Come to a Panel Discussion on Human Trafficking at Reason D.C. on August 3

Featuring Katie Hail-Jares of the Sex Workers Outreach Project, Molly Gill of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, and Reason's Elizabeth Nolan Brown.

Join us at Reason's D.C. office on August 3 for a discussion about the myths and realities of human trafficking in America, the misguided ways government is addressing the issue, and how it threatens to counter the criminal justice reform progress we've been seeing lately. This panel discussion will feature Sex Workers Outreach Project board member and Georgetown University researcher Katie Hail-Jares, Families Against Mandatory Minimum Government Affairs Counsel Molly Gill, and Reason Staff Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown with Reason Foundation Director of Criminal Justice Reform Lauren Galik moderating. 

What: A panel on "Human Trafficking in America: Myths and Realities"

Where: Reason DC Offices, 1747 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

When: Monday August 3rd, 6:00–8:00

Please RSVP here.

Comments

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Will you be discussing loosening legislation on orphan labor?

[Bobarian (Would Chip Her)]

When you get to the conference, Chris Hansen is gonna be sitting there, inquiring as to why you brought wine coolers.

[Almanian - Trump's Woodchipper]

Will there be some human trafficking conducted? Cause if not, this is just a waste of my time. Thanks

[Doctor Whom]

OT: Life imitates bad seventies porn. CW: police, description of forced public exposure.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....rc=nl_buzz

[Suthenboy]

I would bet money Alfie has a little black book filled with cutsie male names. Bruce, Jim, Chris, Glenn, Dave, etc.

And a ballgag and assless chaps.

[DEG]

I see the Planned Parenthood and Immigration posts have lots of comments. Otherwise a fairly slow day at Hit & Run.

[Paul.]

Will there be chicks there?

[Hyperion]

Bring some orphans for trade.

[Episiarch]

How much money you got?

[Idle Hands]

It's hard out here for a pimp.

[Episiarch]

Billy Ray Valentine: [Billy Ray is in jail] I wish my bitches would get here. I ain't got time to be sitting in this cell with you.

Even Bigger Black Guy: Where are your bitches, Mr. Big-Time Pimp?

Big Black Guy: Yeah!

Billy Ray Valentine: [to cellmate #2] Didn't I tell you that the phone in my limousine is busted, and I can't get in contact with my bitches?

Cellmate #2: [to the Big Black Guy] Yeah! The phone in the limo was busted. What is ya, ignorant?

[Idle Hands]

I bet Randolph and Mortimer Duke were human traffickers.

[Catatafish & Woodchips]

It ain't cool bein' no jive turkey so close to Thanksgivin', Epi.

[Curtisls701]

'Cause I'm a karate man! And a karate man bruises on the inside! They don't show their weakness. But you don't know that because you're a big Barry White looking motherfucker! So get outta my face!

[The Last American Hero]

If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

[MJGreen - Docile Citizen]

Will there be COCKTAILZ??

[Hyperion]

Wow, just look at that sexist image with no alt-text. It's like you guys purposefully show nothing above the waist just to prove that you don't even care about the face cause your're evil sex perverts.

Well, we commenters are not going to stand for this. Where's the rest of the picture? Pervs!

[AlmightyJB]

I'm fine with a nice below the waist pic accompanied by my imagination.

[Charles Easterly]

Just yesterday I read a well-researched and very informative article on this topic.

[Je suis Woodchipper]

Will this event be done in the "thunderdome" style of debate?

[RBS]

So how does that lion fit into to all this?

[Almanian - Trump's Woodchipper]

In a pine box?

Or maybe stuffed and mounted on the wall. Its head, anyway....

[John]

I would be curious to hear the tech people on here give an opinion about this.

The House Oversight Committee report cites an officially transcribed interview with John Minsek, senior investigative analyst with the IRS Criminal Investigations (CI) unit. Minsek examined the Lerner hard drive in 2011. In the transcribed interview, he notes Lerner's hard drive contained "well-defined scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk." The Oversight Committee report states:

"Using the CI unit's digital forensic facilities, Minsek opened the hard drive and conducted additional tests. Once he opened the hard drive, Minsek noticed "well-defined scoring creating a concentric circle in the proximity of the center of the disk."

So how did the scoring get there?

Read more: http://www.atr.org/curious-cas.....z3hOjx0ShY
Follow us: @taxreformer on Twitter

Is it possible for a hard drive to have "well defined scoring" if someone didn't mean to destroy it? This is the sort of thing that would win Pulitzers and get movies made about reporters if it were anyone but the Black Jesus doing it.

[DEG]

Hard drive crash

It could be a normal failure, or it could have been induced.

Either type of crash can be caused by a sudden impact, such as dropping the drive. If the drive is powered up and running, even a slight move can cause damage. But even if your drive never suffers anything cataclysmic, general wear and tear can eventually crash it.

[DEG]

"normal failure" - I should think more carefully about what I'm writing before I post.

"Normal" meaning it happened in the normal course of operations due to faulty or worn out equipment and wasn't someone trying to deliberately destroy the drive.

[DEG]

I read the article. I note this:

"When asked about the possible cause of the hard drive failure, the HP technician opined that heat-related failures are not seen often, and based on the information provided to him, the hard drive more than likely crashed due to an impact of some sort. However, because the HP technician did not examine the hard drive as part of his work on the laptop, it could not be determined why it crashed."

"Due to an impact of some sort"

Good luck proving someone deliberately dropped the laptop.

[Episiarch]

Yeah. As I implied below, there are a bunch of ways to fuck a hard drive that just cannot be proven as being deliberate, primary among them being passing a strong magnetic field over them and dropping them/the whole computer. Dropping isn't nearly as reliable as the magnetic field, though. I suppose if you wanted to get more elaborate--almost assuredly beyond Lerner's capabilities--you could corrupt the file allocation table section of the hard drive, but that would only lose the locations of files on the disk, and not remove the actual data itself, so a complete scan of the hard drive could find them still.

There are a lot of ways to subtly fuck with computer equipment, because the equipment is quite complex.

[DEG]

There are a lot of ways to subtly fuck with computer equipment, because the equipment is quite complex.

I agree.

[Jerryskids]

So simple even a squirrel can do it.

[Charles Easterly]

Did the squirrels purposely eat your redundant comment?

[Episiarch]

I'm not a hard drive hardware expert, but the fact is that to have what is described here would either have required the drive to be taken apart, "concentrically scored" (whatever that would be), and then put back together. Taking a hard drive apart to the point where you can get to the platter (which it doesn't specify in that clip, but that's the only thing it could be) is usually the end of the line for the hard drive. You have to have the right equipment and knowledge to put that thing back together so that it will actually function. There are serious moving parts in those.

It's also entirely possible that regular use "concentrically scored" the platter (again, if this isn't what they mean, then they are literally spouting gibberish), and that it was a normal function of wear and tear.

There are many ways to fuck up a hard drive that don't require elaborate teardowns and rebuilds of the drive. Just strong magnetic fields will do it, no "scoring" necessary. So this all sounds like someone who doesn't know anything looking for anything they can point to as suspicious, even if it makes no sense. If Lerner didn't want you getting at the contents of her drive, she could have passed a strong magnet near it a bunch of times and you could never, ever prove it. Physically damaging it would just be stupid.

[DEG]

"concentrically scored" (whatever that would be)

When I saw that bit in what John posted, I thought of drive crashes. After reading your post and the article John posted I note they don't specify what "concentrically scored" means. I didn't watch the clip, I'm at the office. Without knowing what "concentrically scored" means, someone could have taken the drive apart and damaged the platters.

[Episiarch]

Yeah, but why? Why would you take a drive apart, "score" it, and then put it back together, which is not the easiest thing in the world to do? When you could just pass a magnet over it? Or just throw the damn thing against the floor?

[DEG]

Why? Someone being arrogant and stupid yet having enough knowledge to work a screwdriver?

[tarran]

You can't really reassemble one with a screwdriver. I don't think we ever could, but since the invention of the 3.5 " harddrive, definitely not.

[DEG]

I've partially disassembled older MFM drives with screwdrivers, but MFM drives were a long time ago.

[Episiarch]

Because (see below in my answer to John) hard drives are sealed, they aren't supposed to get any dust or shit in them, and putting them back together after taking them apart is not the easiest thing in the world to do properly. They are very carefully balanced, there is an arm inside them that runs over the platter like an old record player's boom, it's all pretty complex with moving parts that have very high tolerances. Taking one apart and putting it back together is probably the most complex and most prone to not working at all again after you do it. It would be your absolute last choice of sabotage, it just makes no sense if you're trying to fuck the drive. You can do that without touching the thing.

[John]

There are many ways to fuck up a hard drive that don't require elaborate teardowns and rebuilds of the drive. J

That is true. But most people don't know that. Isn't it also possible that someone who didn't know anything about hard drive, took the hard drive apart and scored it and then stuck it back together because they didn't understand there were easier and less obvious ways to do it?

I wouldn't give these people too much credit for being sophisticated.

[Episiarch]

Except you are, right now. Taking a hard drive apart, "scoring" it, and putting it back together and having it work again (at least nominally) is actually vastly more sophisticated than other options. It would be like tearing down a car engine and boring out the cylinders so that they are too big to get proper compression anymore and then putting it all back together instead of just cutting the lines to the distributor cap. It just makes absolutely no sense. It's literally the land of conspiracy theories just on that basis alone.

[John]

That is true. It would be an idiotic waste of time. But what if you didn't know any other way to do it?

I guess the question is if you were going to destroy the hard drive making the information on it impossible to recover but wanted to do it in a way that it would be impossible to know whether it had been intentionally destroyed or just died, how would you do it? I would think running a magnet around it would be a bit obvious.

[Episiarch]

Nope, magnet is fantastic. There is no evidence, it "scrambles" the drive in a completely randomized way that cannot be traced to anything. There's no way to prove that somebody fucked the drive with a magnet. There would be SO much more evidence if they took it apart, starting with certain seals being broken that automatically void the warranty.

I'm telling you, this is pure conspiracy theory land.

[John]

Probably, but just because doing something is utterly idiotic and could be done in a much better way, doesn't mean someone out there is dumb enough to do it anyway.

[Episiarch]

Except that taking the drive apart would leave copious amounts of evidence. Even if they were stupid enough to do this the hard way, they'd get caught.

This is not a reasonable or feasible theory. Seriously.

[John]

But if you run a magnet over it and scramble the hard drive, isn't that going to be obvious too? How else does a hard drive end up scrambled other than by someone running a magnet around it?

[Lee G]

Software

[Episiarch]

Viruses. Trojans. Software specifically designed to overwrite sections of the drive (because when files are deleted, they are just marked as open space, but all their ones and zeroes are exactly the same until they are overwritten) for security reasons. Accidental magnet exposure.

Even if you suspect deliberate magnet scrambling, you absolutely cannot prove it.

[Just say Nikki]

Who doesn't know you can erase data with a magnet though? Are people really that retarded now?

[John]

That seems far fetched but frankly, I would be hesitant to bet against it.

[MJGreen - Docile Citizen]

Even Jesse knew that magnets work.

[Episiarch]

Fucking magnets, how do they work?

[cliffjumper]

This doesn't require tearing it down and re-assembly, just remove the drive hook up power cable and bang against floor/desk. The protective sensors require the data cable so the arm is not retracted upon radical movement to protect the drive. The arm would remain in ready state in the middle of the platter creating concentric (circular) scoring and pitting. No big magnet required that obviously everyone has in their desk drawer (don't you?). Interestingly the HP technician thought it caused by impact although there was no damage to outside of laptop. He also stated he thought recovery options still existed but the drive was sent to a industrial shredder instead.

Personally I would have preferred a wood chipper, more classy-

[Episiarch]

I believe that unless performing an operation, the arm is automatically retracted so as not to present the exact danger you are describing. If you pull the power, the arm will already be retracted unless it is directly in the middle of an operation, and so won't pose any danger. It is theoretically possible to pull the power in the middle of an operation, but again, the drive is designed to try and protect against that if at all possible.

Dropping is a nice low-tech way to try and fuck the drive, but it would be very hit-and-miss. Again, the magnet becomes the vastly superior choice in every way.

[cliffjumper]

Magnet is far superior. If you connect the power (power on) to the drive but not the data cable ( two cable connections for a sata drive) the drive goes into ready state spinning with the arm in the middle of the platter. It does not explain though why the lower platters were not scored since the arm holds parallel sensors over the other platters. I'm not saying it did happen just it could happen.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Stick to reviewing cartoons, pal.

[John]

Then there is this,

When asked about the possible cause of the hard drive failure, the HP technician opined that heat-related failures are not seen often, and based on the information provided to him, the hard drive more than likely crashed due to an impact of some sort.

I have a cheap crappy laptop and have dropped it on numerous occasions. It still works fine. I think it takes one hell of an impact to crash one. Of course lap tops die all of the time so it is impossible to know what happened here.

I do not have a problem drawing the worst conclusions. If it is the case that Lerner's harddrive really did just die at the right time and wasn't destroyed, my view is too bad. If you want to get in the business of abusing power and taking the 5th about it later, then you can also take the risk of people assuming the worst about you.

[Episiarch]

Most laptops/motherboards/hard drives at this point--especially in laptops--have gyroscopes and sensors built in to actually get the arm off the platter in the event of a drop. They're actually designed to survive drops.

Again, all of this speculation is insane, because if you want to fuck a drive--including an SSD, which drops will not effect unless they are super violent--just pass a magnet over it. Problem solved. No opening anything. No dropping anything. No evidence. No nothing.

This entire story sounds like people searching for conspiracies with almost no knowledge of the subject matter.

[John]

How powerful of a magnet would you need? And could you destroy the harddrive by just passing the magnet around the lap top without removing it?

[tarran]

You know those big horseshoe magnets they sell at toy stores?

Rub it on the hard drive case and voilla.

Or you can run a utility like erase on a unix system which just writes 0's on every location. :/

[Episiarch]

The more powerful the magnet, the better, but you can absolutely go to Radio Shack and get a magnet powerful enough, especially if you get some kind of powered coil field generator. And it will fuck the drive right thorough the laptop case. I believe they actually sell devices that are specifically for rapidly wiping hard drives for businesses/agencies that have security concerns with discarded hard drives.

[John]

When you consider how impossible it is to disassemble and reassemble a hard drive and that even a monkey could do a google search and figure out that a magnet would do it, then yeah, the concentric scratches mean nothing.

[ant1sthenes]

"The more powerful the magnet, the better, but you can absolutely go to Radio Shack and get a magnet powerful enough, especially if you get some kind of powered coil field generator."

Yes, that's how you would do. Now, how would someone with the IQ of a government bureaucrat do it? Cuz, I'm thinking "hit it with a hammer".

[*GILMORE*]

"this all sounds like someone who doesn't know anything looking for anything they can point to as suspicious"

If there's been anything more embarrassing than the IRS bullshit non-excuses for their stonewalling, its been the silly, equally technically-ignorant question-posing by conspiracy theorist types.

[Suthenboy]

I said long ago that he could tear a baby's throat out with his teeth on live television and no one would do anything about it. His supporters would swoon and defend him.

I don't think that is an exaggeration, not one bit.

[ant1sthenes]

Well, as long as he offered the organs as a sacrifice to Lord Science, I guess it wouldn't be all bad.

[tarran]

Is it possible for a hard drive to have "well defined scoring" if someone didn't mean to destroy it?

Yes. Basically, if the head physically gets driven into the platter while the disk is running, it will leave a groove.

With that being said, there is no such thing as "a concentric circle". Concentric means two things sharing the same center. Unless he means that the scoring was centered on the axis of the drive.

I see two explanations:
1) Stupid person tries to destroy harddrive by dropping it while it happens to be spinning.

2) Accidental damage due to mechanical fault.

It's quite likely the missing data can be recovered from the bits that aren't scored.

[Paul.]

Head crash.

Again, I never (much) doubted Lois Lerner's hard drive had a failure. However, that doesn't explain how the emails aren't retrievable.

There's no guarantee that the email data was in the place of the scoring. Plus, for anyone who's worked in a business environment for all of about 11 seconds know, emails come in chains. Someone else has parts or all of those emails in a chain to and from Lois Lerner.

And none of this refutes the notion that we've got top government officials subverting the most basic data retention policies.

[Bubba Jones]

Free samples?

[*GILMORE*]

repeat from yesterday =

can someone explain why "trafficking" is a crime separate from the underlying crimes used in its definition?

----------

I've always wondered why its not simple "kidnapping".

If the person being schlepped from one place to another is *unwilling*, then its kidnapping.

But... in trafficking, it seems they don't care about the consent of the trafficked.

So, say some 16 yr old cambodian girl wants to come to America. people smuggle her in, *then* tell her she's got to give blowjobs until she's paid off the costs of her transport.

Even then - that's extortion.

Unless she agreed to the blowjobs part? But that's a "crime", so is transporting people *for the purpose of a criminal act* (regardless of how willing the traveler) the definition of "trafficking"?

I'm just confused on what defines "trafficking" exclusive from other crimes.

The dictionary = "the illegal movement* of people, typically for the purposes of forced labor or commercial sexual exploitation"

(*the former is illegal whether they do it themselves, willingly, or 'have it done' with another's aid)

its that the latter elements - 'forced labor' or sexual 'exploitation' - are assumed to to be *unwilling*... and that the 'movement' part is illegal regardless of whether participants are willing or not.

If you're someone who thinks the "illegal entry" crime is bullshit to begin with, this gets problematic.

[Raven Nation]

This doesn't directly address your question, but I suspect some of this is "marketing." If someone is kidnapped, it implies a singular crime by a small group of people. Trafficking implies a systematic transnational approach that has to be addressed by large-scale government efforts.

I also think that most people who get really animated by this subscribe to the idea that no one voluntary goes into prostitution.

[*GILMORE*]

" most people who get really animated by this subscribe to the idea that no one voluntary goes into prostitution."

Yes, it seems as though the definition requires that the 'victims' have no agency whatsoever

some of the activists involved seem to go to great lengths to argue that (like college rape) the victims are not technically EVER allowed to consent.

because either youth makes their choices irrelevant, or the fact that, once they are delivered to the country they wanted to go to, that the "agents" of their transfer wield power over them by having the ability to turn them in to the INS, who would deport them.

Still, few seem to think the immigration policies are the problem to begin with.

[AlmightyJB]

Raven hit it exactly. Pure Marketing. Prostitution is the oldest profession. Trafficking is evil.

[Just say Nikki]

can someone explain why "trafficking" is a crime separate from the underlying crimes used in its definition?

Are we sure that it is?

[*GILMORE*]

No - Hence the question

It seems like a way to make otherwise-liberal people get very up-in-arms about immigration-meets-prostitution; issues which individually they'd probably think shouldn't necessarily be illegal in the first place

[Just say Nikki]

Well I definitely agree. I am just unclear on whether it is a separate crime in the US.

[*GILMORE*]

oh, good point. I have no idea.

Apparently it was added to RICO in 2000 as a federal crime

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/.....h.r.03244:

[John]

That is a very good question and it goes to the heart of how you think law should view criminal conspiracies and larger criminal enterprises.

At one time, the law only punished the crime and the criminal, with few exceptions. One of those exceptions has always been pandering. It is left over from the old view of women being less than full adults who could not consent to some things. So running a brothel was a crime because it was assumed you were coercing the women involved.

Trafficking is just an expanded version of pandering in that it makes the people who import the women criminals right along with the people who run the brothels.

And for the record, criminal law has sadly with the RICO laws moved generally towards this. If you benefit from someone else committing a crime, you are guilty of a crime too.

[Irish ?s ESB]

The answer to your question is that sex-trafficking is eternally undefined for the express purposes of fucking around with numbers at the leisure of anti-sex trafficking organizations. It gets even shadier when you see people using phrases like 'at risk of being sex-trafficked' which is an actual phrase used by some shady motherfuckers who wrote a 'report' claiming that there are 200,000 children 'in danger of being trafficked' in the US.

They came to this number by counting everyone within a certain distance of the Canadian or Mexican border who had access to a car as well as everyone who is transgendered...for reasons that aren't entirely clear.

[Irish ?s ESB]

Also, calling it human trafficking doesn't have the racist connotations of 'white slavery' which is a definite plus.

[Suthenboy]

Human trafficking is just like rape. A term that means some nebulous bullshit that can be tagged on whatever, whenever so that whoever can be crucified.

It is more of what the left is so fond of: attempting to turn the objective into the subjective.

[Hugh Akston]

So trying to create something from nothing?

[Just say Nikki]

[Paul.]

What you didn't do there, I saw it.

[Charles Easterly]

Well, Nikki is creative.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

I'd like to see you get raped while human trafficked!

/nibbles on walnut.

[ant1sthenes]

I mean, there is a reasonable meaning. The guys who stacked Africans like cordwood in boats were human traffickers. Sometimes a crime is more or different from the sum of its parts, like robbery is technically assault in conjuction with theft, but it's still a separate offense.

[John]

There is such a thing as "human trafficking". One of the places it really exists is on cargo ships. There are cargo ships flagged in shit hole countries that literally keep their crews as slaves, including children. But no one ever wants to talk about that or do anything about it because it hasn't caught the fancy of upper class western women.

[ant1sthenes]

That makes no sense. That's just slavery. Trafficking is commerce -- human trafficking isn't the crime of owning humans, it's the crime of selling them.

[John]

Somebody sold them the slaves. And "human trafficking" is just a polite word for "slave trading". Of course 99% of prostitutes are not slaves. They use the polite word because it allows them to lie and pretend they are without being so obvious about it.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Yeah. Traffic is the worst.

[Paul.]

Sez the guy who lives in the woods.

[Dark Lord of the wood chipper]

Why do you think he lives in the woods?

[Charles Easterly]

"Yeah. Traffic is the worst."

Fist, although I didn't particularly like that movie, I think it had a few good quotes.
I think you'll enjoy this one: "What's Washington like? Well it's like Calcutta, surrounded by beggars. The only difference is the beggars in Washington wear fifteen hundred dollar suits and they don't say please or thank you."

[Episiarch]

That movie was a "remake" of a BBC miniseries about the heroin trade into the UK/Europe. Like so much of Soderbergh's work, it's just a remake of someone else's work or based off a book (which is also someone else's work). He's barely done anything truly original since Sex, Lies, and Videotape.

[Charles Easterly]

Thanks, Epi, perhaps I'll look into the BBC miniseries. I tend to enjoy them (and certain Sit-Coms as well).

[Fist of Etiquette]

Don't thank him. The BBC paid him to mention it. The irony is if they knew what a terrible human being he is they would be paying him not to mention them at all.

[Raven Nation]

Try the BBC version of House of Cards.

[*GILMORE*]

Schizopolis

and for the record, Kubrick only ever did movies of books. just saying.

[Episiarch]

Point taken, but he didn't do any remakes and he was also a fantastically talented director, far more talented than Soderbergh. Besides being a sadist towards his actors too.

[Irish ?s ESB]

"Point taken, but he didn't do any remakes and he was also a fantastically talented director, far more talented than Soderbergh. Besides being a sadist towards his actors too."

The thing about Kubrick was that his movies were often drastically different from the book. Kubrick's The Shining is vastly superior to the King book of the same name. His movies were often so much better than the book that some of the books aren't even remembered. Who the hell even remembers Humphrey Cobb's Path's of Glory? I didn't even know that book existed until I just googled to see if it was based on a novel.

Or how about Gustav Hasford's The Short Timers, which Full Metal Jacket is based off of? That one's a memorable classic.

Plus, 2001: A Space Odyssey was not based on a book, the book and movie were basically made simultaneously.

[*GILMORE*]

"Gustav Hasford's The Short Timers, which Full Metal Jacket is based off of? That one's a memorable classic.

Interesting side note=

Full Metal is more of a combination of "short timers", and Michael Herr's own "Dispatches"

Herr was brought in to write the script, and he ended up lifting piles of dialogue /scenes from his own book

(he did the same thing with Apocolypse Now, FWIW; pretty much every vietnam movie has stolen bits from Herr's reporting & his book)
Apparently Herr wrote a book about Kubrick going into detail about it, which i've never read.

[*GILMORE*]

The Limey was also pretty darn good

i'm not a huge fan of the guy, but he's a very solid technical director with ability to vary his styles to the material

[Episiarch]

I really liked Sex, Lies, and Videotape when I saw it as a teenager. So I was intrigued when he made more movies, but overall I found myself going "meh" most of the time and "ugh, this sucks" some of the time. Oceans' Eleven makes me want to strangle kittens (though my overwhelming hatred for Julia Roberts and George Clooney are part of that). He is a solid technical director, but he lacks style and originality. I'd rather watch a Rob Cohen movie than a Soderbergh movie, because at least Cohen is fun and tries to get creative (even though he often fails).

[lap83]

I thought Schizopolis was fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeMMFJx0264

[lap83]

oops Gilmore already mentioned it

[Irish ?s ESB]

Epi, are we just going to pretend Magic Mike, aka the greatest cinematic achievement of the 21st century, didn't happen?

[Episiarch]

I actually haven't seen it. I haven't watched any Soderbergh movies for some time now, because he's so derivative usually. Plus the last male stripper movie I saw was (I think) The Full Monty.

[Raven Nation]

Huh, thought you meant these guys:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocjSc7v83pk

[Lee G]

For some strange reason every time I listen to Traffic, I smell weed.

[Episiarch]

STEVE WINWOOD

Dee Reynolds: Why don't we up the supplements which we know work and eliminate working out which we know blows.

Dennis Reynolds: That sounds like a pretty good plan. You know what? I'm gonna take it one step further and propose that we start working on a muscle that we've been neglecting this entire time. And it's the most important muscle in the entire body.

[takes out fitness instructor's cd and inserts his own into the cd player]

Dee Reynolds: Which muscle?

Dennis Reynolds: The face.

[Steve Winwood's 'Higher Love' begins playing]

Dennis Reynolds: That's a gift for you, bumble bee. Come on.

Dee Reynolds: Enjoy it, Coach Dick 'n' Balls.

[Raven Nation]

Huh, the coffee shop where I am currently working is playing "Arc of the Diver" right now.

[Jerryskids]

The thing that disturbs you is only the sound of the low spark of high-heeled boys.

[Jerryskids]

Damn my slow fingers. And tiny brain. And lack of opposable thumbs.

[Lee G]

The FBI has been promoting their human trafficking epidemic to the BBC. Heard it this morning. Upshot was that it mostly consists of runaways being tricked/forced into prostitution. The real concern from the FBI was that apparent demand over the internet was at an all time high.

[Raven Nation]

Clearly the answer is more government control/intervention/monitoring of the internet. It's a cesspool of people making their own choices.

[Lee G]

Pretty much their argument

[Paul.]

Net Neutrality will cure all ills.

[Lee G]

The first example was a (Baltimore) woman who had been a prostitute for decades. Her first time (at 14) was when some guy she was enamored of and sleeping with told her he was going to be killed if he didn't come up with $400. Just so happens he had some guys upstairs who had given him $400 if she would sleep with them. She did of course.

So in her case the real question appears to be how do you best protect kids from their own bad decisions?

There were real cases of exploitation like heroin addicted parents who pimped their kids out. But the choice of the word "trafficking" carries some connotations that don't seem to fit. I think that this is by design in order to justify further governmental powers.

[ant1sthenes]

"So in her case the real question appears to be how do you best protect kids from their own bad decisions?"

We could try putting adults who fuck children in prison. It's a crazy notion, but I'm willing to try it.

[Jerryskids]

Is the CDC all over this epidemic? Of course they are! Will somebody please explain to these idiots what is meant by 'hyperbole'? IT'S NOT A LITERAL EPIDEMIC!

[ant1sthenes]

I have heard that the British have a problem with the organized rape and enslavement of female minors. Not sure the FBI has any more interest than the British government in doing something about it, though.

[Lee G]

That was what struck me the most. The Brits are horrid in this regard, yet they're focused on how bad we are?

[The Late P Brooks]

Fucking fascism- how does it work?
.
Far be it from me to impugn Trump's fascist/corporatist credentials, but at least make an effort to use a proper definition of the term. At least mention the economic component.
.
In a recent article by Jeffrey Tucker, however, it is argued, quite justly in my opinion, that Donald Trump, whether he knows it or not, is a fascist (or is at least acting like one). Much like Mussolini and Hitler, Trump is a demagogue dedicated to riling up the people (particularly conservatives) with race baiting, traditionalism and strongman tough talk....

--------

The modern GOP is a party of unwavering and dogmatic patriotism mixed with traditionalism and intolerance. The social progression we have been witnessing over the past decade in America, most clearly with the acceptance of the LGBT community, seems to be triggering a reactionary movement on the right.

[Lee G]

So Trump, who hasn't been terribly outspoken about gays, is a result of a backlash in the right from the advance of gay rights?

Salon, they can't even do logical fallacies right.

[John]

Salon:

"Republicans are so angry about gay marriage, they are going to deport all of the Mexicans."

[John]

They would have to look in the mirror to figure that out. Trump is a populist and a bit of a demagogue but he is not a fascist, needless to say. Fascists believe in the total power of the state, reject capitalism, use mob violence for political gain, and embrace blood and soil forms of nationalism. There are fascists in American politics, but they are not Trump or even Republicans.

[tarran]

I think Tucker's article should be read in full. He was the brains behind mises.org, and is pretty familiar with von Mises writings on fascism.

In effect, he believes that he is running to be the CEO of the country ? not just of the government (as Ross Perot once believed) but of the entire country. In this capacity, he believes that he will make deals with other countries that cause the U.S. to come out on top, whatever that could mean. He conjures up visions of himself or one of his associates sitting across the table from some Indian or Chinese leader and making wild demands that they will buy such and such amount of product else "we" won't buy their product.

...

In the 18th century, there is a trade theory called mercantilism that posited something similar: ship the goods out and keep the money in. It builds up industrial cartels that live at the expense of the consumer. In the 19th century, this penchant for industrial protectionism and mercantilism became guild socialism, which mutated later into fascism and then into Nazism. You can read Mises to find out more on how this works.

[tarran]

What's distinct about Trumpism, and the tradition of thought it represents, is that it is non-leftist in its cultural and political outlook and yet still totalitarian in the sense that it seeks total control of society and economy and places no limits on state power. The left has long waged war on bourgeois institutions like family, church, and property. In contrast, right fascism has made its peace with all three. It (very wisely) seeks political strategies that call on the organic matter of the social structure and inspire masses of people to rally around the nation as a personified ideal in history, under the leadership of a great and highly accomplished man.

...

These people are all the same. They are populists. Oh how they love the people, and how they hate the establishment. They defy all civic conventions. Their ideology is somewhat organic to the nation, not a wacky import like socialism. They promise greatness. They have an obsession with the problem of trade and mercantilist belligerence as the only solution. They have zero conception of the social order as a complex and extended ordering of individual plans, one that functions through freedom and individual rights.

[tarran]

Blast! Forgot the link:
https://tucker.liberty.me/trumpism-the-ideology/

[Irish ?s ESB]

Tucker makes a compelling argument, but Salon makes a retarded version of that argument that exists only to smear the GOP while totally refusing to acknowledge that Bernie Sanders' position on immigration is almost identical to that of Donald Trump.

[Lee G]

They are populists.

Exactly. There is no defining political theory behind them.

[John]

That is not fascism. Fascism is more than just an "unlimited power of the state". Fascism is "everything is by and for the state". Even if you think that the government should be able to resort to any means to protect and defend the civil institutions of the country, you are not a fascist since you still recognize things that are separate from the state.

This guy is raping the word. He makes decent points about why Trump has bad ideas. But to call it fascism is both untrue and counter productive.

[Irish ?s ESB]

" Even if you think that the government should be able to resort to any means to protect and defend the civil institutions of the country, you are not a fascist since you still recognize things that are separate from the state."

I have seen no indication that Donald Trump believes there should be anything separate from the state if he is president. Trump thinks he should be allowed to do whatever he wants, so calling him fascist does not strike me as completely inaccurate.

[Restor-woodchipper-as]

Autocratic might be a better word? I don't think that he is advocating for a national-socialist organization of the economy like a true fascist would, though I could be wrong.

[ant1sthenes]

Yeah, not every banana republic dictator is a fascist or a commie.

[Irish ?s ESB]

Remember when Kevin Williamson was evil for daring to call Bernie Sanders a national socialist, even though Bernie Sanders literally is a national socialist, by his own admission?

[The Late P Brooks]

They have zero conception of the social order as a complex and extended ordering of individual plans, one that functions through freedom and individual rights.

And this is why I despise them (whoever "they" may in any specific context be).

[The Late P Brooks]

I have seen no indication that Donald Trump believes there should be anything separate from the state if he is president.

Absolutely not. I see Trump as a "Big Business and Big Government working hand in hand to grind the peasantry under their heels" kind of guy. That certainly puts him on the fascist end of the spectrum, in my estimation. The snazzy uniforms will come later.

[Episiarch]

Yes, but the snazzy hairdos start right now!