Random News Stories

[Pæs]

DAMMIT!  Stop muddying up my view on things!

http://www.today.com/news/george-h-w-bush-shaving-head-was-right-thing-do-6C10760866

Oh no, George Bush was a human being, flawed in some ways, good in others, much like the flawed but not actually sociopathic CEO's of the companies that are making a mess of the world...

Except that a relatively high proportion of those CEOs actually ARE sociopaths. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/14/why-some-psychopaths-make-great-ceos/

My issue with Pergamos' comment is that it seems to imply that if the CEOs were sociopaths, they wouldn't be humans, flawed in some ways, good in others.

IMO, sociopathy gets filed under "flaw this particular human has". Not "qualifies this creature as an inhuman monster."

[Pergamos]

True enough.  I'd much rather associate with a conservative than a sociopath though.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Looks like there's been a pedo ring busted but nobody seems to be naming names. Creepy.
https://www.google.com/search?q=teens+rescued+sex+trade&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&client=firefox-a

[Cain]

Everyone's reading from the same script at the moment, the FBI's press release.

According to the data from the FBI's statement, the majority of the arrests took place in Detroit, Oklahoma City and San Francisco.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Thanks for that. Watching to see where this goes.

[P3nT4gR4m]

This whole pedo-thing is starting to freak me out. I mean, I always figured that there were just about as many serial killers as pedos but, if the recent news is anything to go by (yeah right) I'd be forgiven for thinking I'm the odd man out and 97% of the adult population of planet earth are actually balls deep in a preschooler as we speak. I mean WTF?? 

[Junkenstein]

This whole pedo-thing is starting to freak me out. I mean, I always figured that there were just about as many serial killers as pedos but, if the recent news is anything to go by (yeah right) I'd be forgiven for thinking I'm the odd man out and 97% of the adult population of planet earth are actually balls deep in a preschooler as we speak. I mean WTF?? 

That's pretty much the exact opinion the media has been trying to create for years. If you're worried it means it's working.

What in particular has set the worry alarm? You've normally got a good handle on shit like this so it seems like an odd reaction from you man.

[Junkenstein]

Looks like there's been a pedo ring busted but nobody seems to be naming names. Creepy.
https://www.google.com/search?q=teens+rescued+sex+trade&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&client=firefox-a

I'd suggest the most sickening thing here is the likely level of impact.

100 freed, Great. 150 facing charges, nice going.

Potential scale of the problem?

An estimated 240,000 children in the United States are considered at risk of sexual exploitation.

I'd assume that to be a very, very conservative guess. Most true numbers on shit like this tends to be best guesses with a big list of unknown caveats. Quite simply, there seems to be nowhere near enough funding/resources to begin to actually tackle this problem effectively.

A cynical mind would consider that there may be more than a few extremely wealthy people who benefit from this trade. A paranoid mind might think there could be links to government.

[McGrupp]

http://gothamist.com/2013/07/27/violinist_arrested_for_playing_viol.php

Good to know cops are going after the real monsters.

The officer continued to insist that Christian procure a permit, and Christian continued to insist that no such permit exists. After trying to convince him to leave the station voluntarily, the officer again called his superiors. Christian pointed out specifically, in the rule book, where it says that he's allowed to play.

Strangely, his curiosity about the law seemed to evaporate when he had the chance to have a copy of the rules in his hands. He changed to a new tactic, telling me that the rules could be "overruled" in the case of a safety problem.

[Doktor Howl]

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/29/19754475-more-than-100-teens-rescued-in-weekend-sex-trafficking-raids-fbi-says?lite

[Junkenstein]

That's what Stella linked to. Beat to the punch unless there's some kind of update?

Also, passing bored Mod, may be worth splitting this out, I'd guess this to have a lot more related to it in the next few days/weeks

[Doktor Howl]

That's what Stella linked to. Beat to the punch unless there's some kind of update?

Also, passing bored Mod, may be worth splitting this out, I'd guess this to have a lot more related to it in the next few days/weeks

Beat to the punch.

[P3nT4gR4m]

This whole pedo-thing is starting to freak me out. I mean, I always figured that there were just about as many serial killers as pedos but, if the recent news is anything to go by (yeah right) I'd be forgiven for thinking I'm the odd man out and 97% of the adult population of planet earth are actually balls deep in a preschooler as we speak. I mean WTF?? 

That's pretty much the exact opinion the media has been trying to create for years. If you're worried it means it's working.

What in particular has set the worry alarm? You've normally got a good handle on shit like this so it seems like an odd reaction from you man.

Yeah, man, it was kind of tongue in cheek . Hence the brackets. Child molesting is something that just weirds me out, tho. Murderers and even rapists makes sense to me. Not that I'm an apologist but I think I have a pretty good handle on how it happens. The mechanisms at work in the head meat of the perpetrators makes sense to me but fucking kids? It's just too much of a leap for me. I'm only good with it if its an aberration, like some kind of one in a million basket case. Seems like that isn't the case. The mentality is alien to me. They're not human the way I understand humans. Saddam Hussein, UBL, Hitler, they were all human. Fucked up and twisted versions but I can relate to them. What made them who they are I understand. It doesn't surprise or shock me that people can get that bent. Jimmy Saville, tho ... not my species. Something I don't have a handle on happened there.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Our culture fetishizes the forbidden. Sex is dirtybadwrong, therefore the more badwrong, the sexier. Most of us draw lines, some of us run with it.

[Junkenstein]

This whole pedo-thing is starting to freak me out. I mean, I always figured that there were just about as many serial killers as pedos but, if the recent news is anything to go by (yeah right) I'd be forgiven for thinking I'm the odd man out and 97% of the adult population of planet earth are actually balls deep in a preschooler as we speak. I mean WTF?? 

That's pretty much the exact opinion the media has been trying to create for years. If you're worried it means it's working.

What in particular has set the worry alarm? You've normally got a good handle on shit like this so it seems like an odd reaction from you man.

Yeah, man, it was kind of tongue in cheek . Hence the brackets. Child molesting is something that just weirds me out, tho. Murderers and even rapists makes sense to me. Not that I'm an apologist but I think I have a pretty good handle on how it happens. The mechanisms at work in the head meat of the perpetrators makes sense to me but fucking kids? It's just too much of a leap for me. I'm only good with it if its an aberration, like some kind of one in a million basket case. Seems like that isn't the case. The mentality is alien to me. They're not human the way I understand humans. Saddam Hussein, UBL, Hitler, they were all human. Fucked up and twisted versions but I can relate to them. What made them who they are I understand. It doesn't surprise or shock me that people can get that bent. Jimmy Saville, tho ... not my species. Something I don't have a handle on happened there.

Ah, no worries. Sense of humour failure on my side. It's something that gives me serious "The fuck?!" vibes too, partly a reason I've been trying to read up on this kind of shit more. It's fucking grim, but I don't think "othering" to borrow a term, is a helpful line here.  In this case, Savile and the Belgian stuff Cain put me on to it just seems more important to understand this shit in order to even start getting some kind of grip on it.

Part of the problem seems to be that it does set off a very visceral reaction to even discuss this kind of stuff so it becomes very difficult to have sensible discussions for any length of time.

Strange thought, if most of the cash on the drug war went towards a human trafficking war (Which surely, would almost universally be supported?) I wonder how much of a societal shift we'd see?