist (#1363)

Airlines:  do you really want to keep accepting liability for employees racially profiling passengers due to the government propaganda you force-feed them?

American Airlines has apologized to a Black musician who…was [harassed using the asinine pretext] that he was trafficking his own children, [based solely on their being] biracial…David Ryan Harris…and two of his children, Truman, 12, and Hendrix, 7, were flying…from Atlanta to Los Angeles on Sept. 15…[when an air hostess started peppering] his children [with nosy] questions…After the plane landed, Mr. Harris…and his children were [confronted] at the top of the jet bridge by an American Airlines employee and [a pack of] four [scowling cops]…They…were eventually allowed to continue on to the baggage claim area, but were not given an apology….[until] he p[ublicized the harassment on] Instagram…

Permanent Record (#1379)

I can’t feel sorry for someone whose job is ruining lives for violating arbitrary diktats when they get in trouble due to a similar diktat:

The Minneapolis Police Department is looking into a [female cop] who moonlights as an OnlyFans model.  [Local news] is not identifying the [cop, though they would never extend the same courtesy to any other sex worker]…

 

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

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Every politician, every prohibitionist, every social engineer and every naked ape with a title, uniform or badge is bound and determined to bring as many other people under his control as possible, and because this drive springs from his warped psyche you can be sure he will never relent as long as he remains above ground.  –  “Eternal Vigilance

If one is going to publish propaganda, one can’t be distracted by facts.  –  “Time Warp

When Coca-Cola, Disney, IBM, Google, Monsanto, Chase, Wal-mart or Kraft starts sending out gangs of thugs to rape, rob & murder people, then and only then will I be more concerned about them than I am about government.   –  “The Greater of Two Evils

Bluenoses and control freaks want to seal all of society, even older adults who have no dependent spawn, into a worldwide nursery where everything conforms to their idea of what is “safe” for young children.  –  “Children’s World

“The statement ‘2000 QW7 is the size of Burj Khalifa’ is not-dissimilar in accuracy to the statement ‘A 2019 Honda Accord is the size of the bag of sugar in my cupboard’.”  –  “Assume a Sphere

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The potential for abuse is immense.  –  Patrick Toomey

License to Rape (#1249)

Apparently, pigs are only allowed to excuse sexual assault as a “search” if the victim is female:

…”squeezing a detainee’s penis hard is not a ‘proper part of a search,'” a federal appeals court has held.  The case, before the…8th Circuit, was brought by Wilbert Glover against Minnesota [screw] Richard Paul….[who sexually assaulted] Glover [in]…jail…in 2015…Paul responded by claiming that he “never touched [Glover’s] genitals”…and that even if he had, he was protected by qualified immunity.  The U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota rejected Paul’s argument, concluding “that Paul’s alleged actions violated [a male’s] clearly established constitutional right to be free from…sexual assault or abuse”…the appeals court…affirmed the district court’s ruling…

A Moral Cancer (#1306)

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

George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism…[sez] the…USDA…might soon revise its dietary guidelines to recommend that adults consume no more than two alcoholic drinks per week.  Canada’s health [nann]ies recently shifted to that guideline …Currently, the federal dietary guidelines advise no more than two drinks per day for adult men and one drink per day for adult women…Thankfully, most Americans don’t give a shit what the federal guidelines…say.  Following [them]…would mean a joyless existence devoid of many fine drinks (particularly if you’re a woman), anything less than well-done steak, or eggs benedict.  Oh, and don’t forget to microwave your prosciutto!…

The Punitive Mindset (#1307)

If there’s anything more petty and warped than the mind of a prison official, I’m not sure what it might be:

A Florida prison refused to deliver copies of a local newspaper to an incarcerated subscriber…[under the bizarre pretext] that a puzzle game in the publication “may be used to create coded messages indecipherable by staff”…the “Celebrity Cipher”…[is] a syndicated word puzzle that appears next to the crossword.  Staff [preten]ed that the game violates a…rule prohibiting “publication[s] … written in code”…The Florida Press Association has asked the Literature Review Committee to reverse the [moronic] decision and allow incarcerated people to receive [newspapers because the ban is]…“arbitrary and irrational” and violates the First Amendment rights of the publisher and its incarcerated subscribers…

Pyrrhic Victory (#1341)

Tyrannies often start with sex workers, but never stop with us:

…it…seems to be that online [sex work] advertising is a surefire way to get flagged at the border…Some sites are seemingly safer than others.  Sex workers who advertised on Tryst, for example, never heard of the advertising platform mentioned by Border Control… it’s almost exclusively full-service sex workers being flagged, but there are examples of online creators being targeted, too…The ads reportedly don’t even need to be live in order to be flagged…It is unclear how the US government is identifying sex workers. It could be facial recognition, it could be advertising sites working with the government.  The fight right now is for transparency…some websites disclose that they co[llaborate with pigs and spooks], but…these statements are often buried in opaque terms and conditions, and no site is forthcoming in terms of speaking to the media…

I Spy (#1342)

In mass surveillance, fascism beats communism hands down:

Customs and Border Protection…has bought millions of dollars worth of software from a company that uses [error-prone algorithms] to detect “sentiment and emotion” in online posts…related to inbound and outbound travelers who the agency [imagin]es may threaten public safety, national security, or lawful trade and travel…the…company called Fivecast also offers “AI-enabled” object recognition in images and video, and detection of “risk terms and phrases” across multiple languages…the software…[surveils] big social platforms like Facebook and Reddit, but also…smaller communities like 4chan, 8kun, and Gab…Fivecast…[also says] the tool could be used against [sex workers]…which can include U.S. citizens…CBP has deployed multiple [algorithmic] systems…[of dubious] accuracy and utility…

Unsafe for Human Consumption (#1366)

Now that politicians are vomiting out the “magic fentanyl” myth, will the media finally back away from it?

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass falsely claimed that “touching fentanyl could kill you”…according to all reputable toxicology experts, fentanyl powder cannot penetrate the skin under casual circumstances.  And overdosing from inhaling fentanyl particles in the air is nearly impossible, despite news reports published by…[bootlicking local media from both “culture war”camps pretend]ing otherwise…

The Mob Rules (#1368)

Much more of this, please:

As more and more states pass [unconstitutional] laws targeting “pornographic material” in books and online, they are repeatedly running up against a problem:  The Bible has not just a few passages that could be considered indecent…Reddit users…in…Virginia…[are] encourag[ing] people to use the new law to file consumer complaints to Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares…[about] websites…[which a]re “failing in requiring age verification before accessing pornographic material” from the Bible…

 

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

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Partisans and other shallow thinkers often fail to grasp why censorship is always an evil, even when the speech being suppressed is that of those they view as political enemies.  Currently, authoritarians who describe themselves as “conservative” are the main characters in my “Thought Control” tag, but their counterparts who prefer the label “progressive” also blindly accept a whole menu of excuses for censorship, including “hate speech” and whatever the government chooses to call “disinformation”.  A recent article provides a perfect example of why outsourcing one’s judgment to politicians and bureaucrats is an absolutely terrible idea:

The Global Disinformation Index (GDI) is a British organization that evaluates news outlets’ susceptibility to disinformation.  The ultimate aim is to persuade online advertisers to blacklist dangerous publications and websites.  One such publication, according to GDI’s extremely dubious criteria, is Reason…The U.S. government evidently values this work; in fact, the State Department subsidizes it.  The National Endowment for Democracy—a nonprofit that has received $330 million in taxpayer dollars from the State Department—contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to GDI’s budget…The First Amendment prohibits the U.S. government from censoring private companies for good reason, and government actors should not seek to evade the First Amendment’s protections in order to censor indirectly or exert pressure inappropriately…Reason‘s rating was due to three factors, according to GDI: “no information regarding authorship attribution, pre-publication fact-checking or post-publication corrections processes, or policies to prevent disinformation in its comments section”…contrary to what GDI suggests, the authorship of Reason articles is clearly communicated to readers.  Reason writers link to their sources, and promptly make (and note) corrections whenever appropriate.  It’s true that Reason does not specifically police disinformation in the comments section; that is perhaps an area where Reason‘s philosophy—free minds and free markets—clashes with GDI’s.  When evaluated by a misinformation-tracking organization that uses transparent and objective metrics, Reason fares much better. NewsGuard—an evaluator co-founded by Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of The Wall Street Journalgives Reason a perfect score of 100/100 and does not steer advertisers away…It is also worth noting that GDI ranked the 10 so-called “lowest-risk” online news outlets, which include: NPR, The Associated Press, The New York Times, ProPublica, Insider, USA Today, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed News, The Wall Street Journal, and HuffPost

Though Reason‘s article understandably focused on its inclusion on this blacklist, it was the latter whitelist which most drew my attention.  Seven of the ten websites GDI ranks as “lowest risk for disinformation” have repeatedly published wild fantasies about the lives and experiences of sex workers and migrant workers, despite mountains of evidence that they were lies.  NPR & New York Times have been, in fact, two of the most active spreaders of the “sex trafficking” moral panic; despite both organizations being repeatedly appraised of the facts, they have doggedly refused to correct the disinformation they’ve spread, or even to stop spreading it.  This is what happens when governments are allowed to be arbiters of fact: they wrongly label as “disinformation” facts which those in power find inconvenient, such as criticism of government propaganda.  And this is why wiser heads recognize all censorship, including government funding of pro-censorship groups, as dangerous, regardless of how high-sounding the excuse.

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