Links #542

The blast blasted blubber beyond all reasonable bounds.  –  Paul Linnman

Since last week was the 50th anniversary of the infamous Exploding Whale of Oregon, Mike Siegel felt this video should be posted to commemorate it.  He also provided “restoration” below, and the other links are from Walter Olson, Cop Crisis, Scott Greenfield, Amy Alkon, and Boatfloating, in that order.

• The Russian version of Clue?
• An “off duty” pig is still a pig.
• “Cop shoots dog” is, alas, not news.
• Another botched art “restoration” in Spain.
• Never call the cops for any reason whatsoever.
• Reporter claims cop’s victim had magic mind-control powers.

From the Archives

• It’s rare for a US court to uphold the Constitution against the government.
• Your “leaders” will use any excuse to further empower cops to rob people.
• A toiletful of myths, lies, fascist cheerleading & other assorted sociopathy.
• Prohibition turns bodies into “crime scenes” which cops can violate at will.
• 41% of cops admit to beating their wives.  Some don’t stop with beating.
• Will they quietly muscle power away from him as PA is doing to Krasner?
• Americans suffer from a peculiar and characteristic ignorance of history.
• More “sex slave” fantasies from Dominique “Body Fluids” Roe-Sepowitz.
• If Democrats cared about human rights, this would be in their platform.
• Politicians dislike policies that oppose their harm magnification agenda.
• We’re so lucky to have these brave heroes to protect us from refugees.
• FBI intentionally destroyed exculpatory evidence in the Backpage case.
• They want to cage a man for 20 years for fictional character drawings.
• Swedish model regimes would’ve targeted the victim for surveillance.
• The press, partying like it’s 1999 & nobody’s heard of escort reviews.
• “Rescued” means “arrested” & “safe” means “caged for deportation”.
• Politicians send rapist thugs to advance vain Disnification campaign.
• “Xi urged the party to emulate aspects of America’s ‘war on terror’”.
• When a headline asks a question, the answer is nearly always “no”.
• Offering a whore only $40 is indeed attempted sexual exploitation.
• Why can’t people choose a government as they choose a religion?
• The natural result of widespread kowtowing to the heckler’s veto.
• In the Puritan US, pictures are considered worse than actual sex.
• How countries with healthy ideas about sex react to moral panic.
• Unlike Americans, Hong Kongers know tyranny when they see it.
• They aren’t really having less sex; they’re just admitting it less.
• Since this is suburban Seattle, I could’ve done this one stoned.
• Cops, Florida, Spaghetti-Os, William Goldman and much more.
• Wannabe cop murdered three women and tried for a fourth.
• Everything cops and other “justice” officials tell you is a lie.
• One of the most vile prohibitionist organizations in Europe.
• A dumpsterrific article full of weird feminist/MRA claptrap.
• A monster’s attempted power grab goes down the toilet.
• Cops, cats, straight people, Beethoven, and much more.
• More cops imagining ordinary things as “sex trafficking”.
• Pimps are uncommon, but most who do exist are cops.
• Another of those nonexistent false assault accusations.
• FOSTA was a huge miscalculation by prohibitionists.
• Tanzania ramps up its pogroms against gay men.
• No woman is safe from sexually-aggressive cops.
• This article is completely unmoored from reality.
• Prohibitionists now claim they don’t need proof.
• Virtually a catalogue of prohibitionist bullshit.
• A quick and easy way to clear a fenceline.
• Remember “prostitution-free zones”?
• Greta Thunberg, child saint.
• The quiet week that wasn’t.
• Rapist cops of the week.
• Fascism in action.

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In the News (#1089)

 [A Biden victory] is not a victory for sex workers.  –  Penelope Saunders

A False Dichotomy 

Cathy Reisenwitz on the dogma that sex without “enthusiastic consent” is rape:

…most of our choices in life…[a]re not straightforwardly coercive or cooperative, but somewhere in-between…This leads me to the inevitable conclusion that consent versus coercion isn’t a binary.  It’s a spectrum…On one end of the spectrum you have slavery and rape.  On the opposite end you have enthusiastic consent.  But most choices fall somewhere in the middle…When we say we are “forced” to make a choice, we mean that there’s no acceptable alternative.  We say we’ve been forced to do something if the alternative is death or jail.  When we say we’re “pressured” to make a choice, what we mean is there’s no appealing alternative.  We say we’ve been pressured to do something if the alternative is unpleasant or inconvenient.  The difference then between force and pressure is a difference of scope, not kind.  They’re both coercion, but are different levels of coercion…

Don’t Take My Word For It (#873)

While it’s not surprising to see male sex work increase during the pandemic, I’m extremely skeptical of claims, such as those in this story, that the clients are predominantly female.  Anti-queer stigma is much higher in India than in the US, so naturally male sex workers there are going to claim – as some did for decades in the US – that most of their clients are female in order to save face.  But as usual, the claims in this story don’t ring true, and the quotes from the interviewees only serve to underscore that.

Pyrrhic Victory (#992) 

Seattle cops have a positive fetish for illegal surveillance:

…a…Seattle Police…detective…signed up for and used facial recognition app Clearview AI, which…i[s a] violation of the City of Seattle’s Surveillance Ordinance…Nick Kartes…signed up for Clearview in September 2019 using his “@seattle.gov” work email address…he logged into the service over 30 times, as recently as April 22…the devices used to log into Detective Kartes’ account were connected to the City of Seattle network…This follows an established pattern, highlighted this summer, where Seattle police regularly flaunt the law…

But don’t worry, toothless local laws will definitely stop this!

Panopticon (#993)

Amazon’s fascist collaboration with cops just keeps getting worse:

…While people buy Ring cameras and put them on their front door to keep their packages safe, police use them to build comprehensive CCTV camera networks blanketing whole neighborhoods.  This…allows police departments to [shift] the cost of buying surveillance equipment…onto consumers by convincing them they need cameras to keep their property safe…[and] evades the natural reaction of fear and distrust that many people would have if they learned police were putting up dozens of cameras on their block…Now…police in Jackson, Mississippi, have started a pilot program t[o convince]…Ring owners to patch the camera streams from their front doors directly to…police…footage [of] your…coming and going…your neighbors taking out the trash, and the dog walkers and delivery people who do their jobs in your street…can now be live streamed directly onto a dozen monitors scrutinized by police around the clock.  Even if you refuse to allow your footage to be used that way, your neighbor’s camera pointed at your house may still be transmitting directly to the police[, plus all cops need do is ask and Amazon will grant warrantless access to your camera without your consent]…

The Pro-Rape Coalition (#1033) 

Censors’ fixation on Pornhub spreads to Thailand:

Thailand’s government said…it had banned Pornhub and 190 other websites showing pornography, prompting social media anger over censorship…many Thai users trended the #SavePornhub hashtag on Twitter and criticised the shutting of a site in a country…which has a globally-known sex industry…A few dozen activists protested the block outside the digital ministry, holding banners saying “free Pornhub” and “reclaim Pornhub”…Internet research firm Top10VPN said it saw a spike in searches from Thailand for Virtual Private Networks (VPN), which help circumvent censorship, by 640%…after Pornhub was [censored]…

And India:

The Cyber Police agency of the Indian state of Maharashtra — the region that includes populous Mumbai — has formally accused several platforms of “transmitting sexually explicit and obscene content online”…[the sites include] Xvideos and Pornhub.  Inspector General of Police Yashasvi Yadav [made furtive movements in his pants while sharing his fantasy that]…”the actresses in these videos have been exploited, lured or compelled to perform the obscene acts. We will be treating the actresses as ‘victims’ and not ‘accused persons’”…

To Molest and Rape (#1048)

Since costumed rapists are essentially immune to criminal law, civil law has to do:

A new lawsuit [has been] filed against [typical and representative] Louisville [cop] Brett Hankison…a…sexual predator…who…[has] willfully, intentionally, painfully and violently…[raped at least 10 women over the years and achieved recent notoriety for the murder] of…Breonna Taylor…LMPD has…fired Hankison for his role in the [murder, but ignored all the rape complaints]…nine o[f the] women who…Hankison [raped have made statements in the lawsuit, filed by Margo Borders, a lawyer he raped in 2018]…

(State) Violence Against Women

Two hardline prohibitionists at the top do not bode well for sex workers:

…Phoenix Calida…[of] SWOP-USA…says of a Biden win, “I see things getting worse for sex workers, actually.”  Calida’s assessment is due in part to Biden’s sponsorship of the 1994 crime bill…“‘Tough on crime,’ which Biden has really promoted his entire career, is really not helpful at all to sex workers…Biden is like, ‘Let’s not defund the police, let’s give them more money!’”  Advocates’ concerns around…Kamala Harris, are both more numerous and concrete.  “You couldn’t get a candidate with a worse record on sex work,” says [Penelope] Saunders of [Best Practices Policy Project].  In 2008, Harris called San Francisco’s Proposition K—an attempt at halting the enforcement of laws against prostitution—“completely ridiculous.”  Harris also infamously pursued the shutdown of Backpage and the prosecution of the site’s owners despite warnings that shuttering the site would put sex workers in greater danger and make it harder to investigate sex trafficking cases. (It did.)  She also helped develop the devastating SESTA/FOSTA, specifically as a means of targeting Backpage…[and supports]…the EARN IT Act, a bill…which threatens sex workers’ ability to use encrypted messaging services…as well as free speech online…opponents of the bill…are calling it “SESTA/FOSTA 2.0.”…

Elephant in the Parlor (#1078)

Compare the ugly, racist, agency-negating whore stigma used by Democrats in this article to attack someone closely associated with Trump, to the ugly, racist, agency-negating whore stigma used by Republicans just a month earlier to attack someone closely associated with Biden, and then tell me again how they’re so different and why sex workers should trust either pack of fanatics:  “President Trump’s top campaign strategist, Jason Miller…admitted to hiring prostitutes and receiving sexual favors at multiple ‘Asian themed’ massage parlors, an industry known to have connections to sex trafficking rings…”  “Progressives” want sex workers to believe they’re on our side, but they go straight for the anti-whore slurs the second they think it will win them cheap points on the “other team”.

Social Distancing (#1084)

Prohibitionists don’t care who has to suffer to advance their twisted agenda:

India’s sex workers suffered a setback…following a U-turn by the country’s human rights body, which said [sex workers] should not be registered as workers or guaranteed financial aid from the government amid the fallout of COVID-19.  The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) last month asked state governments to recognise sex workers as informal workers, which would have entitled them to benefits and aid from a $23 billion fund for India’s poor during the coronavirus pandemic…the watchdog’s non-binding advisory was hailed by [human rights experts]… as a boon for the rights of an estimated 800,000 sex workers across India, [but prohibitionists, led by the evil and deeply-derangd Sunitha Krishnan, worked to intimidate the commission by issuing veiled threats of expensive and troublesome legal complaints based in bad “]sex trafficking[” laws.  In response to these threats]…The NHRC…issued a new statement that said sex workers could not be registered officially or categorised as informal workers….[but] should instead be given help on “humanitarian grounds” during the pandemic…

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Bathhouse 23

I got word a week or so ago that our cee purlins are on the way from Phoenix, but it’s a route truck so it’ll probably be another week or two before they actually arrive.  The roof panel order took longer than I anticipated to process, but they finally charged my credit card last Friday; I then got an email telling me they weren’t able to deliver here, but we could pick the panels up ourselves from the plant…which is in Kent (suburban Seattle).  Now, I have no idea why we couln’t find this place when we were searching for local suppliers; the office we dealt with is in Tennessee.  But at least I’ll get a refund on my shipping fee, and it’s no big deal to send Chekhov to Seattle with the trailer.  A couple of days ago we shifted the steel tubing into Grace’s shop, so she’ll be starting on the trusses next week; since the shop is enclosed she’ll be able to work regardless of rain (which we’ve had quite a lot of lately), and we’ll only need to work around the weather to actually get them in place.

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Links #539

James Randi, AKA, “The Amazing Randi”, died last week at the age of 92.  If you don’t know who he was, watch this short video for an introduction; there’s also a full-length documentary on his life’s work, An Honest Liar.  The links above the video were provided by Mistress Matisse, Nun Ya, Franklin Harris, Radley Balko, Cop Crisis, Walter Olson, and Mike Siegel, in that order.

• Just protecting and serving.
• Almost 10% is a good start.
• Previously-undiscovered Nazca lines!
• The rotten fruit of public-sector unions.
• These driverless pigmobiles are a menace.
• Tom Lehrer has made all his lyrics public domain.
• Do I really need to say, “Not because you dislike someone’s decorations”?

From the Archives

• UK cops, desperately trying to draw others into their “sex slave” fantasies.
• We were warned Israeli whore-censorship was only “part of a wider plan”.
• Redbridge has a history of harassing whores with stupid “crime” rhetoric.
• European Court of Human Rights kissed France’s arse, but the UN didn’t.
• Any elected official who acts in this way should be removed from office.
• The government keeps openly hiding information in the Backpage case.
• The New York Times has discarded whatever credibility it once enjoyed.
• Facebook wants to become one of the cornerstones of modern fascism.
• Tech geeks create a “consent app” that is both useless and dangerous.
• “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time“.
• Nobody will be safe until this odious practice is ruled unconstitutional.
• If you weren’t horrified by China’s “re-education” camps for Uighurs.
• There has never been a case of a kid getting drugged trick-or-treat.
• Nigerian scholar demolishes racist European masturbatory fantasy.
• They actually admit the point is to normalize constant surveillance.
• Pimps are not common, but many of those who do exist are cops.
• UK cops shoehorn migrants into their “pop-up” wanking fantasy.
• How the government created a bogeyman to justify censorship.
• All too often, evil arrives cloaked in the mantle of expediency.
• I hope this doesn’t harm increased awareness of rapist cops.
• Palantir helps cops spy on sex workers and minority groups.
• Bezos wants to provide the engine to power racist pogroms.
• It’s good to see so many challenges to these medieval laws.
• Facebook claims this picture will sexually arouse its users.
• Any internet-connected device can be used to spy on you.
• Another Australian state moves toward decriminalization.
• Your government wants this to happen more often.
• A retrospective of my blogging from October 2016.
• Sex and death are but two sides of the same coin.
• Cops, politicians, a horror story, and much more.
• Sex workers have been saying this for decades.
• Your government refers to this as “correction”.
• In the US, his victims would have no recourse.
• The US is trying to rewrite Backpage’s history.
• A tale of beauty, love, obsession and horror.
• Cops, Pokemon, Halloween and much more.
• My two previous columns for Halloween.
• In which I downshift into Autumn mode.
• A tale of the death of an immortal.
• Welcome to our world, amateurs.
• Population 13,255.  Seriously.
• Kaytlin Bailey’s wedding.
• Rapist cops of the week.

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Bathhouse 22

It took us six weeks, but we’ve finally got all the materials for our roof on the way!  I was hoping to have the roof up before the rain came again, but Trump’s silly trade war made that impossible; metal building components are hard to find here already (I reckon they’re just not as popular in Washington as in drier climes), and the tariffs made the ones that were available insultingly expensive.  But we found some leads a few weeks ago, and with the help of a generous gent I was able to shove money around to clear enough space on my credit cards to buy what I needed (if anyone else wants to volunteer to help me pay that, please do).  We got the structural steel a month ago, then this week I ordered the cee purlins (crossmembers which support the roof panels) from a place in Phoenix and the roof panels themselves from a place near Knoxville, Tennessee; today Chekhov is picking up the heavy-walled pipe we’re using for the support posts.  Since the stuff from other states is coming via freight, it’ll probably be late November before it arrives; that’s OK because it won’t be needed until the roof structure is in place, and Grace will be welding the trusses together in her shop.  Since we’ll have to work around the rain, phase four will probably go slowly; we figure it may take until the beginning of spring.  But then we’ll have shelter from the rain, so the walls should go relatively quickly afterward.  For the time being, expect about two updates a month; let’s hope the progress speeds up again in March!

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Noise and Nuisance

Seattle is the only large city I’ve ever lived in.  Oh, I spent an appreciable fraction of my adult life in New Orleans, but that hasn’t been a large city (by North American standards) since the Second World War.  New Orleans is also slow, quiet, friendly, and highly idiosyncratic – all of which Seattle is not.  But when I made the decision in December of ’14 to move there, I assumed I would adapt.  After all, I easily adapted to New Orleans after a childhood spent in a town of 6000 people; I just figured it would be a similar scale-up.  And I didn’t even realize that I was mistaken until a few weeks ago.  Oh, I have always known that I prefer rural living to urban, which is one of the reasons I bought Sunset rather than a house somewhere in Greater Seattle; I figured I’d retire there one of these days, and spend relaxing weekends there in the meantime.  But when everything shut down for the pandemic, I started spending most of my time there, only returning to Seattle for appointments or other practical reasons.  And as the summer waxed, I noticed something peculiar: I wasn’t nearly as agitated by the long, bright days as usual, despite spending a great deal of time outdoors and not keeping the interior of the house as dark as I keep my Seattle apartment.

I noticed in my first summer up here that the anxiety was much worse than it was in Oklahoma or Louisiana, but I put that down to the considerable stress I was under and the fact that at these latitudes, the contrast between the lengths of summer and winter days is much greater.  But though my stress levels decreased throughout ’18 and ’19, my summer anxiety did not.  And though the days were brighter at the farm, the anxiety did not climb to the levels I had come to expect over the past five years…except for the days when I was in the city.  Every time I was in town during July, August, and September, my anxiety increased, sometime to the point of needing a little chemical assistance to manage it; every time I headed back to Sunset it decreased again.  Finally I realized that the problem isn’t Seattle’s geographical location, but rather its size.  Those who have visited my incall have certainly noticed that it’s a kind of psychic oasis; its darkness and masses of sound-dampening fabric tend to shut out much of the noise and bother trying to force their way in from the street.  When I lived here full-time, I always felt better upon returning from work or shopping and deliberately closing and locking the door.  But that was only relative, and my brain was still tense and racing; out at Sunset the blaring sirens and glacial traffic flow are two hours away, and it makes all the difference in the world.  So it’s a good thing I’m semi-retiring before next summer; I can handle the stress and commotion a few days at a time, a few times a month.  But it’s better for my brain not to marinade in that for weeks or months on end.

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In the News (#1076)

If your fantasies offend the police…you can be destroyed.  –  Marty Klein

Tales from the Dark Side

“In a world where prosecution for thoughtcrime has become a grim reality, it might be wise to restrict such discussions to fully-anonymized online accounts“:

…You are NOT free to fantasize about sex that is illegal.  If you do, and you’re caught, you will have to prove you do not actually want to do those things.  This is almost impossible…if two people email or text about [ageplay]…and the digital trail falls into the hands of the police, the person playing the adult role in the fantasy could be in big trouble…There are police departments in every state with units devoted to finding people who fantasize online about adult-child sex.  They have huge budgets and almost unlimited power.  These [cops] are going undercover in ADULT chatrooms…looking for people to arrest…they invite the hobbyist—whom they [pretend]is a predatory criminal—to meet for…legal sex….[with] an adult…[and when] he does…he is arrested for allegedly intending to have sex with a child…

The Maze of Consent

An excellent essay on the deeply misogynistic basis of modern “consent” dogma:

…the notion that sexual contact is degrading to women has become wrapped up in the contemporary progressive language of trauma and consent…For all its protestations about how hot consent can be, the progressive discourse surrounding sex is markedly unsexy.  Amid the obsession with power, oppression and the ever present threat of harm, the notion of desire (or, heaven forbid, fun) all but disappears…This laser-focus on consent effectively recasts sex itself as a dangerous act, to be undertaken with extreme caution and only if absolutely necessary…men are increasingly seen as predators almost by default, while women are cast as helpless, even infantile.  (Witness the rise of the word “grooming,” previously reserved for sexual predation of children, as something done to women in their twenties)…young people are now being taught to expect absolute emotional safety in sex, love and courtship at all times—and that if they feel hurt, disappointed or betrayed, it means they’ve been violated…

Legal Is as Legal Does (#831)

“Legalization” of sex work always features weird, arbitrary laws written by obsessive bureaucrats:

Toronto will no longer force workers at body rub parlours to keep their doors unlocked—a win for sex worker safety…Toronto bylaws prohibited…parlours…from keeping their doors locked, so that inspectors could [barge in at will and without warning]…the rules [predictably] led to thefts, abuse, and even death..By locking doors, workers are now able to screen people entering their businesses…In February, Ashley Arzaga…was [murdered] by a 17-year-old man who entered her North York spa with a machete…60 avoidable robberies targeted body rub parlours [in the past year]…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do (#991)

Laws are for the peasantry, not the rulers:

The preferential treatment afforded to [Randal] Woolery wasn’t mentioned in the de[ferential coverage by bootlicking media like the Seattle Times]…But [it was sharply criticized in The Honest Courtesan] and…[now that the] public…[is clamoring for greater] police accountability…the [mainstream media are finally getting around to talking about it almost a year later]…Unlike the four other men arrested in the sting that night, Woolery avoided having…an “embarrassing situation” fully videotaped…The p[ig] also wasn’t taken in handcuffs to a [filthy sty] to await booking…[and] didn’t spend any time behind bars that [or any other] night…Woolery…has been [on paid vacation ever since, with]…his case [conveniently] postponed [using the excuse of] the coronavirus pandemic…

Pyrrhic Victory (#1016) 

Why I keep telling you local laws banning surveillance technology are feel-good bullshit:

The Los Angeles Police Department has used facial-recognition software nearly 30,000 times since 2009, with hundreds of [pigs rooting through]…a massive database of mugshots [in search of people to pin “crimes” on]…the LAPD has consistently denied having records related to facial recognition, and at times denied using the technology at all.  The truth is that, while it does not have its own facial-recognition platform, LAPD personnel have access to facial-recognition software through a regional database maintained by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.  And [were that database banned, they could simply fall back on secret resources such as FITlist]…

Dangerous Speech (#1031)

A judge reverses one iota of the government’s persecution of two journalists:

The FBI [was] recently [forced to] return…scores of personal possessions belonging to veteran newspapermen Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin as the result of a judge’s finding that the bureau violated their Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure when it…raided the men’s homes at gunpoint two years ago…Judge Susan Brnovich found that certain categories of items listed in the FBI’s 2018 warrant applications were “impermissibly vague”…the FBI’s warrant affidavit sought “evidence of wealth” from January 1, 2010 to the date of the search.  “Nothing suggests that Lacey and Larkin’s homes were filled solely with items obtained solely from illegal proceeds or to suggest that Backpage.com was being run out of their homes,” Brnovich writes. “Both individuals were successful and wealthy before 2010.”  And yet, prosecutors have contended that Lacey and Larkin’s affluence was wholly derived from the alleged crimes of conspiracy, money laundering and the facilitation of prostitution through the online listings giant Backpage.com, which the two men sold in 2015…

Quiet Genocide (#1058)

Oh look, someone in Hollywood appears to have grown a spine:

Judd Apatow is refusing to let Hollywood off the hook for allowing itself to be censored in…China in order to reap financial rewards…the…director said studios would shoot him down if he ever pitched a movie about a man who escapes Chinese concentration camps…Disney has recently come under fire for filming part of its live-action Mulan film in Xinjiang and using the film’s end credits to thank [the Communist propaganda ministry for]…the region…In addition to censoring content, Hollywood studios have also included China-friendly content in certain films in order to guarantee a theatrical release in the country…When filmmakers take a stand against China (see Quentin Tarantino refusing to edit out the Bruce Lee scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), their films are blocked from the country and risk losing a significant percentage of their box office…

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Diary #532

It’s been years since I made jam; I believe the last time was in 2013, because the year after that I was on tour all summer, then in 2015 I moved to Seattle.  But we had a bumper crop of plums and blackberries, and the apples are almost ripe as well; Jae picked a big basket of plums last week, and even after making two huge plum cobblers I had plenty left.  So on Thursday I made plum jam, then on Friday blackberry, and both came out perfectly!  I have to admit I was a bit daunted; I like making jam, but it’s a lot of work, and, as I said, it has been a while.  But it was a lot easier this time than it was in Oklahoma, for several reasons.  First, Jae picked and pitted the plums for me, and she and a visiting friend picked the blackberries.  Second, I have an electronic cooking thermometer now, which makes monitoring the jam mixture’s temperature much less of a hassle.  And speaking of heat, the Washington coast in September is dramatically cooler than southeast Oklahoma in June, so I wasn’t stuck in a sweltering kitchen while working.  Today I’m going back to Seattle and I’m going to visit the gent I call Dr. Quest this weekend.  But on Monday I’ll be back at Sunset, and soon I’ll be using our apples to make apple cider, apple jelly, apple butter, mince meat, and other lovely treats.

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In the News (#1070)

This is not a game…This is our…livelihood.  –  Cris Sardina

Counterfeit Comfort 

This steaming turd is even more worthless than is typical of NPR’s bluenosed imitation of “journalism”, starting with the headline:  the “sex offender” registry wasn’t “designed to protect” anyone; it was and is intended to inflict unconstitutional and extrajudicial punishment on an arbitrarily-defined group of people after the end of their sentences.  Even if the registry were limited to the sort of violent criminals the story luridly cherry-picks in order to uphold its false premise, it would still make no sense; there is no registry for murderers, those who permanently maimed their victims, and many other criminals far more dangerous than the majority of those condemned to permanent pariah status for such heinous “crimes” as public urination, taking selfies, or having consensual sex before the Sacred Moment of Shazam.  If, as the story postulates, there is a problem with these people taking back their lives from illegal state control, maybe the solution is to stop condemning so goddamned many people  –  a disproportionate number of whom are poor and black, and 25% of whom were first “registered” when they were under 18  –  to unpersonhood in the first goddamned place, often by evil scams such as those described in the item below.

Bait and Switch (#849)

Cops don’t care how many lives they destroy with their sick fantasies:

Since 2015, nearly 300 men in…Washington State have been arrested [by male cops fantasy-role playing online as young teen girls] in…a…[scam revoltingly labeled] Operation Net Nanny…[as is typical in such scams, many] are 25 or younger [and seeking consensual sex with age-peers, though cops manipulate them so as to be able to argue that they committed] …attempted rape of a child…even though no actual children were involved.  The emails and texts offering sex are written [one-handed] by [pervert cops]…The “girls” in the photos are [clearly] not 13.  They are [adult sows]…At least five of the men [entrapped by this evil sex game] have committed suicide…most of the [victims] have no felony record…and 92 percent have no history of violent crime.  They are nonetheless sentenced, on average, to more than six years in prison with no chance of parole…[then condemned to] the…sex-offender registry for at least 10 years — and often for life…The[se victims] can wind up serving more time than men who are convicted of sexually assaulting and raping actual children…

Make sure you read down to the part about how these ugly scams are enabled in part by “sex trafficking” profiteers “Operation Underground Railroad”, best known for their cowboy raids victimizing brown people in the developing world.

Finding What Isn’t There (#880)

The easiest way to increase “sex trafficking” numbers is to invent imaginary “victims”:

…“Operation Not Forgotten” [is what Georgia cops melodramatically called a scam in which they arrested]…26 [legal minors, mostly teen runaways] and…found [13 kids who were with parents other than those assigned custody by courts.  Spokespigs oinked out fantasies about]…potential victims of sex trafficking…

Nine adults were arrested during the raids, mostly for probation violations, custody order violations, or merely continuing to exist while condemned to the “sex offender” registry.  Despite the claims of “authorities” that this was a “sex trafficking bust”, only one person was charged under Georgia’s incredibly-broad “sex trafficking” law.

The Widening Gyre (#961)

Words cannot express the extent of my delight at seeing the arch-mythmonger Polaris forced to debunk some of the hysteria it has disseminated (and profited handsomely from) for most of this century.  In the past few years, local cop shops have often been forced to deny stupid rumors that they aren’t in control of which are clogging their phone lines, but this is the first time I’ve seen Polaris put in this position, and the schadenfreude is so sweet.  Incidentally, the reason I took a screenshot of this press release rather than linking it is that Polaris counts clicks on their site as “sex trafficking reports”, and they even block the Internet Archive from archiving their pages so as to force those wanting to disseminate the information to cick directly on their site, thus unwittingly giving them ammo for their campaign of lies.

Paint By Numbers (#973)

Have you noticed dumb “anti-trafficking” stunts are now mostly ads for sports?

Renée Brinkerhoff…started Project 356…to…“use [auto rally] racing as a platform to do something about child trafficking worldwide”…[after] she saw a man on an airport bus viewing a…[porn] image of a young child on his phone…Ms. Brinkerhoff…also “participated in [anti-whore stings]”…She once spent two weeks in Southeast Asia working with…Exodus Road, a…profit[able anti-sex work] organization…that [provides opprtunities for weathy white entertainers to play cowboy using brown people in developing countries as unwlling props]…

Working From Home (#1045)

So much for the idea that celebrities cosplaying as sex workers would fight stigma:

Bella Thorne…[is a] former Disney star [who] made $1 million…during her first 24 hours on OnlyFans…[by] engaging in fraudulent behavior…[thus] triggering OnlyFans policy changes that harm sex workers…Thorne had charged $200 for nudes that she failed to deliver, and which reportedly led to numerous refund requests…[as a result] OnlyFans introduced…policy change[s] that…add[ed] a 30-day wait period for payouts and restrict[ed] pay-per-view prices to $50.  The company [claim]s the policy change wasn’t based on a single user, but many saw it as a response to the [huge number of] chargebacks…Thorne…[issued a mealy-mouthed “apology” in which she claimed her scam was somehow well-intended]…

The Implosion Begins

Evangelical churches get what they deserve for embracing “sex trafficking” mythology:

Some Christian leaders, including a couple of prominent conservative evangelicals, have denounced…QAnon…and…its…growing support among…evangelical churchgoers and other mostly conservative communities…Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler Jr…compared QAnon…to the early church heresy of Gnosticism …“Christians don’t have secret beliefs we hide from the world”…Tyler Huckabee, senior editor at Relevant Magazine…that QAnon’s claims are “farfetched”…and fueled by “confirmation bias”…Author and pastor Joe Carter denounced QAnon in a column…label[ing] QAnon a “political cult” and “satanic movement…QAnon…often traffics in lies, which Jesus says are associated with Satan”…

For evangelicals to refer to dealing in lies as “Satanic” when they have embraced that strategy in their attacks on science, human sexuality, and sexual minorities for over four decades is pretty fucking rich.  And for evangelicals to call others’ beliefs “farfetched” is laugh-out-loud funny.

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In the News (#1068)

Traffickers aren’t sneaking into your home in the night and stealing your teen daughter from her bed.  –  Kip Hollenbeck

Finding What Isn’t There

Are some cops starting to abandon the “sex trafficking” myth?

[While “rescue” profiteers in] Spokane [keep spouting fantasies about hundreds of teenage “sex slaves” controlled by “pimps”]…Kip Hollenbeck, who heads up Spokane Police Department’s sex trafficking unit…estimates the average age of a prostitute in Spokane at about 30.  He said some three out of four people selling sex in Spokane are independent, meaning they keep their own money and don’t work through a pimp…they choose sex work when they find they can make significantly more money than working for minimum wage…FBI agents, who work with SPD, sees similar trends.  “We’re not seeing hundreds of juveniles being trafficked in our city, and we’ve got people whose full-time job is to look for that,” said [spook] Christian Parker…profit[eer]s’ [fantasies] that the vast majority of people [selling] sex are basically enslaved are “nothing like what we’re seeing”…Dramatic claims of women or girls kidnapped and chained up in basements are also false…

To Molest and Rape

Another rapist protecting and serving:

Desmond Ladon Logan, the [typical and representative] Chattanooga [cop] who admitted to raping three women [he had abducted] and [tortur]ing a…fourth [with a taser]…has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison…Logan stood before U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier and [claimed he]…”never hurt anyone [because obviously his victims wanted it]”…

A Broker in Pillage (#1012)

Nobody will be safe until this odious, contemptible practice is recognized as unconstitutional:

Tucson handyman Kevin McBride was hard at work one Friday last May when his girlfriend offered to get him a cold drink from a convenience store.  She took his Jeep, his sole means of transportation and the basis of his livelihood.  Then the cops [stole it]…and local prosecutors are…demanding a $1,900 ransom before he can get it back.  This sort of shakedown…is legal under Arizona’s civil asset forfeiture law [because] the cops [claim] McBride’s girlfriend…used his Jeep to sell a small amount of marijuana to a…[disguised, lying pig] for $25.  Although the charges against her were dropped, the Jeep is still being held…the Goldwater Institute is representing McBride pro bono, arguing that Arizona’s system of legalized theft violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of due process and the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines…

Rotting Fruit (#1015)

In which the old-fashioned act of paying for a son to lose his virginity to a sex worker is described as “sex trafficking”:

Peter Nygard, the 79-year-old Finnish-Canadian fashion designer, [h]as [been] sued…by two of his sons, who accused their father of sex trafficking, and claimed that he arranged for them both to be raped when they were underage.  The suit…comes just months after ten women and girls filed a sexual assault and trafficking lawsuit against Nygard…[his] sons…say that their father [hired]…a “known sex worker”…to…statutorily rape them when they were 14 and 15, respectively…

Losing Their Shit

Some states are doubling down on the dying myth:

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has a new unit that will focus solely on [persecuting sex workers]…the new…Human Exploitation and Trafficking (HEAT) Unit….will focus on [hunting] commercial sex [workers] and…[locking up consenting] adult[s]…

Loose Cannons (#1054)

Court declares that illegal surveillance is illegal:

A Florida appeals court ruled…that police violated the rights of…Robert Kraft and others when they secretly video recorded them paying for massage parlor sex acts, barring the tapes’ use at trial and dealing a potentially deadly blow to their prosecution…Prosecutors will likely appeal the ruling to the state Supreme Court…and…State deputy solicitor general Jeffrey DeSousa argued that police and prosecutors [shoul]d [be allowed to do whatever they like, no matter how illegal] to convict [massage parlor] owners of felonies…because…sex…

Social Distancing (#1054)

“Equality minister” is European Prohibitionese for “chief anti-sex bureaucrat”:

Spain’s Equality Minister Irene Montero…called on the country’s regional governments to order the closure of all brothels [under the guise of] avoid[ing] coronavirus infections…Montero made her request via a letter sent to the regions’ equality chiefs [rather than public health officials], and called on them to take specific measures for the sex trade…[which she referred to as] “sexual exploitation”…

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