I first learned about Sherri Papini, the 34-year-old California woman who went missing for 22 days in November, from a Today Show headline asking: "Was Sherri Papini kidnapping linked to sex trafficking?" In People magazine's December 9 issue, John Kelly, "a noted serial killer profiler," said Papini's abduction had all the hallmarks of human trafficking, with her mistreatment typical of the "shaming and degrading" of victims that traffickers deploy. Other wide-reaching media outlets—NBC News, ABC News, Us Weekly, the Sacramento Bee—have likewise floated the idea that the mysterious duo of Hispanic women Papini fingered may have been part of a sex-trafficking ring.
Yet there is almost nothing to support the idea that Papini's disappearance was related to sex or prostitution. The whole theory hinges on the fact that Papini was "branded," as her husband Keith initially put it. Police later confirmed that Sherri did have something burnt into her skin, specifying only that it was not a "symbol" but a "message." But even accepting the premise that sex-traffickers frequently "brand" their victims—a common claim also utterly lacking in evidence—Papini's burns could just as easily have been an act of torture or a way to relay a message to Papini, police, or the public. And the latter explanations certainly make more sense than the former when taken with the facts that nothing else about the abduction belied an intent to force Papini into commercial sex and, in fact, Papini's assailants eventually just let her go, according to what she told police.
#1
nothing else about the abduction belied an intent to force Papini into commercial sex... Papini's assailants eventually just let her go, according to what she told police.
The PizzaGate story, on the other hand, seems to have more legs than a centipede.
#3
She was found near the illicit marijuana harvesting fields in the hills of northern California, where ruthless men camp out to protect the lucrative weed. Women are sometimes forced to service the camps, as in Colombia with FARC. The brands usually are marks of gang/cartel ownership...I read of young trimmers trying to make a buck and being terrified after being repeatedly raped and fleeing for their lives. There is a dark underground that many cannot fathom exists.
Posted by: One Eyed Speaking for Boskone7919 ||
12/12/2016 10:47 Comments ||
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#4
Cops, judges and DAs just hate being lied to. It never ends well.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/12/2016 10:51 Comments ||
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#5
But.. but.. but.. the trafficking story SELLS!!!!
And that is all that counts in Journalism school these days.
I personally know someone that was killed on the mountain. There's a lot of money to be made trimming (however monotonous). But on the mountain, you cant F! up. These are multi million dollar operations. But on the other side of the coin, I know people who come home from the mountain with thirty grand cash in their pocket for three months of work. There's definitely an underground, but how dark it is is open for debate.
[Unz Review] The bombings that killed 38 people and injured 155 after a football match in Istanbul is the latest episode to underline Turkey’s violent instability. Government officials blame the attack on the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), with which the Turkish state has been fighting a guerrilla war since 1984. But only a week ago the spokesman of Isis called on its followers to target "the security, military, economic and media establishment" in Turkey.
The fact that either an offshoot of the PKK or Isis could have carried out the football stadium bombings is a measure of the trouble Turkey is now in. The credibility of the government’s initial attribution of responsibility to the PKK is undermined by its past tendency to claim that that the Kurds are behind any terrorist atrocity, regardless of the evidence. The biggest terrorist attacks in Turkey in recent months ‐ 47 killed at Istanbul International Airport in June and 57 dead at a Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep in August ‐ were both carried out by Isis.
The bombings will no doubt be used by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to justify his proposed assumption of more power under a new bill just submitted to the Turkish parliament. In practice, Erdogan already wields dictatorial powers and Turkey’s shift towards becoming an authoritarian state using arbitrary powers is well under way. The last remnants of the free media are being closed down and journalists are being arrested under the guise of pursuing those responsible for the failed military coup on 15 July. Even before this purge, Kurdish population centres in the south east had been shelled and bulldozed into heaps of rubble.
Erdogan has responded to the Istanbul bombings by swearing to eradicate those responsible, but it was he himself who created the conditions under which terrorism has become a permanent feature of Turkish life. He chose confrontation with the Kurds last year in order to boost his nationalist support at the polls, while the rise of Isis in Syria since 2011 would not have been possible without Turkey’s tolerance of extreme jihadis. For a long time Isis had free passage across the Turkish-Syrian border and al-Qaeda clones, not much different from Isis, received copious supplies of arms and ammunition.
Posted by: Besoeker ||
12/12/2016 06:43 ||
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#1
Turkey also has ground forces in both Syria and Iraq.
Not conducive to friendship
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/12/2016 9:52 Comments ||
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h/t Instapundit
When it comes to faithless electors, I wrote the book--literally.
Okay, it was a novel, and a satirical one at that. But I did immerse myself in the law, and the lore, of the Electoral College, and the potential for "faithless" (or rebellious or courageous) electors to throw the whole process of picking a president into a cocked hat. (The novel, The People’s Choice, is available at fine church basements and rummage sales, or here.)
It’s from this perspective that I’m watching the various efforts to deprive Donald Trump of his majority when the electors meet in their respective states this week.
...It’s all a shadow play--entertaining, provocative, but bearing no relation to current political reality.
...In theory, Trump would offer the perfect case for rebellion.
But when theory meets reality, the prospects dim to invisibility. To begin with, Trump’s electoral majority is simply too big. Think back to 2000, when George W. Bush emerged from the post-election battle with 271 electoral votes. Had only three of his electors defected to Gore--on the ground, say that Gore had won half a million votes more than Bush, he would have had the majority (at least temporarily; more on that in a moment). Not a single Bush elector bolted; including those unbound by any state law forcing them to stay with their pledged candidate. The prospect of persuading 37 Trump electors to rebel is all but non-existent.
But let’s assume it happened (Maybe Trump could say or do something in the days before December 19th that would prove beyond the pale, though what he’s said and done this last year and a half makes that idea shaky.) Let’s say when the usually ceremonial battling is over, 40 Trump electors have bolted.
Then what?
Those votes would have to be validated by the appropriate state official, usually the secretary of state (No, not John Kerry, the 50 officials across the country). If these electors were bound by state law to vote for their pledged candidate, that official might well refuse to count that vote; court battles would follow, but it’s by no means clear that such votes would be certified and sent on to Washington.
Meanwhile, the legislatures in states where electors defected might weigh in. It’s hard to believe, but under the Constitution, state legislatures have all but total power over how electors are chosen. They are under no legal obligation to let voters have any say at all; they could designate the Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner to pick them; or, they could make the choice themselves. (That’s what the Florida legislature threatened to do back in 2000 when the Gore-Bush recount fights dragged on). So should an elector, or two, or six from a state bolt, there’s a good legal case to be made that the state’s legislature could say "no way!" and choose their own slate.
Assume, though, that this doesn’t happen, and that somehow defecting votes are sent to Washington. There’s still the pesky matter of the United States Congress--the final arbiter of these votes.
#1
Maybe because they don't teach and thus do not really understand that its the United States of America, not the Peoples Democratic Republic of America. 37 states are not going to surrender to 20 major metro areas anything short of a civil war.
[The Hill] Russia interfered in the U.S. elections to get revenge against Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. ambassador to the Kremlin said Sunday.
Michael McFaul, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, said he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help Donald Trump win the presidency to hurt Clinton.
"Let's remember that Vladimir Putin thinks [Clinton] interfered in his election -- the parliamentary election in December 2011 -- and has said as much publicly, and I've heard him talk about it privately," McFaul said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
The New York Times reported last week that American intelligence agencies concluded that Russia acted covertly to harm Clinton's campaign and promote Trump.
#3
"McFaul, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, said he thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help Donald Trump win the presidency to hurt Clinton." And I think the Golden State Warriors threw the championship.
#4
That Putin thinks HRC screwed with him in his 2011 election would be sufficient motivation to give her some problems.
I believe that no matter who HRC ran against in the "finals," the Pub or Indy candidate would have benefited from Mr. Putin's pique. Is that "help?" Yeah, I guess so, but serendipitously.
Why no talk about the "home-brew" server and what may have been gleaned from it? And how?
#6
Lessee. Obumble didn't even try to hide his efforts to meddle in Israel's elections. So, good for thee, but not for me, which is, after all a core dem operating principle. If swil really did use her position as Secretary of State to fiddle with Putin's election, that'd be "reap what you sow, baby..."
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/12/2016 10:47 Comments ||
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#7
Heh. Maybe it was Bibi after all. Wouldn't that be fitting.
#8
Former ambassador to Russia: Putin wanted 'revenge' against Clinton
Except, he didn't have to wait in line given how inept she was in handling important materials. As another poster mentioned the other day, she took the safeties off the torpedo.
h/t Instapundit
A few years ago, Mark Steyn sagely observed, "In America today, few activities are as profitable as a ’nonprofit.’" Nothing warrants changing that assessment now. President-elect Trump has a lot on his plate if he plans to turn around the ship of state. But if it’s not too presumptuous, I’d like to add one more item to his agenda: a substantial rewrite of the laws respecting our tax-exempt sector, reining in private foundations.
#2
Sadly, we live in times when the first thing someone thinks of for "work" is to get to a place where they can use the power of the state to force other people to give them money - instead of doing something valuable that they will purchase voluntarily.
Rent-seeker nation.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
12/12/2016 8:04 Comments ||
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#3
And take down the NFL for Gods sake.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
12/12/2016 8:59 Comments ||
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#4
Many of these so-called humanitarian organizations exist to further a left-wing political agenda or to line the pockets of out-of-office politicos. So yeah, reform would be good.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
