Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Monday Links

Monday, February 7th, 2011
  • After an anonymous tip, a female teacher in Ohio is accused of having sex with five of her male students. She “faces up to 81 years in jail if she is convicted of 16 counts of sexual battery and three offenses involving an underage person.” The sexual “battery” charge presumes that the sex was unwanted.  I’m guessing that’s probably not the case (although reality does not play a major roll when it comes to the legalities of sex with  minors).
  • Florida is going to consider banning “simulated” obscenity, whether clothed or unclothed, in material accessible to minors.  Perhaps next year they will outlaw having dirty thoughts within 1000 feet of a minor.  No more suggestive cheer leading moves or dancing in Florida.
  • to minors by adding a clause that says that “a suspected sexual predator purposely and knowingly sent obscene electronic messages to a minor”.   This is apparently a attempt to reconcile free speech rights with their desire to restrict free speech rights.
  • Biblical porn: “My lover thrust his hand through the hole, and my insides groaned because of him.”  Surprise!  The Bible is conflicted about sex!

Posted in Books, Censorship, Florida, Massachusetts, Obscenity, Ohio, Pornography, Prostitution, Relgious Zealotry, Texas, Trafficking, Virginia, Washington | 5 Comments »

New revisionist edition of Huckleberry Finn

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

Mark Twain’s book, Huckleberry Finn is one of those literary works that is perpetually under attack for being racially offensive.  Despite its acclaim as a literary classic, demands for its removal from school reading lists are so common as to not even be newsworthy anymore.

But, forget all that.  Publisher NewSouth Books  now intends to improve the book by printing an edition that will purge the word “nigger” and replace it with “slave”.

The new book will also remove usage of the word Injun. The effort is spearheaded by Twain expert Alan Gribben, who says his PC-ified version is not an attempt to neuter the classic but rather to update it.

Alan Gribben is an Auburn University (Montgomery) professor and the author of several books about Twain.

There have been numerous complaints that this amounts to censorship and all the internet polls that I’ve seen show that 85-93% of people oppose the alteration.  To me it smacks of revisionism and reminds me of Winston Smith’s job at the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s book, “Nineteen Eighty-Four“.  His job was to review historical records and alter them to fit the government’s preferred version of events.  Of course, NewSouth Books is not the government, but they are responding to social pressures which can be even more powerful than government.  From the public response, it would seem they missed the mark, but there is no doubt that the word “nigger” has become so taboo that you would be hard pressed to find it mentioned in mainstream news articles covering this story even though the story is, in fact, about that very word.  In other words, they won’t even print the word they’re discussing for fear of offending someone.  That parnoid approach to journalism is reminiscent of the media’s fear of printing cartoons depicting the prophet Mohamed and underscores the need for nontraditional news outlets (now provided by the internet).

On the other hand, if this puts the book into the hands of kids who would not otherwise be allowed to read it due to forces beyond their control (overprotective parents and the school boards they frighten), then maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to judge.

Actually, nothing makes a book more appealing that banning it.  Censorship almost always results in increased exposure and interest in uncensored versions of books, movies, and the arts.

The real problem here is that we are raising a generation of children who are being inculcated with the idea that a mere arrangement of letters is something to be feared independent of the context.  Of course, that fits in quite nicely with the belief that it’s perfectly permissible to outlaw imagery that portrays verboten sexual fantasies.  And these children will grow up with a view that freedom of expression should be restricted because of the potential for harm.

There is no such thing as a little censorship.

Posted in Bad Words, Books, Censorship, United States | 5 Comments »

MSNBC joins the Amazon feeding frenzy

Sunday, November 14th, 2010

Never let it be said that MSNBC doesn’t know a profitable thing when they see it and the Amazon controversy over a book for pedophiles is right up their alley.  MSNBC has posted the image below as evidence of the depravity that has consumed Amazon.  Presumably there is something disturbing about the picture, but they blurred it so it’s anybody’s guess what that might be.  MSNBC is way too responsible to actually include a an unedited copy of the picture they are condemning Amazon for carrying.  Yes, way, way ,way too responsible.

The listings are disturbing, as you may be able to sense even from the blurred item pictured above. Nudist videos from Eastern Europe appear on the U.S. Amazon retail site; meanwhile, books and videos that feature scantily clad pre-pubescent Eastern European and Asian girls, specifically stated by an independent website as being between the ages of 11 and 17, are listed on Amazon properties in Japan and elsewhere, and on Yahoo in Japan. That there are more books and videos of this nature on Amazon and other online retailers is highly likely.

Where to begin.  First, nudity in pictures is protected by the First Amendment.  Nudity does not equate to porn for most people whose IQ is at least into the double digits, but MSNBC, being merely a part of the American free press, might not be aware of the extent that the First Amendment actually protects, you know, free speech.    Amazon as well as many other retail book outlets sell books that show naked children, whether it’s nudists, medical books, art books, photography books, etc.  And yes, that protection even extends to pictures of Eastern Europeans and Asians.  From what I gather, MSNBC apparently draws the line at videos as if they are granted a lesser degree of protection than books.

I guess the real stunner is that Amazon is selling material showing pre-pubescent girls that range in age up to 17 which would be a real rarity given that girls usually reach puberty somewhere around age 10-12.  I suspect the author is really talking about adolescent girls, but that won’t do if you’re trying to keep the story focused on the pedophile menace.

Then the story goes on about a girl, Masha, who was adopted as a sex toy at age 5.  She was photographed and her photos were distributed to pedophiles (people interested in pre-pubescent, as opposed to adolescent, children).

Amazon would never have sold material like the pornographic photos of Masha; however, as Marsh pointed out to me, the site currently lists a lascivious “true crime” book, for sale by four used-bookstore partners, about Masha’s case, written by Peter Sotos, a man who once pleaded guilty to a child pornography charge.

So, Amazon is not actually participating in the illegal activities described, but MSNBC has no problem linking them all together based on something like the they-all-share-the-same-planet theory.  Clearly Amazon should be conducting background investigations of all authors of books that discuss the child sex abuse topic .  I mean how many can there be?  While it’s true that  topic is the center of focus for the entire sex hysteria industry, my guess is that there can’t be more than a few tens of thousands of authors involved.

“There’s a real disconnect on what the true nature of child porn is,” [lawyer and child advocate] Marsh said. “99.9999 percent of the material I deal with features pre-pubescent children being raped … the most graphic hardcore images you can imagine.

Really?   Okay, so how many books and videos did MSNBC came across on Amazon that actually show pre-pubescent children being raped?  Ummm.  None?  So apparently they’re zeroing in on that relatively harmless .0001 percent, huh?

People think downloading a picture of a baby in a bathtub is going to send them to prison. That’s not what we’re talking about.”

Yeah, people like that are idiots.  They don’t lock you up for shit like that.  They just take your kids away from you.

But there is a fine line. When it comes to young girls in swimsuits…

So how do people know exactly where the fine line is drawn?

“There are complicated legal tests that courts need to engage in to determine what is or isn’t legal,” [Marsh] explained.

So, no one can really know in advance?  They just have to take a guess and if they guess wrong they get their lives destroyed?  Ok, so I guess everyone should steer clear of anything that might possibly, maybe, conceivably, potentially to someone somewhere (especially some prosecutor or child abuse panic-monger), looks vaguely like it might be material that borders on child porn because it includes pictures of children who are nude, or not nude, or dressed in swimsuits, or posed in a way that could be construed to by unchild-like.    Ok, I think I understand, now.

As for Amazon — and Facebook, another current target of Marsh’s activism — he says free speech should not be the defense. “It’s not about First Amendment rights,” said Marsh. “It’s about what material a good corporate citizen should be making available to the public. And that’s the kind of decision Amazon should be making.”

Well, I think I have to agree with this.  The way they define “the fine line” between what’s legal and what isn’t, there is no First Amendment.  In order to obey the law, people have to know what’s legal and what’s not.  That’s a little difficult if it doesn’t get defined until you’ve been prosecuted and the case is in the hands of the jury.

Only a complete imbecile would believe this is not a First Amendment issue.  If publishing and selling books isn’t a First Amendment issue, it would be interesting to know exactly what Marsh thinks a First Amendment issue actually looks like.

I think its time to cut through the crap here.  I can understand why MSNBC would publish this kind of idiocy.  After all, ethically challenged NBC thinks nothing of creating crime just to give them material for their network.  CNBC is one-sidedly covering this story as if the Amazon can be tried under Masha’s Law even though they don’t identify any actual child victims.    Is it sleazy journalism?  Of course, but this is not that far removed from the sensationalistic fear-mongering that CNN and Fox News engage in regularly to boost ratings.

It is clearly a First Amendment issue in the sense that advocacy groups like this aren’t just using social pressure to get Amazon to stop selling a book.  Whereas child porn laws target those who use actual children to produce porn, the mission of law enforcement and advocacy groups is now becoming much broader, targeting material that doesn’t involve children in it’s production.  This includes, both images and text.   Imagery that used to require explicit sexual activity now only requires the child to be “scantily clad”.  Whatever can be used to inflame the anxieties of a jury is all that’s needed.  And those anxieties have been cultivated by decades of sensationalistic media hype.

The problem is simple.  No child has ever been injured by some guy  jerking off in his closet to a picture he ripped out of a Sears catalog or tore out of a teen magazine.  The injury is done during the actual production of real porn  using real children.  Laws that go beyond that are thought control.

One final thought.  If child advocates are so concerned about children who are abused by the child porn industry, why aren’t they aggressively advocating the elimination of penalties for porn that only simulates children, encouraging a shift away from porn that uses real children.  The self evident answer is that, like all moral crusaders, their primary mission is not about saving anyone so much as punishing immorality.

Thanks to reader and fellow blogger Maggie McNeill for the heads-up on this story.

Posted in Books, Censorship, Child Pornography, Nudity, Paranoia | 7 Comments »

Amazon caves in to public censorship demands

Friday, November 12th, 2010

In response to a public outcry, Amazon.com has discontinued sales of a book entitled “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover’s Code of Conduct”.

First of all, since Amazon is a private sector company, they have the right to sell or not sell any book they wish.  Clearly, your freedom of speech is not a guaranty that what you write will be distributed by others.  Furthermore, this is not a First Amendment issue because the government is not involved.

Having said that, free speech advocates have established a long and honorable record of warding off attacks by those who feel the right to free expression should only be extended to those with a socially acceptable message.

Pedophilia is, of course, an issue that evokes instant condemnation and any resistance to instant condemnation is itself instantly and equally condemned.  The media, child protection advocates, politicians, and law enforcement have enthusiastically cultivated an environment of stranger danger where children are disappearing by the minute and no child is safe.  It’s become a lucrative industry unto itself.  Ironically, the vast majority of child sexual abuse is perpetrated, not by strangers, but by those known or related to the family of the victim.

Overwhelmingly, customer comments condemned the sale of the book:

“It is ILLEGAL to molest children, and for Amazon to promote such is insane. I’m an abuse survivor, and am OUTRAGED Amazon would choose to promote this nonsense. I will not be purchasing anything from your website until this is removed,” one user wrote in a comment echoed by others.

Of course, it’s ludicrous to assume that Amazon is promoting anything merely  by selling a book.  If that were the basis by which book publishers and sellers operated, no controversial book would see the light of day (at least through a major outlet).

But, there were a few reasoned comments from people who were willing to brave the wrath of the outraged and make a case for why we don’t want an angry mob determining what we can or can’t read:

“While I think 99.9 percent of us object to pedophilia (even though I think this particular book was a publicity stunt/joke), I think we can all agree that we don’t want someone else censoring a subject matter that we may be interested in. Religion, atheism, homosexuality, etc. are some subjects that spring to mind … and they have been censored in the past until we realized that it’s best to let all information in (even if we don’t like some of it), rather than allow some authority or individual decide what we can and can’t know about based on their own opinions or motivations,” one user wrote.

What is most disturbing about cases like this is the rarity of arguments in favor of Amazon selling the book by any entity that relies on free speech.  Most bloggers seem to support the outrage against Amazon.  Ironically, one blog called SayAnythingBlog.com was quick to praise Amazon for caving to the pressure.  Free speech does, after all,  include the right to advocate for less free speech.  From what I’ve seen, the mainstream press seems to be reporting this without actually joining in the hysteria, which is refreshing after their enthusiastic participation in the crusade against the free speech rights of craigslist.

Finally, if that weren’t enough, there are also some other more speculative theories behind the sale of the book:

But conspiracy theories over the book abound, with commenters citing it as a publicity stunt, a hoax, or perhaps a law enforcement sting.

“People… Relax… This book is obviously promoted by Amazon per request of FBI in order to track down and catch pedophiles. This book is obviously a bait for the sickos that are lurking around out there trying to prey on our children.”

As law enforcement (often in cooperation with ethically challenged sensationalistic media) now depends so heavily on trickery to generate sex crime arrests, it’s not  much of a stretch to think that this could have been a ruse.

One final comment about the meaning of the word, censorship.  It’s a common refrain by some to angrily proclaim that it is not censorship when a non-governmental entity refuses to distribute, broadcast,  sell, or publish offensive material.  I find it somewhat stunning that writers, who should know better, would make such such an utterly ignorant assertion.  Censorship is censorship regardless of whether it’s done by a private organization or or the government.  The difference is that, when the government censors something, it is under threat of prosecution whereas private entities only have the power to refuse to publish, sell, or otherwise distribute something.  Censorship advocates can dress it up anyway they like, but in this case, as with the crusade against criagslist, the public, acting as an angry mob, successfully waged a war meant to force private businesses to censor material which those companies believed had a right to exist in a country that supposedly values the free exchange of ideas.   That, my friends, is nothing to be proud of.

Hats off to reader Richard for alerting me to this story.

Posted in Books, Censorship, Child Molestation, United States | 3 Comments »

Another episode in the U.S. Justice Department’s anti-sex morality crusade

Friday, October 15th, 2010

A middle school teacher in Meridian, Idaho was caught with cartoon images of children engaged in sex acts on his computer and now faces up to ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine.  According to the Idaho Statesman:

Boisean Steve Kutzner, 33, pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to possession of obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a press release.

Note the fact that he is being charged under obscenity laws rather than child porn which require that the material portray actual children.  Child porn laws are designed to protect children whereas obscenity laws can target any material deemed to be sufficiently offensive.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said investigators determined that his IP address had been used to share child pornography in a peer-to-peer file-sharing network in October 2008. After a forensic investigation of his computer in August last year, agents found 70 cartoon images of minors engaging in sexual explicit conduct. Many of the images depicted characters from the TV show “The Simpsons.”

Notice the ease with which they substitute the more inflammatory term, “child pornography” in the story.   Anti-sex crusaders rarely let ethics stand in the way of  their mission.

So, to summarize, the images do not satisfy the legal definition of child pornography and no children were victimized by anyone.  This is pretty much a case of “we prosecuted him because we can”.

The obscenity exemption to First Amendment is a Supreme Court fabrication to justify censorship of unpopular expression and it has a long history of abuse.  The supposition that the First Amendment is only meant to protect expression that isn’t too offensive is so illogical as to be ludicrous.  The very fact that the public buys into such nonsense suggests an utter lack of appreciation for their rights.

Of course, one could make an argument that someone who looks at such material shouldn’t be permitted to teach, but we must keep in mind that he was not charged with any offense against a child nor is there any mention of any such concerns.  Furthermore, if looking at cartoon images of children makes someone unfit to teach children, does looking at adult porn make someone unfit to teach adults?  In any case, this isn’t about getting a questionable teacher out of the classroom.  Simply firing him would have accomplished that.  No, this goes way beyond that.  This is about intentionally destroying a person’s life for simply looking at the wrong cartoons.

This story is nothing but another example of how laws originally sold as a means to protect children have become perverted into an opportunity to torture someone for not submitting to a cultural conformity defined by moral crusaders to whom rights are of no importance.

We can all breath a little easier tonight knowing that, Wendy Olson, the U.S. Attorney for Boise, Idaho has saved the United States from the terrible destructive scourge of cartoon sex.  I’m sure Wendy is quite pleased with how this will look on her resumé.

Posted in Books, Censorship, Child Pornography, Idaho, Obscenity, United States | 5 Comments »

Wikileaks back in the news!

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

September 25 to October 2 happens to be Banned Books Week and Wikileaks is apparently celebrating by claiming to have the book, Operation Dark Heart, by author Lt. Col Anthony Shaffer.  In a rush to suppress some of the content in the book, the Pentagon bought the entire first printing of 10,000 copies and summarily destroyed them.  Versions of the book currently being sold will be edited by the government.

“When you look at what they took out (in the 2nd edition), it’s lunacy,” Shaffer said.

Cut them some slack, Shaffer.  The Pentagon tends to see secrecy as a blank check to do what they want so they naturally tend to get all paranoid when someone shines even a small light on the truth.

Posted in Books, Censorship, United States | 3 Comments »

Residual suffering from a past moral panic: recovered memories

Saturday, September 25th, 2010

“My Lie: A True Story of False Memory“ is a new book by Meredith Maran that describes how she was caught up in the recovered memory hysteria of the 80s and 90s.  Recovered memory syndrome has now been almost universally disgraced as being a disease created by the cure.  It was a widespread belief that children who are sexually abused commonly repress the memories of it, only to have them reemerge later in life.  This hysteria paralleled another well known witch hunt of the era as criminal justice journalist Steve Weinberg reports:

As researchers like me are painfully aware and as Maran discusses in her memoir, a variation of recovered memory accusations played out in day care centers and similar preschool locales, where adults abetted children in revealing alleged sex abuse rings.

Hundreds of child care workers and others in cities across the nation – with Bakersfield as a prominent example – ended up in prison for supposedly abusing countless preschoolers in fantastical ways.

Social workers, police detectives, psychologists, psychiatrists, prosecutors, jurors and judges became complicit in the mass hysteria that led to the wrongful convictions.

It would be hard to find another phase in American history where mass hysteria marching under the flag of saving children laid waste so many innocent lives.  Like so many crusades, the goal was to win at all costs. The ends justified the means.  This site dedicates a page solely to that era and its cast of characters.

Since those days, exploiting people’s emotional compassion for children has become the preferred strategy to justify new legislation, restrictions on freedom, censorship, higher taxes, and greater regulation.   Politicians invoke child danger scares to gain votes, news outlets capitalize on it to attract viewers, and nonprofit as well as governmental organizations pump it up it to justify more funding.

Saving children is big business.

Posted in Books, Child Molestation, Day Case Sex Abuse Cases, Hall of Shame, Paranoia, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Recovered Memory Syndrome | Comments Off

Review: America’s War on Sex by Marty Klein

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

Short sweet review of the 2006 book, America’s War on Sex, by Marty Klein.

The factual basis of this book paints a detailed landscape of America’s irrational persecution of and delusional obsession with all activities sex-related. If you’re a like thinker, it will simply confirm your own beliefs, but if you’re conservative, be prepared to have all the world’s evils laid at your feet. This is the first time I’ve even heard the phrase “conservative feminist”. You have only to look at Congressional (and state legislative) voting records to see that the war on sex is by no means a strictly conservative crusade (although the bulk of it is certainly initiated by them). I’ve read books on the topic by other authors, including Nadine Strossen, that are much more credible simply because they do not demonize the conservative right while excluding the liberal contribution to the war on sex. Nonetheless, while rather one-dimensional, it is also an excellent presentation of just how stunningly pervasive the problem really is.

Finally, nowhere in the 230 pages is there any mention of prostitution laws. Indeed prostitution, call girls, massage parlors don’t even show up in the index. If laws banning the sale of sex toys deserve prominent coverage, one would think that laws against prostitution would at least earn an honorable mention (unless one subscribes to the concept that the war on prostitutes is acceptable, that is).

I don’t know the reason prostitution is left out, but it shouldn’t have been. Surely, if the phrase, “your body, your choice” means anything, it gives you the right to use your god-given body as an asset to put a roof over your head and food on your table no different from a laborer, doctor, or sports star. But, beyond that, laws against prostitution sadistically deny one of humanity’s most pleasurable and intimate communions to a class of people who are only likely to experience it through the services of a prostitute. That would include many handicapped people, those who have been maimed by war or accidents, those with serious birth defects, the home bound, the bed-ridden, and the just plain ugly (such as myself). If that doesn’t deserve mention as part of America’s War on Sex, then nothing does.

Posted in Books, Prostitution | Comments Off