Sex workers are literally dying because of [brothelkeeping] law.
– Wendy Lyon
Let’s hope this means Snopes will start doing more to debunk “sex trafficking” lies:
Snopes.com’s founders, former husband and wife David and Barbara Mikkelson, are embroiled in a lengthy and bitter legal dispute in the wake of their divorce. He has since remarried, to a former escort and porn actress who is one of the site’s staff members. They are accusing each other of financial impropriety, with Barbara claiming her ex-husband is guilty of “embezzlement” and suggesting he is attempting a “boondoggle” to change tax arrangements, while David claims she took millions from their joint accounts and bought property in Las Vegas…
Could this bootlicking be any more pompous?
Like many other law enforcement agencies throughout Southern California, Long Beach police have turned their attention to eliminating the scourge of human trafficking…The department formed a task force and vowed to arrest people who profited from and exploited the sex trade…[except] when one of their own officers was accused of trying to exploit the illicit sex trade the department wants to stamp out…William Scott Holder…was arrested last year in a…sting in Corona…[but] remains employed by the department…
[A confused & self-contradictory propaganda] notice from the Malheur County (Ore.) Sheriff’s Office didn’t [make much sense]…“Victims of sex trafficking and prostitution are forced, coerced and manipulated into this lifestyle against their will…prostitutes…still may be charged no matter what…Because if you don’t charge them, then there’s no incentive to change…we don’t throw them out to the same manager, or pimp, if you will…Most often, they won’t [pretend the cop narrative is true], so you do everything you can to [force] them…to [pretend] that they were or are victims”…[cops pretended that] the 11 men charged with commercial sexual solicitation…responded to decoy ads police placed on “known sex trafficking websites” [even though there is no such thing]…
Three quarters of a million no-strings dollars to spread propaganda & infantilize women:
The Catholic Charities, Diocese of Venice, was awarded a three-year, $750,000 grant…from the U.S. Department of Justice…The charity’s victim assistance program partners directly with local law enforcement to help human trafficking victims become more independent…”We help them go from not being able to tie their shoes to being independent and able to sustain themselves,” [chief propagandist Chuck] Anderson said…Typical signs that someone may be a victim include signs of physical abuse, tattoos or brand marks, especially ones that say “property of,” and possessing large amounts of cash…
Wait, large amounts of cash? I though the “pimps” took every penny? I guess people who can’t tie their shoes can’t count, either.
Another example of how people’s memories can be rewritten by others:
…[many people]…recall…a movie called Shazaam…in the early Nineties …the movie starred the American stand-up comedian Sinbad…as an incompetent genie who granted wishes to two young children…[some claim] detailed scene-by-scene recollections of the film…hundreds of Redditors…have used the popular social news site to discuss their memories of Shazaam. Together they have scoured the internet to find evidence that the movie existed but each has repeatedly come up empty-handed. Sinbad himself has even taken to Twitter to deny that he ever played such a role…It all began in 2009 [when] an anonymous individual took to…Yahoo! Answers to pose its users a simple question. “Do you remember that…movie in the early 90s where sinbad the…comedian played a genie?”…it took another two years for somebody else to ask about it again online…last year…things took [off on Reddit]…In 1996, the basketball player Shaquille O’Neal played a genie who helped a young boy find his estranged father in a commercially unsuccessful film…[named] Kazaam…
Dr. Laura Agustín is back with a novel dramatizing the problems faced by migrants:
European borders are the gates of Hell, lurked over by hounds of police and organized crime…illegal migrants and smugglers are outsiders doing whatever it takes to make good, often by selling sex…In the realm of undocumented migration, knuckling under to thugs can be the sensible alternative to drowning at sea, and putting up with rotten jobs preferable to pointless lives back home…The Three-Headed Dog is international mystery in a downward-spiralling scenario for human mobility…
Jamie Rosseland…remembers the day her mugshot and charge were published in a Jacksonville newsletter [ironically] called the Victim’s Advocate as part of a column called “Shame, Shame, Shame”…those publications fuel a stigma against women who are arrested for prostitution…
Unfortunately, you’d be wrong; the rest is a typical “whores are mindless victims” mess which quotes (among others) arch-prohibitionist Pete Holmes, the Seattle city attorney paid to lap up Swanee Hunt’s “end demand” vomit and puke it out again all over reporters.
The families of three fatally shot victims [from the Pulse nightclub in Orlando]…filed a lawsuit against Google, Twitter and Facebook…[pretending] the tech companies provided “material support” for the radicalization of Islamic State (ISIS)-inspired shooter Omar Mateen…The suit [pretends]…all three tech giants…”knowingly and recklessly” [chose not to censor]…accounts associated [by unnamed “authorities”] with ISIS…and allowed the extremist group “to use its social networks as a tool for spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds, and attracting new recruits”…
The most dangerous part of the suit is that Mateen, an adult, was magically “radicalized” against his will by these mind-control messages; i.e., they paint a disturbed murderer as the passive victim of hypnotic rays beamed through the internet. Sound familiar? This is what happens when you allow a precedent to be established that people are passive victims of anyone who can be “othered”, especially when the so-called villains are multi-billion dollar corporations who may be bullied into paying up because it’s cheaper in the long run than fighting these nuisance suits.
Just when you thought the “anti-pimp personal hygiene products” trope couldn’t get any stupider:
…America and Penelope, “The CyberCode Twins,” are developing Beacon of Hope…once activated, [it] can give authorities real-time updates on victims’ whereabouts. The trackers are embedded into tampons and pads, which would be available from dispensers at highway rest stops, gas stations and casinos. At the press of a button, a woman in trouble could get a tracker tampon and carry it in her purse or pocket…Beacon of Hope is part of a larger movement to show how tech can be used more broadly to combat…human trafficking…
An assistant warden at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola…[committed] rape inside the prison walls. Barrett Boeker…was charged with one count of second-degree rape…and [arrested]…[Boeker committed] the rape [while off duty]…on Nov. 30 at [his] home on Angola property…the…victim was “not an inmate”…
…Supporters of the [Swedish model]…regularly insist…that [it]…“decriminalises” [sex workers]…On the rare occasions they’re pressed on it, they usually witter on about how this law is “intended to punish pimps”…that the law is…aimed at…sex workers themselves…can be proven clearly enough just by looking at how the law is actually used in real life…nearly all the reported prosecutions [in Ireland] have in fact been of sex workers, not of anyone managing…them…Go back to the original debates over the 1993 Act and you see very clearly that sex worker prosecutions are a feature, not a bug, of the brothel-keeping law – which was intended to address the public nuisance factor of brothels…it was clearly envisaged by the law, at the time it was introduced, that a sex worker would be prosecuted under it – even in her own home, if she allowed someone else to sell sex there. This is not a law about pimps…
New documents in an ongoing lawsuit against the King County Sheriff’s Department [reveal] that…Sheriff John Urquhart told investigators in his department to ignore a woman who [reported that] Urquhart raped her…[in] 2002…numerous people were made aware of the [report]…a deputy also complained that Urquhart and the woman had an affair but…the sheriff didn’t want that complaint documented. Urquhart denies the allegations, [claiming] the woman [is mentally ill]…
That last is no surprise; Urquhart thinks women aren’t mentally competent to understand which sexual acts are consensual & which aren’t.
Still think you don’t live in a police state?
Never let it be said that Kamala Harris gives up after being told her totally bogus legal crusade is totally bogus. She’s now filed brand new charges against the execs who run Backpage.com — despite having the very same lawsuit thrown out a few weeks ago…Harris…knows that she has no legal basis for arresting the execs behind Backpage…because three years ago she signed a letter whining about how she had no legal authority to arrest Backpage because it’s (rightly) protected by Section 230 of the CDA…The press release from Harris claims that the reason for the new charges is that she’s “uncovered new evidence” but that’s a load of hogwash. The new charges still include bogus “pimping” charges, but now also have a bunch of [bogus] “money laundering” charges as well…
Thank you, Maggie, for always putting out such thoughtful and thought-provoking material. One element of this post caught my eye (when you tweeted about the CO and whether he was acting in uniform or not) and I’d like to try to tread very carefully through that topic in a way that teases out some subtle legal distinctions without sounding like an apologist for the press. Then I expect I will have miserably failed and you may then pick apart any inconsistencies at your leisure. 😉
In the matter of Barrett Boeker (who I see was not simply a guard but listed as an “assistant warden”) the article takes pains to convey details to the reader that the assault and rape took place “at his home” (which, presumably due to his job, is on site in some manner at the prison grounds) and that the victim “was not an inmate.”
I do not presume to speak for you, but I took your comments on this matter to be solidifying and reminding people that a rape is a rape is a rape… and that other ancillary elements to the crime do not impact how wrong it is. I agree 100% with that characterization.
However, are there also not certain legal distinctions relating to the issue of consent when there’s a power dynamic in play? That is to say, could the reporting have highlighted the “non inmate” status of the victim in an effort to address further inquiries as to what defense Boeker may or may not try to drum up? (e.g. if the victim was/is an inmate, I do not think that the law acknowledge them to be in a position to /ever/ offer consent and therefore that defense would not be possible)
Of course, all of this opens the door to further discussion as to how it’s awful that:
(a) by machinations of law, some parties are viewed by courts and by the state as “incapable” of consent and their own agency (a very thorny subject in less structured institutions, like schools or summer camps, etc)
(b) given that the victim is not an inmate, we may indeed see Boeker offer up a consent defense… indeed, Erin Foster, who offered this fact to the press, is listed as “a sheriff’s spokeswoman” and leads me to believe that possibly the CO’s Union is already working back-channels to lay the groundwork for this defense.
So, in the end, I suspect we see the matter in a similar light (and if we don’t I’d appreciate hearing more) but I enjoy teasing out additional subtle details and hidden meanings between-the-lines, especially as they relate to legal strategies and ulterior motives.
Re: Whores and Wives – Snopes should stop being partisan hacks, and start being an equal-opportunity ass-kicker.
Re: To Molest and Rape – Yet another reason to abolish law-enforcement lobby groups and openly mock/discredit the right-leaning dipshits who continue to defend and support them, such as Jeff Crouere, Matt Drudge, the Family Research Council, Frontpage Magazine, etc.
Re: Snopes
Just some minor additional factual information.
The Daily Mail article states:
The “folklore-themed online message board” was the very active usenet newsgroup alt.folklore.urban (aka “AFU” to participants).
The Daily Mail, like most news media these days has no idea what usenet was. Usenet certainly was not an “online message board”. It was a world-wide network of servers operated by volunteers, basically anybody who wanted to operate a server and agreed to play nice with other servers in the network.
Like most usenet newsgroups these days, AFU is but a shell of its former self if it exists at all.
But some spotty archives can be found, if anyone cares to find them.
“Snopes” was a pseudonym used by the Mikkelsons on AFU. The name was taken from William Faulkner’s fictitious Snopes family, residents of his fictitious Mississippi “Yoknapatawpha County” (pronounced “Yok’na pa TAW pha”).
The Snopes family is central to three Faulkner novels, The Hamlet, The Town, and The Mansion.
Barbara Mikkelson was, and presumably still is, expert on the works of William Faulkner.