Comments on: Happy Endings?

By: www.buzzflash.net

www.buzzflash.net — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:39:10 +0000

Happy Endings?…

Is prostitution a victimless crime? A Rhode Island coalition against human trafficking fails to stop the growth of ‘massage parlors’. The police want more arrest powers, the ACLU objects. One documentary filmaker went to the women and asked them abou…

By: What other people say « happy endings? Director’s blog

What other people say « happy endings? Director’s blog — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:19:16 +0000

[...] I am happy that today I was blogged about on Kmareka. [...]

By: joe bernstein

joe bernstein — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:22:51 +0000

Harm reduction-looking for the real abuses in any area rather than “one size fits all” thinking-that is real progressive thinking as opposed to the nanny state”we know what’s best for you”mentality which drives me up a wall.That is an example of lazy intellectual mental masturbation.I have a libertarian streak that innately rebels against behavioral laws that are counterintuitive to what most people have no problem with.
Prostitution,guns,alcohol,marijuana-all can be the focus of truly bad behavior-if someone is “straw purchasing”guns for resale on the street,I am all for locking them up,but I don’t think it’s anyone’s business if I own an AR15 with a 30 round magazine-I have no criminal or mental health history and never had a restraining order,so the most likely thing I will kill is paper targets,because I don’t like game meat.

By: Nancy Green

Nancy Green — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 12:37:38 +0000

thanks Joe, your well-informed comments are very welcome. yes, this is complex. that’s one reason i am not active in the coalition anymore. i am discouraged at some of the politics that has worked its way in, especially during the bush admnistration, and i am mistrustful of the Wilberforce Act which i think could have unintended consequences. i’m not a lawyer, and i could be wrong, but historically the Mann Act was abused to target individuals for their politics, and I don’t think we can stop prostitution altogher any more than we can prohibit alcohol or make guns illegal. no law can work if enough people disobey it. Donna Hughes speaks contemtuously of harm reduction, but that is a strategy I support.

By: joe bernstein

joe bernstein — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:52:06 +0000

You want an example of sexual human trafficking?In 1977 INS in Chicago busted Emil Leutner,a South Milwaukee police officer for violation 0f 8USC1328,Importation of Aliens for Immoral Purposes-Leutner lured 13/14 year old girls from Mexico to a motel he was connected with on the pretense of domestic employment and held them captive forcing them to have sex with dozens of men a day,mostly Mexican farmworkers in southern Wisconsin.Leutner did the world a favor by dying before trial.This is the kind of thing human trafficking for sex involves.
Adult women legally in the US who are not under physical compulsion can’t be considered “trafficked”.If they are free to come and go and make more than the equivalent of minimum wage,the case is nearly impossible to make.
The gambling thing is weird-when I worked security at Lincoln Park,a lot of massage parlor workers would come in to gamble,and they didn’t gamble small.Hard to call people “slaves”when they can drop a few grand a night at the slots.Most of them weren’t young,either.There were also a lot of strippers who came in.Must be something about the sex trade that induces a likeliehood to gamble.??
I will say this again ,having worked on the Alien Smuggling Unit in Chicago INS for a few years-the real human trafficking is in laborers,and not by any means all Latinos.The non-Mexicans(“OTM’s”)pay a whole lot more money to get smuggled in.
The West Coast was inundated by Indonesian slavery cases for many years.They were not used as sex slaves so much as sort of domestic indentured servants.I never ran into any cases,but the agents from Frisco,LA,etc had experience with this.
On a previous post about Roman Polanski I described an alien smuggler who kept a woman as a slave in his basement.Happily after I arrested him,he died in prison.
This is an incredubly complex issue,Nancy,which it seems you are well aware of.