It’s psychologically damaging to stay 12 hours in an office getting paid a minimum wage. – Andra Chirnogeanu
Police dug through Walter Korte’s trash four times. They searched his car, his office, and his home. They found thousands of…”erotic and pornographic pictures that appeared to be printed off websites.” The “vast majority” of the images “appeared legal and depicted adults and transgender individuals.” Some of the photos showed “young men clothed and unclothed,” some of whom “appeared to be in their late teens.” One of those pictures was ultimately determined to qualify as child pornography under Virginia law, meaning that it was a “sexually explicit” image of “an identifiable minor,” i.e., someone younger than 18. As a result, Korte, a [73 year old] former film studies professor at the University of Virginia with no criminal record, faces up to a year in jail and registration as a sex offender…According to the proposed plea deal, Korte “knowingly possess[ed] child pornography”…[even though] the police did not know that the single purportedly illegal image, showing a boy in his “late teens,” was child pornography until they consulted experts at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. It also is not clear why prosecutors, who noted that “police did not find evidence of any hands-on crimes against minors”…are insisting that he register as a sex offender, which is not required by statute for possession of child pornography unless it is a second offense…
This is actually a very reasonable article, especially considering the BBC’s usual prudishness:
…Working an eight-hour day, [Lana] earns close to 4,000 euros (£3,600) per month – nearly 10 times the Romanian average wage. As Lana’s employer, Studio 20 also makes 4,000 euros per month from her online sessions. And at the top of the video chat money-making pyramid, LiveJasmin – the online cam site that streams Studio 20’s content and is responsible for collecting payment from the credit cards of clients – takes double that: 8,000 euros…LiveJasmin is the largest internet cam host in the world. Between 35 and 40 million users visit it daily, and at any given moment, there are 2,000 models live online…Studio 20 is the largest studio webcam franchise in the world. It has nine branches in Romania, including one employing “cam-boys” who service the gay market. Its other branches are in the Colombian city of Cali, Budapest and Los Angeles…
Naturally, they felt compelled to quote a prohibitionist about magical “damage” and camming being a “gateway” to whoredom, and the reporter had to end with an absurd little Utopian “feminist” homily. But these come across as tacked-on detraction from an otherwise truthful article.
Sex Rays
Half the population of New York City would be contaminated by sex rays!
Porn streaming site RedTube has offered to take Gov. Andrew Cuomo up on his idea to sell naming rights to subway stations…Owned by porn giant MindGeek, RedTube is a YouTube-like service that focuses on pornographic videos. It boasts 20 million daily users…Required donations range up to $600,000…Earlier this year, RedTube paid to have its logo placed on the shirts of a Massachusetts amateur soccer club. And three years ago, sister site YouPorn (another MindGeek holding) became the title sponsor of a Madrid, Spain-based esports team – now called Team YP.
Shifting the Blame (#553)
The teen…described being prostituted around the Washington area by two brothers she met at a Virginia motel…Danielle H…testified that one of the brothers, Christian Hood, posted ads for her on…Backpage earlier this year. His half brother Abdul Bangura was her boyfriend and her pimp, she said. Hood’s trial on sex trafficking charges comes as Backpage is under increasing scrutiny for hosting prostitution ads that include child-trafficking victims…
Full of Themselves (#591)
What is it about massage parlors that brings the puritans out of the woodwork?
The booming spa and massage parlour business in India has led to an increasing demand for women from Thailand, many of whom are being duped and trafficked into slavery in the country’s sex industry, [cops], [politicians] and [prohibitionists] said…At least 40 Thai women have been [arrested and deported] in 2017 during police raids on massage parlours acting as fronts for prostitution in western cities such as Mumbai and Pune…There are an estimated 40 million sex workers globally, according to French [prohibition profiteers] Fondation Scelles. [Prohibitionists fantasize] most have been lured, duped or forced into sexual slavery by pimps and traffickers…
Comfort Zone (#651)
…in the downtown area and hotel zone of Cancun, more than twenty women of several nationalities were [arrested by] National Institute of Migration (INM) authorities, in order to determine their legal immigration status [using the excuse that] all the detained women were alleged victims of forced prostitution…[pigs] raided night clubs with a warrant to detect any [migrants]…
Theatrics (#677)
A new hotel ad campaign launched by Toronto Crime Stoppers online is [spreading anti-sex worker propaganda]…in hotels across the Greater Toronto Area. From a restaurant menu of OxyContin, marijuana, cocaine and heroin, to room service amenities, such as intercourse, threesome, backrubs and bondage, Hotel de Jeunesse’s website aims to [spread disinformation] about sex [work]…The ad also [fantasizes about so-called]…warning signs that hotel staff need to look for…
Pyrrhic Victory (#697)
The word for collaboration between government & private industry to control people is “fascism”:
…the British government has announced plans…to partner with businesses to come up with the best ways to implement surveillance and crowd-control techniques at heavily-populated venues…The British government already has the “most sweeping” surveillance powers in the western world, thanks to a bill passed last fall. The new focus of combining that massive surveillance apparatus with crowd-control techniques is what makes this new initiative so jarring. DASA is offering up to £1 million of funding in the first round to companies that can come up with the best ways to improve current surveillance and use crowds as “sensors” to detect dangers through the use of behavioural sciences…the goal is to find a way to [indoctrinate] the public to…keep a distrustful eye on those around them. Those ideas seem similar to American initiatives such as the Department of Homeland Security’s “If You See Something, Say Something” program, which essentially incentivizes a sense of paranoia when riding the metro or attending an event where a large crowd is present…
The Crumbling Dam (#709)
I’m rather pleased that somebody beat the pompous, priggish politicians of Seattle to the punch:
For nearly three years, in an undisclosed US city, a social service agency has quietly been inviting people to inject illegal drugs at a clandestine site, without the government’s approval. More than 100 people have injected drugs at the site…This data provides the first glimpse of what it would look like if the US decided to follow 10 other countries and open supervised injection facilities…two people’s lives were saved because they overdosed at the site, where staff had immediate access to…naloxone, and 90% of people who used there said they would have injected in a public restroom, street, park or parking lot if the site had not been available…The secret site is modeled after legal facilities in countries including Canada, Denmark and France, where users can take drugs in a safe space with clean supplies…
Stupor Bowl (#752)
Even cop-fellating pieces like this one now mostly admit that “Super Bowl sex trafficking” is a myth, but they’re trying to turn the truth on its head by pretending the reason there’s no surge is that the “demand” for “victims” is always sky-high:
Minneapolis [prohibitionists fantasize that] criminal sexual enterprise has taken root in the state and will remain long after the Super Bowl leaves town…So law enforcement agencies and nonprofit groups are [lying about] the big game to bring fresh…funding to anti-sex-[worker pogroms]…It includes coordinated stings and [indoctrination to] train…bus drivers, hotel workers and 10,000 Super Bowl volunteers [spy on people for the pigs]…Authorities aren’t expecting a massive spike in trafficking during the Super Bowl…
