The ugly news behind the ugly news

posted on 7:33 AM | permalink

Nazi Porn

As if Nazism didn't have enough of a bad reputation. A new documentary examines booklets published in the 1960s (in Israel of all places) depicting pornography, rapes and killings at the hands of SS soldiers. The New York Times notes:

Mr. Libsker’s 60-minute documentary puts the Stalags under a spotlight for the first time and exposes some uncomfortable truths. One is that the Stalags were a distinctly Israeli genre, created by Israeli publishers and penned by Israeli authors, although they had masqueraded as translations from English and were written in the first person as if they were genuine memoirs.

When Political Correctness goes very badly

A homosexual couple, posing as model foster parents, were finally found to be sexually abusing the young males put in their care and producing child pornography videos to boot. As the investigative panel concluded:

Despite growing reservations by staff and complaints from the mother of two of the boys, the two men were treated by the authorities as "trophy carers" who, because of their status as homosexuals were regarded as beyond scrutiny. An independent investigative panel has found that officials of Wakefield Metropolitan District Council, controlled by the Labour Party, allowed "the fear of being discriminatory" to lead them to "fail to discriminate between the appropriate and the abusive."

Chalk one local win up for decency

Fairview Heights, Il voted to deny adult businesses in their community. Kudos.


"It's all in my defense"

A defense lawyer was accused of letting his client, an accused pedophile and child pornographer, spend too much time examining the evidence against him. In other words, the accused was ogling the porn he created that got his arrested. Ugly.


Speaking of ugly. How about some stats.

One software platform for family internet use put out some stats that should wake up any concerned parent:

* The average age when the children encounter pornography in the internet is 11.

* The age of the largest pornography consumer group in the internet is Between 12 to 17.

* 85% of children between the ages 6-16 encountered pornographic content intentionally or unintentionally (most of them while preparing their homework).

* 25% of children between ages 9-17 will freely disclose their home address in the internet.

* 60% of children who committed suicide, declared their intentions online directly or indirectly.

* One in five children who use the computer chat rooms has been approached over the internet by pedophiles.

* Only 25% of youth who received sexual solicitation told a parent.

Salary for appraising pornography: $300/hr

Laura Henkel spends her days living on a houseboat and appraising erotic art. Nice work if you can get it? But I really don't get it.

Henkel worked for 18 years as a legal secretary in Miami and San Francisco before changing careers and getting a doctorate in human sexuality at San Francisco's Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.

She is now leading an effort by the Exodus Trust, the institute's parent organization, to set up the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas by next January.

In other unspeakable news

A man faces extradition to the United States after filming the rape of his daughter. While we can all disagree on the effect of pornography we can at least agree what should happen to this guy.


Google Brazil: Help us fix it

In a first for Google, Sao Paulo authorities will be able to help monitor and capture illegal content on Orkut, Google's social networking platform.

Labels: erotic art, homosexuality, nazism, news, online pornography, rape, stats