We lost the battle for the democrat party's soul long ago

[defixione]

It was a huge problem before "open borders." The right has a movie specifically made for them, it gets panned by two art critics. They criticized art, not the subject, and the right exhales accusations that the left supports pedophilia? What a stretch.

[jfish26]

Leftists used to try to hide child trafficking and pedophilia. Now they are getting louder and louder about defending jt

Objective, specific, factual examples please? Or is it just more crayon drawings?

[jfish26]

It was a huge problem before "open borders." The right has a movie specifically made for them, it gets panned by two art critics. They criticized art, not the subject, and the right exhales accusations that the left supports pedophilia? What a stretch.

“Open borders” is one of those far right conjuring phrases, very useful because (like voter fraud, for example) you can blame almost anything on it. The far right loves things like this, that are fundamentally unsolvable to 100% (and require proving negatives to rebut). Endless grist for the mill; fuel for the perpetual outrage machine.

[randylahey]

It was a huge problem before "open borders." The right has a movie specifically made for them, it gets panned by two art critics. They criticized art, not the subject, and the right exhales accusations that the left supports pedophilia? What a stretch.

I think the movie was just made for anyone who wanted to watch it. It was not a left/right thing


But for some reason, the left is attacking it. Apparently people are not allowed to speak out against child sex trafficking/pedophilia according to the modern left, and they are trying to lump it in as another right wing thing

Scary road we are heading down. Disgusting

[randylahey]

It was a huge problem before "open borders." The right has a movie specifically made for them, it gets panned by two art critics. They criticized art, not the subject, and the right exhales accusations that the left supports pedophilia? What a stretch.

What's the point of criticizing art? I don't recall the left doing that ever really. But suddenly when "the art" is a movie bringing awareness to child sex trafficking, its had hands on deck and the left is outraged

[Shirley]

Has it occurred to anyone that Randy is a bot?

(The lack of an ability to reason is the tell.)

[Sparko]

Has it occurred to anyone that Randy is a bot?

(The lack of an ability to reason is the tell.)

On this board, he repeats bot-driven memes for sure.

[jfish26]

It was a huge problem before "open borders." The right has a movie specifically made for them, it gets panned by two art critics. They criticized art, not the subject, and the right exhales accusations that the left supports pedophilia? What a stretch.

What's the point of criticizing art? I don't recall the left doing that ever really. But suddenly when "the art" is a movie bringing awareness to child sex trafficking, its had hands on deck and the left is outraged

Isn’t all that’s happening - again - is that reasonable people are pointing out yet another rube grift? And that the grifted (you) are being manipulated into decrying this callout as cancel culture?

[randylahey]

Has it occurred to anyone that Randy is a bot?

(The lack of an ability to reason is the tell.)

Randy: says child trafficking/pedophilia is a problem that some of the world's elite are involved in, and wonders why people are objecting to bringing awareness to it

Feral: accuses him of being a bot

What in the actual fuck

[randylahey]

It was a huge problem before "open borders." The right has a movie specifically made for them, it gets panned by two art critics. They criticized art, not the subject, and the right exhales accusations that the left supports pedophilia? What a stretch.

What's the point of criticizing art? I don't recall the left doing that ever really. But suddenly when "the art" is a movie bringing awareness to child sex trafficking, its had hands on deck and the left is outraged

Isn’t all that’s happening - again - is that reasonable people are pointing out yet another rube grift? And that the grifted (you) are being manipulated into decrying this callout as cancel culture?

Or is it just a movie??

That the same little group of you lefties are for some unknown reason trying to turn into a political pissing match. Because for some reason the side you associate with seems to want to bury this issue instead of bring awareness to it

[jfish26]

What's the point of criticizing art? I don't recall the left doing that ever really. But suddenly when "the art" is a movie bringing awareness to child sex trafficking, its had hands on deck and the left is outraged

Isn’t all that’s happening - again - is that reasonable people are pointing out yet another rube grift? And that the grifted (you) are being manipulated into decrying this callout as cancel culture?

Or is it just a movie??

That the same little group of you lefties are for some unknown reason trying to turn into a political pissing match. Because for some reason the side you associate with seems to want to bury this issue instead of bring awareness to it

If it's "just a movie," what are your panties so twisted over? Unless I've missed something, I think the very first time this movie was brought up here, was YOU posting a tweet throwing a fit over other people's reactions to this movie?

[Shirley]

Has it occurred to anyone that Randy is a bot?

(The lack of an ability to reason is the tell.)

Randy: says child trafficking/pedophilia is a problem that some of the world's elite are involved in, and wonders why people are objecting to bringing awareness to it

Feral: accuses him of being a bot

What in the actual fuck

Wow, you're right: "Mar-a-Lago...Epstein...Hillary...Hunter..."

I take it all back...

[defixione]

It was a huge problem before "open borders." The right has a movie specifically made for them, it gets panned by two art critics. They criticized art, not the subject, and the right exhales accusations that the left supports pedophilia? What a stretch.

What's the point of criticizing art? I don't recall the left doing that ever really. But suddenly when "the art" is a movie bringing awareness to child sex trafficking, its had hands on deck and the left is outraged

This is all I need to know about you and your responses on this board.

[JKLivin]

It was a huge problem before "open borders." The right has a movie specifically made for them, it gets panned by two art critics. They criticized art, not the subject, and the right exhales accusations that the left supports pedophilia? What a stretch.

“Open borders” is one of those far right conjuring phrases, very useful because (like voter fraud, for example) you can blame almost anything on it. The far right loves things like this, that are fundamentally unsolvable to 100% (and require proving negatives to rebut). Endless grist for the mill; fuel for the perpetual outrage machine.

I listened to Jordan Peterson’s podcast where he interviewed the guy that the movie is based on. The statistics and the stories were mind-blowing, and it all funnels through our barely-managed border. It’s not fundamentally unsolvable, but it will hurt big business that likes an endless supply of cheap labor and it will hurt Dems, who want an endless supply of future voters. It’s long past time to put the interests of everyday Americans first.

[JKLivin]

Has it occurred to anyone that Randy is a bot?

(The lack of an ability to reason is the tell.)

Randy: says child trafficking/pedophilia is a problem that some of the world's elite are involved in, and wonders why people are objecting to bringing awareness to it

Feral: accuses him of being a bot

What in the actual fuck

Wow, you're right: "Mar-a-Lago...Epstein...Hillary...Hunter..."

I take it all back...

There have been pedophile rings running through Nebraska since the mid-1980’s.

[Shirley]

Not from Nebraska, but yet another example of Randy's "child trafficking/pedophilia...problem that some of the world's elite are involved in"?

[jfish26]

It was a huge problem before "open borders." The right has a movie specifically made for them, it gets panned by two art critics. They criticized art, not the subject, and the right exhales accusations that the left supports pedophilia? What a stretch.

“Open borders” is one of those far right conjuring phrases, very useful because (like voter fraud, for example) you can blame almost anything on it. The far right loves things like this, that are fundamentally unsolvable to 100% (and require proving negatives to rebut). Endless grist for the mill; fuel for the perpetual outrage machine.

I listened to Jordan Peterson’s podcast where he interviewed the guy that the movie is based on. The statistics and the stories were mind-blowing, and it all funnels through our barely-managed border. It’s not fundamentally unsolvable, but it will hurt big business that likes an endless supply of cheap labor and it will hurt Dems, who want an endless supply of future voters. It’s long past time to put the interests of everyday Americans first.

Even setting aside the sampler platter of xenophobia and disinformation, the leaps here are nuts.

Please note that the analysis below was undertaken during Trump's presidency. When his own administration ran State and Justice.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... ng-claims/

In his State of the Union address, the president referred to “thousands of young girls and women” being smuggled between ports of entry.

It’s unclear where Trump got that statistic — the White House did not respond to a request for comment — but he appears to have picked it up from a conversation with Tim Ballard, chief executive of the anti-trafficking group Operation Underground Railroad, during a White House event on human trafficking on Feb. 1. In an opinion column Feb. 4 for the Deseret News, Ballard wrote that “the State Department reports that around 10,000 children are smuggled into the U.S. annually and forced into the commercial sex trade.”

Ballard did not respond to a request for his source. The State Department has no records that would validate this claim.

“We have attempted to identify any State Department report that references that statistic, but have found none,” said a State Department spokesperson. “As a result, we cannot verify its origin.”

The Justice Department, however, said that in fiscal 2017, “the FBI identified nearly 450 victims of domestic minor sex trafficking and adult domestic and foreign national victims of sex and labor trafficking.” It’s unclear how many were from Central America, but clearly it’s less than “thousands.”

The State Department’s 2018 report on human trafficking also reports that grantees funded by DOJ between July 2016 and June 2017 reported 4,349 new clients for victims of child sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. But the report said only 34 percent were foreign nationals and one quarter were victims of labor trafficking. So again, it falls well short of “thousands” and certainly 10,000 being smuggled in for the sex trade.

More likely than not, those foreign nationals came through legal ports of entry. Data collected by the United Nations’ International Organization on Migration, analyzing 10 years of information on more than 90,000 victims, has found that 79 percent of international trafficking journeys “go through official border points, such as airports and land border control points.” The IOM said that “about a third of official border points are crossed by bus, another third by train, and 20 percent by plane.”

But the IOM also said that cases involved in sexual exploitation were more likely to travel through unofficial routes: “Sexual exploitation makes up 15 percent of official border crossings and 22 percent of nonofficial border crossings.” Children, especially those under 10, were also more likely to travel through unofficial entry points: "Out of all the children in the sample, nonofficial border points are used in 44 percent of cases, against 20 percent for adults.”

The anti-trafficking group Polaris has contributed to the IOM project. Brandon Bouchard, a spokesman for the group, said between 2015 and the middle of 2018, the group’s tips about human trafficking were basically split between U.S. citizens and foreign nationals. Of foreign nationals, the most frequently reported were Mexico (over 1,500 victims), Philippines (over 460 victims), Guatemala (over 380 victims), China (over 370 victims) and Honduras (over 290 victims).

(The U.S. government issues T visas to victims of trafficking. The Fact Checker was not able to obtain a breakdown of such visas by nationality, but a Jan. 18 notice in the Federal Register said that from fiscal 2014 through 2016, 40 percent of T-derivative visas, for family members, were issued by the U.S. Embassy in Manila. In 2017, there were 1,141 T-visa applications received from alleged victims and 672 approved, according to government data.)


But the main problem is labor trafficking, not sex trafficking. “For foreign nationals: 58.9 percent were labor trafficking victims, 6 percent were sex and labor trafficking victims, 28.3 percent were sex trafficking victims, and 6.9 percent the trafficking situation couldn’t be categorized based on the info provided,” Bouchard said.

“We know that the vast majority of victims who cross a border and are then trafficked in the United States arrive here through ports of entry and other legal means,” said Bradley Myles, chief executive of Polaris, in a Feb. 1 statement arguing a wall would not be effective in preventing human trafficking. “Many fly here and travel through U.S. airports.”

The Pinocchio Test

On just about every level, the president’s rhetoric on human trafficking far exceeds the available data, either from within the government or from outside sources. He earns Four Pinocchios.

You're chomping down fruit from the same poisoned (and clearly poisonous) tree.

[JKLivin]

I guess my question would be what motive Ballard would have for fabricating these things. He gave up a stable, high-paying job with Homeland Security to do this dangerous and stressful job freelance. Not a lucrative undertaking by any stretch.

[jfish26]

I guess my question would be what motive Ballard would have for fabricating these things. He gave up a stable, high-paying job with Homeland Security to do this dangerous and stressful job freelance. Not a lucrative undertaking by any stretch.

Well.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-ent ... -caviezel/

“Sound of Freedom” is based on the life of Ballard, who left the Department of Homeland Security about 10 years ago and founded a group that works with local police to catch child sex traffickers in other countries — often by staging elaborate sting operations that it captures on video.

In the film, a brother and sister are lured to an innocuous-sounding photo shoot in Honduras, only to be snatched by abductors and imprisoned in the Colombian jungle. Caviezel’s version of Ballard spends much of the movie sneaking through criminal hideouts to find the children, risking his life and finally beating up the traffickers.

The real Ballard hasn’t claimed to do anything quite like that, but the film ends with a montage of clips from sting operations his group, Operation Underground Railroad, actually conducted in the country.

[...]

A Vice News investigation in 2020 found no clear falsehoods in Operation Underground Railroad’s rescue claims, but “a pattern of image-burnishing and mythology-building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading.”

“The entire premise of its operations: that local law enforcement will take over when the dirty work has been done is dangerously naive,” the prominent human trafficking scholar Anne Gallagher wrote for HuffPost in 2015. “Why are police in Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Colombia not arresting child sex traffickers if they are so easy to find? The simplest explanation is law enforcement complicity in such crimes.”

As for answering your question - I would guess that the answer is complex, and involves (among other things) genuine concern, along with profit-, fame- and adventure-seeking.

None of which, of course, are bad things in and of themselves.

But a responsible person should be aware of where the profit and fame come from. And in this case, it's fairly clearly from rubes, eager to swallow the exaggerations and mythmaking uncritically (and then run the cancel culture rebop to get internet-mad at anyone who challenges these things as being something less than objective fact).

[randylahey]

It was a huge problem before "open borders." The right has a movie specifically made for them, it gets panned by two art critics. They criticized art, not the subject, and the right exhales accusations that the left supports pedophilia? What a stretch.

What's the point of criticizing art? I don't recall the left doing that ever really. But suddenly when "the art" is a movie bringing awareness to child sex trafficking, its had hands on deck and the left is outraged

This is all I need to know about you and your responses on this board.

Dumb post. Answer the question. You are scared to address the subject matter. Why does the left, the "party of tolerance",
Want to "criticize art" of a movie bringing awareness to child sex trafficking. Where was the criticism of anything else