Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt gives remarks on Operation United Front, a joint state and federal anti-human trafficking operation, in a video uploaded to YouTube on Friday, Aug. 27, 2021. | Screenshot: YouTube/Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt
A major human trafficking law enforcement operation has resulted in the rescue of 47 people who were trafficked and the arrest of 102 individuals across 12 states. Two of the victims rescued are minors.
Known as “Operation United Front,” the endeavor was led by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office and the Missouri State Highway Patrol and included the participation of law enforcers from the federal government and other states. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said in a statement released last Friday that his office’s anti-human trafficking task force is “a national leader for our efforts to investigate and eradicate human trafficking in Missouri.”
“Through that task force, we were able to engage law enforcement agencies and attorneys general from across the country to organize and lead Operation United Front, which was a massive success,” stated Schmitt.
“Operation United Front was an unprecedented human trafficking operation that brought together law enforcement agencies from different jurisdictions – something that rarely happens. When we all come together, we can affect change and more effectively fight human trafficking, a crime that is often multi-jurisdictional in nature.”
In addition to Missouri, Operation United Front also involved arrests and rescues in Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. In South Dakota, nine individuals were arrested for alleged involvement in human trafficking while attending the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, according to a statement from the United States Department of Justice earlier this month.
Eight of the nine men arrested at Sturgis face charges of attempting to entice a minor using the internet. One is facing charges of attempted commercial sex trafficking of a minor.
If found guilty for attempted enticement of a minor via the Internet, the penalty can include 10 years to life in prison. If found guilty of attempted commercial sex trafficking of a minor, the penalty can include 15 years to life in prison and a $250,000 fine.
In recent years, there has been a concerted effort among states and the federal government to crackdown on human trafficking in the United States.
In March, Texas authorities arrested around 30 people attempting to buy sex and rescued a minor over the course of three days as part of “Operation Cupid.”
“Operation Cupid aimed to combat human trafficking in Fort Bend County by identifying and arresting those intending to buy sex,” stated Assistant District Attorney Craig Priesmeyer, according to the Fort Bend Herald.
“Commonly known as ‘johns,’ they create the demand for human trafficking and contribute to the pervasive problem the community faces from these crimes. We are focused on saving victims by following basic economics; removing the demand will reduce the supply.”
In Arizona in February, police arrested 37 people charged with child sex crimes and human trafficking as part of the multi-agency “Operation Broken Hearts.”
In January, 33 missing children were rescued as part of “Operation Lost Angels” in California. The effort was led by the FBI in conjunction with over two dozen law enforcement and non-governmental partners.
Last November, the Tallahassee Police Department in Florida announced that over 170 people were charged in a two-year investigation into a sex trafficking network in the state.
The Texas Supreme Court has ruled against Facebook as the social media giant tries to use a controversial federal law to dodge liability for its platform being used by human traffickers to recruit victims. The ruling allows three survivors of human trafficking who want to sue Facebook to move forward with their cases, according to Forbes. Facebook had argued it was not responsible for what its users say under Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act.
Section 230 has become a controversial piece of law, with critics saying it gives social media companies too much power. Forbes reported that in 2018, Congress carved out exceptions to Section 230 so that lawsuits could be brought against companies that violate human trafficking laws. In his opinion, Justice Jimmy Blacklock noted those limits.
“We do not understand section 230 to ‘create a lawless no-man’s-land on the Internet’ in which states are powerless to impose liability on websites that knowingly or intentionally participate in the evil of online human trafficking,” he wrote.
“Holding internet platforms accountable for the words or actions of their users is one thing. … Holding internet platforms accountable for their own misdeeds is quite another thing. This is particularly the case for human trafficking.”
“Section 230, as amended, does not withdraw from the states the authority to protect their citizens from internet companies whose own actions — as opposed to those of their users — amount to knowing or intentional participation in human trafficking,” the ruling said.
The case involved three women who, according to the ruling, “allege they were victims of sex trafficking who became entangled with their abusers through Facebook.” One was 15 years old when she was befriended by a Facebook user who told her he would help her pursue a modeling career.
“Shortly after meeting him, Plaintiff was photographed and her pictures posted to the website Backpage (which has since been shut down due to its role in human trafficking), advertising her for prostitution. As a result, Plaintiff was ‘raped, beaten, and forced into further sex trafficking,’” the ruling said.
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Advocates and survivors speak during a virtual congressional briefing on Pornhub hosted by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation on April 8, 2021. | YouTube/National Center on Sexual Exploitation
A coalition of advocates and sex trafficking survivors have detailed to U.S. Congress the myriad ways one of the world’s largest pornography sites has concealed the sexual abuse of children for over a decade and has “built an empire” off criminal copyright violations.
Lawyer: Pornhub ‘built its empire on criminal copyright violations’
In a congressional briefing that took place last Thursday hosted by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, the advocates continued scrutiny that Pornhub has come under in recent months as it has already faced questioning from lawmakers in Canada. MindGeek, the parent company of Pornhub and other popular porn websites, has faced mounting accusations that its companies have hosted child sex abuse videos and other non-consensually recorded content, including videos of rape and sex trafficking.
“MindGeek’s empire of exploitation is built on the monetization of sexual abuse and exploitation of children,” said sex trafficking survivor Brook Bello of the Sarasota, Florida-based More Too Life. She called for it and Pornhub to be shut down.
The heightened pressure on Pornhub has intensified since early 2020 as more survivors have come forward with their stories of exploitation, and a petition was launched that garnered over 2.2 million signatures calling for the website to be shut down because of its links to trafficking. The petition came as The New York Times published an article by columnist Nicholas Kristof titled “The Children of Pornhub” in December.
A Pornhub survivor named Serena, whom Kristof interviewed for his article, shared Thursday that the man who exploited her also uploaded a video of her to Pornhub. And when she contacted the website pretending to be her mother to demand the company take the video down since she was only 14, Pornhub took weeks to respond. The video was taken down only to reappear there days later, Serena detailed.
“I’d have to do this over and over and over again,” she said, noting that she would tell the company that the videos were during a dark time in her life, and she was a minor when it was filmed. She explained how Pornhub made her go through many steps to prove her identity and said the company made her send photos of herself with an ID card next to her face. She said the video set her on a destructive path of dropping out of school, drug use and becoming homeless. She wound up with an older guy who convinced her that since she already had an online presence, there was nothing wrong with making money in the same way.
“It wasn’t something that a 14-year-old should have had to deal with, let alone continue to deal with all the way up until I’m 20 now. And just after the [Kristof] article, that’s when Pornhub started deleting all of their videos. And I haven’t seen a video of myself up there again,” she said.
Offering a legal perspective, Serena’s attorney, Michael Bowe, shared during the briefing that her story is indicative of what has happened to thousands upon thousands of women. In the span of just one year of investigation, the attorney has spoken to and investigated over 100 stories that sound very similar to Serena’s plight, he said.
“And the impact … doesn’t end with the assault or the posting [of videos on the site]. It takes life away from women, and it derails their life,” Bowe told congressional staffers, emphasizing that lawmakers need to understand that the porn industry is not occupied by responsible corporate actors.
“This is not Apple. This is not IBM. It’s not Microsoft. This is an industry which, for various reasons, grew up in illegality. The most obvious and mundane illegality is that the entire industry, this online porn industry, particularly Pornhub and MindGeek, the mack daddy of them all, built its empire on criminal copyright violations.”
“They basically stole millions and millions of legitimate adult entertainment videos, put them up there, all of which was criminal,” he added. “And they made a fortune, between $500 million and $1 billion a year.”
The companies knew that child sexual abuse content, trafficking and rape videos were on the sites and they did not care, he said. The attorney argued that their carelessness reflects the entire industry that is inherently rogue and can’t be trusted to self-police.
Current federal legislation on the books in the U.S. is dated and from the pre-internet era, Bowe added. He asserted that Pornhub and MindGeek do not believe that existing laws apply to them.
“What needs to happen is the statutes need to be updated so that there is no loophole and no ambiguity. … There needs to be a clear obligation that they ensure that the content that’s on their site is consensual and of age,” he stressed.
Laila Mickelwait of the group Exodus Cry, who launched the petition to shut down Pornhub last year, highlighted six areas of criminal content on the website: sex trafficking, child sex abuse material, rape, incapacitated sexual assault, “revenge porn” and hidden-camera/spycam abuse.
“Videos on Pornhub have obvious indicators of illegality, of criminal sexual abuse,” Mickelwait explained, noting that some videos contain tags such as “middle schooler” and “young teen.”
Content moderators who have come forward said that Pornhub could flag illegal content and disturbing comments. But what the site did instead was hide and censor the troubling signs, Mickelwait said.
“They have spent over a decade concealing the sexual abuse of children on their site, making zero reports to relevant authorities and child protection agencies,” she added.
Since December, five lawsuits have been filed against Pornhub on behalf of trafficked women and minors, while calls for criminal investigations have occurred in both the U.S. and Canada.
“The evidence of crime is overwhelming,” Mickelwait said at the close of the briefing.
She stressed that three things need to happen: a formal government hearing in the U.S. as Canada has done, the passing of preventative laws to respond in a regulatory fashion to the evasive porn industry and a criminal investigation and prosecution by the Department of Justice of MindGeek and Pornhub.
“A slap on the wrist for MindGeek is a slap in the face for the countless survivors who have had their lives completely destroyed by this predatory company,” Mickelwait concluded.
Terry Forliti of Breaking Free in Minnesota, also a survivor, emphasized that extensive movement occurs between several fronts of the commercial sex trade. Women are recruited into pornography from stripping or prostitution, trafficking victims are videotaped and the material is posted on pornography sites that they have no control over. People who are recruited into adult films are then pressured to escort, she explained.
“The commercial sex trade tries to create false borders between the legal industries like stripping and illegal crimes like sex trafficking,” Forliti said. “These lines are more blurred and coercion is deeply embedded in all forms of the sex trade.”
She continued: “the physical and psychological harms of being exploited on a platform such as PornHub is similar whether you’ve been in the life, or you were passed out and somebody uploads a video of your sexual abuse.”
“In both cases, you lose control of intimate images, and it’s a massive violation of your privacy,” Forliti said. “And this has a long-term impact on your sense of security, ability to form long-term relationships and can lead to other addictions and coping mechanisms.”
Online sexual abuse is becoming increasingly common, she believes, because there is no legal check on such abuse.
Author and researcher Christine Stark was trafficked as a child in the 1970s and 1980s in an organized sex trafficking and porn ring. Because victims have no control over the use of the images that are widely distributed, they have no closure from the abuse they endured.
“I’ve lived my entire life dealing with the harms of being tortured and also knowing that those images are being used over and over and over again,” Stark stated. “It’s like being used all the time for the rest of your life, psychologically, knowing that that is going on.”
During a human trafficking investigation in California, called “Operation Lost Angels,” the FBI recovered 33 missing children, eight of whom had been sexually exploited,the agency said.
For the operation, which began Jan. 11, the FBI worked with more than two dozen law enforcement and non-governmental partners “to identify, locate, and recover missing children, particularly those who have been or were suspected of being sexually exploited and/or trafficked.”
Of the underage victims recovered, eight were being sexually exploited at the time of recovery, the agency said in a statement, as part of Human Trafficking Awareness Month.
“Two were recovered multiple times during the operation while on the ‘track,’ a common term used to describe a known location for commercial sex trafficking. It is not uncommon for victims who are rescued to return to commercial sex trafficking either voluntarily or by force, fraud, or coercion,” it said.
“The FBI considers human trafficking modern day slavery and the minors engaged in commercial sex trafficking are considered victims,” said Assistant FBI Director Kristi K. Johnson.
As part of the operation, a suspected human trafficker was arrested on state charges and multiple investigations were launched.
In the 2020 Report on U.S. Government Efforts to Combat Trafficking in Persons, the State Department warned about “the increasing number of people vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers due to the instability, isolation, and lack of access to critical services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“The effects of COVID-19, as with other catastrophic events, are disproportionately impacting communities suffering from systemic or generational inequality – the same communities traffickers often prey upon,” the report said.
The FBI also revealed that its caseload for trafficking-related crimes, for both sex and labor, had increased significantly in the past several years. Last year, the agency started 664 human trafficking investigations across the country, arresting 473 people. As of last November, there were more than 1,800 pending trafficking investigations, including those involving minors exploited through commercial sex trafficking, the FBI said.
The Tallahassee Police Department, Florida, announced last November that more than 170 people were charged as part of a two-year investigation uncovering a sex trafficking network in the state.
“Operation Stolen Innocence,” a secretive probe into the commercial trafficking of a teenaged girl, began in November 2018 when police investigators saw images of a child being posted on a website advertising sex for money.
Last October, the U.S. Marshals rescued 27 missing children in Virginia as part of nationwide operations to save exploited children. The Department of Justice announced at the time that the five-day law enforcement effort, called “Operation Find Our Children,” took place throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday the opening of its new Center for Countering Human Trafficking based in Washington, D.C., which has been operational since last month and is led by officials from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf tweeted, “Proud to announce the opening of the DHS Center for Countering Human Trafficking. One of the many steps the Trump administration has taken to combat and dismantle all forms of human trafficking.”
“Human trafficking is modern day slavery. There is no other way to say it. The words are strong because the actions are evil. The forms of exploitation, sex trafficking, forced labor, and domestic servitude that constitute human trafficking are antithetical in every way to the principles of human dignity that Americans hold dear. The launch of this Center for Countering Human Trafficking represents the investment of resources, attention, and time by President Trump to combat and dismantle all forms of human trafficking.”
The announcement stated that “The Center will build on the agency’s ‘victims first’ approach, which balances victim identification, rescue and support with prevention, investigation, and prosecution of traffickers. ICE HSI is uniquely positioned to utilize criminal, immigration, and trade-based authorities to proactively identify, disrupt and dismantle cross-border human trafficking organizations.”
The agency noted that in fiscal year 2019 alone, “ICE initiated 1,024 human trafficking and forced labor related cases which led to 2,197 criminal arrests. These effective actions resulted in nearly 700 convictions and the rescue of more than 400 victims.”
Some conservatives voiced frustrations over a lack of media attention for the center’s launch.
Donald Trump Jr. shared a post purportedly showing that members of the media had no questions during a briefing on the center’s launch.
“This is a disgrace,” Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son, tweeted. “@realDonaldTrump is the first American Politician to address the scourge of human trafficking and fund it and no one has any interest in covering it. I guess they’re too busy running cover for Hollywood.”
While this may sound like hyperbole, some of the rhetoric coming from the left does have elements of clinical insanity. The insistence on the part of prominent Democrats that President Donald Trump colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election despite having been cleared of this charge certainly qualifies. Claims that restrictions on abortion being considered in some states will kill black women (an abject fallacy in itself) whilst ignoring the black babies being killed by abortion in the absence of such measures also qualifies.
Today, these “institutions” are practically commonplace, and they’ve become so largely because those who considered them ridiculous remained silent rather than being labeled as bigots.
The most recent incarnation of the left’s efforts to promote sexual ambivalence has to do with the nature of gender itself. Not only does a segment of the tiny but extremely vocal LGBTQ lobby advocate for biological males and females being able to “choose” a preferred gender with which to identify, this bunch also contends that there are multitudes of genders, perhaps even hundreds.
Who knew?
I remember quite well during the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s, when the political left was pushing sexual permissiveness with all the urgency of avoiding the next planetary extinction-level event, catty, mincing liberals accused those who resisted going along with the program of being prudes. As far as they were concerned, a prude was just as bad as a segregationist – and if you ran afoul of their budding doctrine, they certainly let you know it.
Also during this period, court cases and discussions in the public square arose with regard to how these “new sensibilities” would be represented in media and education. Oh, the controversy over sex ed in schools! Many will recall the liberal argument that sexual function and reproduction were “only knowledge,” and that keeping this valuable knowledge from our youth was simply wrong. Further, that argument added that an ignorance of sexuality and reproduction would lead to young people getting into trouble should they become sexually active.
There was a great deal of concern about sexuality being represented in films and TV, and particularly its effect on children, as well as concern over the proliferation of pornography and its effects on society at large.
In November of 1968, the first voluntary Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) film rating system took effect, not so much because the public was concerned about sexual content in movies, but because the MPAA brass deemed the Hays code (in place since 1930) archaic. Movie makers had been increasingly pushing the envelope in this area anyway; the new ratings code actually gave filmmakers more license to produce explicit material.
While millions of Americans possessing traditional values were alarmed at these emergent sensibilities, there was a certain congruity in the disposition of courts and regulatory agencies, which decided that if a segment of the population wished to expose themselves to smut, it was not the role of the Christian majority or those or secular folks who held to traditional values to dictate mores to them.
Unfortunately, like our Constitution itself, this has become a double-edged sword. Fast-forward 50 years and any child with a computer, tablet or smartphone can navigate to the most aberrant and disgusting pornographic fare ever conceived. American consumers are hard-pressed to find movie and TV offerings that do not aggressively promote leftist sexual orthodoxy, and even TV shows featuring comic book superheroes are peppered with gratuitous pro-LGBTQ messages.
As is occurring today, back in the ’60s and ’70s, the perceived “rights” of individuals to engage in sexually deviant behavior superseded any consideration of how propagating sexually deviant behavior might impact society at large.
Well, at this point, I think that the jury is in, and it’s apparent that we’ve pretty much screwed ourselves (pun intended).
An interesting perspective comes from Christine Caine, an Australian activist who has firsthand experience with sexual abuse and trauma. Caine founded A21, a global anti-trafficking organization that operates in 15 countries and aids in prosecuting sex traffickers and rescuing victims.
Now, one could claim that the increasing incidence of sex trafficking, especially that involving children, has nothing whatsoever to do with the phenomenon of an increasing sexual permissiveness in Western culture – but I think that most reading this will know better. Ms. Caine asserts that the proliferation of pornography and other sexually ambivalent materials has fueled human trafficking, and I tend to agree. We’re human beings, and, by our nature, the only ones who’ll find themselves immune to morally ambivalent materials of any kind are those who do not partake in them.
So, we have confirmation that the atmosphere of sexual permissiveness we’ve cultivated has severely compromised us culturally. Also, we can now see that the left (via the LGBTQ lobby) has no intention of exhibiting the same tolerance to people who hold traditional values as was shown them. Indeed, having been extended an olive branch, they continue to cry “oppression” amidst calls for traditional values to be relegated to criminal status.
So much for tolerance.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR/COMMENTATOR:
Erik Rush
Erik Rush is a New York-born columnist, author and speaker who writes sociopolitical commentary, and host of the FULL-CONTACT With Erik Rush LIVE! streaming radio show. He is also the Founder and Chief Editor of the Instigator News Network. In February of 2007, Erik was the first to break the story of Barack Obama’s ties to militant Chicago preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright on a national level. His book, “Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal ~ America’s Racial Obsession,” has been called “the definitive book on race politics in America.”
It’s a horrific issue that doesn’t get nearly enough coverage in U.S. mainstream media. Child sex trafficking is a booming black market business. Most parents can’t imagine it happening in their own backyard. While we know it’s a global issue, child sex trafficking is finally starting to become a mainstream topic in the U.S.
A film called “I Am Jane Doe,”released in February, highlights young girls between the ages of 13 and 15 years old who were picked up off the street and sold for sex online. The film takes aim at Backpage.com. But in reality, the issue of child sex trafficking is so much bigger than one website. And the appetite for child sex abuse goes all the way to the top.
This is Reality Check you won’t get anywhere else.
It’s a disheartening statistic: the child sex trafficking market is resulting in more than 1 million children abused around the world each year. So how has this market proliferated?
Tim Swarens, a columnist and editor for The Indianapolis Star, recently began publishing a series of articles about the child sex trade, a subject he’s reportedly investigated for more than a year. He explains that the child sex trade is like any other business trade, driven by supply and demand.
According to a study by the Center for Court Innovation from 2016, between 8,900 and 10,500 children ages 13 to 17 are being sold in the U.S. each year. Swarens writes, “The researchers found that the average age of victims is 15 and that each child is purchased on average 5.4 times a day.”
To determine a conservative estimate of the demand, Swarens “multiplied the lower number of victims (8,900) identified in the Center for Court Innovation study by the rate of daily exploitation per child (5.4), and then by an average of only one ‘work’ day per week (52). The result: Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.”
And while the supply side is what garners most media attention, the issue of demand doesn’t get nearly as much coverage.
Take the recent documentary “I Am Jane Doe,” a film about parents seeking justice for their young teenage girls being picked up and trafficked for sex right in their own communities.
Those parents took aim at the website Backpage.com for profiting off of its adult section, allegedly riddled with young girls being sold for sex. But even if Backpage.com is a platform for advertising and selling, a channel through which these transactions can take place, it’s just one of many online channels being used by pedophiles to buy children to abuse.
But is the problem the channels, or is it something deeper?
What’s missing from the discussion is the high demand perpetuating the child sex trade.
Swarens explains, “The critical need to reduce demand has gained far less attention and money. The result: Buyers continue to abuse children with near impunity.”
Now, in the film “I Am Jane Doe,” the people buying children to abuse are described to be white, married men with families who live in suburbia. A former pimp interviewed for the film, Homer King, says on camera that he sold girls to priests, lawyers and even politicians.
Swarens came to the same conclusion in his investigation. He writes: “This project began with a question: Who buys a 15-year-old child for sex? The answer: Many otherwise ordinary men. They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse.”
Who are some of these men buying children to abuse?
Remember Jared Fogle from the Subway sandwich commercials? He “admitted to charges of having child pornography and repeatedly having sex with minors,” according to NPR. Court documents show that one of the text messages Fogle sent to a 17-year-old he paid for sex, stated his preferences as quote: “The younger the girl, the better.”
And back in June 2008, billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was prosecuted and sentenced to 18 months in prison for paying for sex with girls as young as 14. He served only 13 of those months.
The appetite for underage sex goes all the way to the top—some most powerful people in the world.
The longest serving Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, who was second in line to the presidency from 1999 to 2007, admitted to sexually abusing boys while he was a high school wrestling coach. After making the admission in 2016, the judge who sentenced him 15 months in prison and two years of supervised release, called Hastert a “serial child molester.” He served only 13 months.
Now, let’s be clear: there’s no evidence that Hastert actually paid for sex. But the desire to abuse children is what fuels the global child sex trade, and demand is high.
Back in 2015, a special report aired on 60 Minutes Australia revealing that elected officials and elites in the UK were accused of buying and abusing children.
From powerful elites down to “otherwise ordinary men,” children are easily being bought and abused… around in the world.
Posing as a buyer, former special agent for the Department of Homeland Security Timothy Ballard has been setting up undercover sting operations through his nonprofit Operation Underground Railroad since 2013.
Working in conjunction with governments all around the world, Operation Underground Railroad has so far busted 443 child sex traffickers and saved more than 1,000 victims. Here are just some of their 2017 operations.
Operation Sainte Jou: Port-au-Prince, Haiti – 32 rescued, 9 arrested
Operation Grand Via: Mexico – 25 rescued, 5 arrested
Operation NN9: Washington State, USA – 17 rescued, 21 arrested
So what you need to know is that the battle to dismantle the global child sex trade is a massive and almost overwhelming undertaking.
Yet mainstream media does not treat it that way. Networks like CNN will give at least 40 days of daily coverage to stories like the missing Flight 370 in 2014. But in those 40 days, using Swarens’s math, about 250,000 children were bought and abused.
Even if that made the news, we make a mistake when the focus of the efforts to end this trafficking is only focused on how children are sold, instead of also focusing on to whom they are sold.
That discussion is one we need to have because until mainstream media and law enforcement is willing to go down that road… we will likely not see any real changes.
Ben has spent 14 years working as a journalist in broadcast news. He began his career as a news photographer and moved up the ladder to reporter, morning anchor/reporter, prime time anchor/reporter. Along the way he won two Emmy Awards and two Edward R. Murrow awards. Ben was the anchor at WXIX in Cincinnati, Ohio and hosted the popular “Reality Check.” Ben now has his own brand of media, which you can find at Truth in Media.
Congressional Democrats are coming to the defense of Planned Parenthood as Republicans launch investigations into the group’s use of fetal tissue from abortions. Multiple Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday dismisseda secretly recorded viral video that shows a Planned Parenthood executive detailing how the livers, lungs and hearts of fetuses are preserved during abortions for medical research. “It’s got a Benghazi feel to it, for me,” centrist Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) said. “They’ve been attacking Planned Parenthood for years,”said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), another prominent abortion rights supporter. “They’ve been calling for investigations for years.”
Still, the footage, which was recorded by anti-abortion advocates posing as fetal tissue buyers from a research company, is putting Democrats in an uncomfortable spot. While Democrats have for years defended Planned Parenthood against GOP attacks, the graphic discussion about “fetal parts” in the video has energized conservative groups that say the reality of abortion is deliberately obscured by the media.
The remarks from Planned Parenthood’s chief medical director surfaced Tuesday in a nearly nine-minute video that was created by a new group, the Center for Medical Progress. Planned Parenthood, which receives federal funding that cannot be used for abortions, has acknowledged that the video does feature its top medical officer but says the footage is heavily edited and “grossly mischaracterizes” the organization’s practice of donating fetal tissue to research.
At least one anti-abortion Democrat, Rep. Dan Lipinski (Ill.), said he supports the GOP for its planned investigations. Lipinski denounced the video in a press conference with several House Republicans on Wednesday and said he believes more of his colleagues in the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus will follow. “I’m hopeful that some of the pro-choice Democrats also come out in support of the investigation to find out what’s going on at these clinics,”he told The Hill. “I think everyone should be concerned about it, no matter what your position is on abortion.”
Some Democrats, like Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.), the co-chairwoman of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, have been cautious in their response to the video. In a statement to The Hill, she expressed support for Planned Parenthood, though it fell far short of a sweeping defense. “Planned Parenthood has spoken clearly on the specific circumstances surrounding this video, and I will let their experts explain for themselves. Circumstances of this video aside, people need to understand the important research that specific tissue types contribute to,” she wrote in a statement.
The video, which is nearing 1.5 million views online, reverberated across Capitol Hill and the campaign trail on Wednesday. Less than 24 hours after it surfaced, lawmakers in the House had opened a pair of congressional investigations. Dozens of Republicans, including Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), have condemned the claims in the video as “inhumane” and “grotesque.”
GOP presidential hopefuls, including Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rand Paul (Ky.), are also raising the issue’s national profile. The remarks by Planned Parenthood’s medical director in the video are shockingly candid.
While sipping wine in a Los Angeles restaurant, she describes “crushing” the fetus in a way that preserves its organs for researchers. She also describes the growing demand for liver, lungs and “intact” hearts.
Democrats have said there’s no evidence that the group is violating federal laws from her remarks, though none of them told The Hill they had seen the video. “Planned Parenthood is actually allowed, is my understanding, for scientific research, to use fetal tissue, and that is not illegal,”said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a member of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus who said she had spoken to Planned Parenthood leadership. When asked about Republicans’ planned investigations into Planned Parenthood, Schakowsky said she wanted an investigation into the Center for Medical Progress, which she called “a phony company.”
The issue of abortion has already caused trouble for members of Congress in both parties this year, from a bipartisan Senate bill to fight human trafficking to a House bill banning late-term abortions that drew objections over its language on rape.
Earlier this week, House leaders pulled a bipartisan bill from Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) that would have created a commemorative coin to help raise money for breast cancer research because some of that funding would have gone to Planned Parenthood. The bill was ultimately passed Wednesday with broad support from both parties. But Maloney hinted that the delay was, in part, because of the Planned Parenthood video. Asked if she thought the outrage over the video fueled sudden opposition to her bill, Maloney responded, “Yes. It is an unusual coincidence, shall we say.”
The global slaughter of Christians is growing in leaps and bounds at the hands of Muslims and their supporters. ISIS or ISIL and other murderous Islamic relatives consider the daily torture and murder jobs of Christians simply obeying Muhammad and their pagan god Allah. Sometimes they offer the victim before they are murdered, the 3 choices stated in Chapter 9 of the Koran – 1) Forcibly convert to Islam 2) Give them great amounts of money as a high tax to stay alive 2) or be killed. Many times they don’t even offer them those options. Instead they just cut right to the torture and murder part – slow and gruesome.
Each week I interview on my national radio show, experts who have tasted the real horror offered up by Islam and are involved with exposing and confronting the real Islamic agenda. It is most clear that there is a real Christian genocide happening all around the world. Ted and Whalid Shoebat have long exposed the slaughterhouses in Syria, where Christians are kidnapped, tortured, hung by their feet like cows, then butchered.
This is a regular occurrence along with ISIS and Islamic rebels wiping out whole Christian neighborhoods and villages.
Not only has America and Obama not helped the victims or confronted the Islamic murderers, but instead, Obama has been complicit in creating ISIS – ISIL by sending them (through Lybia) thousands of lethal and high-end weapons and money.
Not only did America, under Barack Obama’s leadership, weaponize the Islamic rebels, growing and creating ISIS and its offspring, but the weapons pathway and illegal activities lead to the murder of Ambassador Stevens and staff. We are still awaiting justice and untangling the cover up that has followed for many years now. I pray Rep. Trey Gowdy pushes through the wall on this investigation and gets it right.
The genocide is funded and organized all around the world. All through Africa, where villages are torched; young girls are captured and used as sex slaves, husbands and fathers are murdered in front of their families and torture and kidnappings are daily staples. Iraq is a growing horror show as well and once again Obama says nothing except for Christians to get off their ‘high horse’ and be ashamed because of our involvement in the Great Crusade over 600 years ago. I am ashamed all right…I’m ashamed that Christians took so long to rise up at the hands of Muslim aggression, torture and stealing of their land. Will today in America end up being another place in history where we were ‘too little – too late’?
Several have screamed very loud, making desperate appeals to stop the madness and get help from the US and our Government to save lives, but Obama is nowhere on this. He just looks the other way as hundreds of thousands of American citizens and Christians are murdered in the name of Allah and Muhammad. Obama has gone way behind being another Neville Chamberlain horror. Obama knows that the tortures and blood letting is happening all over to Christians and does nothing about it. Chamberlain could hardly believe Hitler would be capable of such evil so imposed denial on himself.
Sister Dian Momeka of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine of Siena has spoken before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She has described in Technicolor what is going on to Christians throughout Iraq. She describes it as mass genocide and has begged Obama and America for help. Her comments were covered in a Newsmax piece by Cathy Burke.
“As this horror spread throughout the Nineveh Plain, by Aug 6, 2014, Nineveh was emptied of Christians, and sadly, for the first time since the seventh century A.D., no church bells rang for Mass in the Plain of Nineveh,” she said, adding that since then, more than 120,000 people found themselves “displaced and homeless” in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. “The current persecution that our community is facing is the most brutal in our history.”
Cardinal Dolan and others have weighed in and warned Obama and America about our skewed lack of protection of Christians in the Mideast, yet nothing is done and Obama plays more golf.
It appears as if by his brazen lack of action and even words against Christians, that Obama is in full support of the Islamic caliphate and murderous genocide of Christians worldwide. If he isn’t in support of this then he must do more than ‘sound bite’ theatre and brief empty statements reflecting no action.
We find ourselves in another Nazi Germany horror show of extermination again. This time it is the Christians and we have a President who not only looks the other way, he funds and weaponizes the murderous Islamic groups that are doing it all.
About the Author: Dr. Laurie Roth
Dr. Laurie Roth hosts a popular and growing national radio talk show called The Roth Show. It airs from 7-10pm PAC Mon-Friday http://www.therothshow.com. She is known as ‘The Annie Oakley of the Airwaves’ a name given her by her listeners and is also a regularly published commentator and speaker at conservative conferences. In 2010 Laurie was nominated for the Ronald Reagan Award by CPAC for breaking a national story on Obama and his many connections with William Ayers.
Join me for my live show each day from 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM PST. You can listen in at http://www.therothshow.com. When you are taken to http://www.usaradionetworks.com click on Channel 2 and you will be on board. Call in at: 1 877 999 7684.
It’s not often I get so angry I can hardly see straight, but this is one of those times – certainly one of the topics that just sets me to think hellish thoughts. This has been going on for a while now, but yesterday morning, Glenn Beck, on his morning radio show reminded me of it. It was regarding a document ISIS released last October or November (2014). The document was an auction price list for captured females to be sold to scumbags ISIS members.
Those to be sold are Yazidi and Christian girls and women from towns ISIS has captured. ISIS fighters would overtake a village or town and force the men and boys to convert. If they refuse, they will be slaughtered, leaving only the girls and women. The females are then rounded up and marched back to the nearest auction site and sold.
For a period there were no set prices, so ISIS members could bid anything they wanted – whatever the “market” dictated. But according to the document “the market to sell women and spoils of war has been experiencing a significant decrease, which has adversely affected ISIS revenue and financing of the Mujaheddin.”
Therefore ISIS leadership decided to impose price controls. They also dictated that anyone violating the controls would be executed.
The United Nations reports that not all children are sold as sex slaves. Some, like those with abnormalities such as retardation or reduced mental capacity are to be used as unwitting suicide bombers. They are chosen because it is unlikely they understand what they are tasked to do. It’s just pure evil!
The price list for sex slaves is as follows. They are classified as merchandise, not girls, women or even human beings – just merchandise.
The prices are posted an Iraqi dinar.
Women age 40 to 50 = 50,000 dinar ($42),
30 to 40 years = 75,000 ($63),
20 to 30 = 100,000 ($84),
10 to 20 = 150,000 ($127), and ages
1 to 9 = 200,000 dinar ($169).
Yes folks – not even infants and toddlers are spared the atrocity.
There is however a limit of three sex slaves per bidder, with exception to foreign sales to Turks, Syrians and Gulf states. That’s where most of the fighters are so naturally they will need more. After a great battle they need to blow off some steam and unwind by raping and savaging young Christian girls.
The document adds that the source of this decision for price controls is the ISIS “Commerce Department.” The Commerce Department? As if they are fixing the price of a bushel of wheat or a pound of sugar. There are currently two full-fledged auction sites. One in Mosul Iraq and one in their capital Raqqa Syria, and there is a constant flow of “merchandise” in both locations.
The women and girls are shrouded from head to toe, shackled together and marched into the marketplace to be auctioned. I have seen video of the proceedings and they are appalling. Cattle are treated better. The wails of the victims to be sold are bloodcurdling.
Over the years, I’ve become more libertarian regarding war and foreign entanglements. Like the founders, I believe if it’s not in our national interest, if it doesn’t concern us directly – stay out of it. Protect the homeland and its citizens – that’s all.
But I believe this particular atrocity transcends national interest. This is a sin against all mankind. It is and will be a stain on our humanity. Frankly, if we, the United States of America, who have the wherewithal to act to stop this don’t do anything, what does it say about us?
I’m not sure what can be done, but I bet there are at least 20 to 30,000 veterans in this country that would be more than happy to go mercenary to stop this. Count me in.
Every so often, the Church gets an issue in its sights, one that cuts past all the sectarian, class, or racial boundaries and brings us together to make something fantastic happen.
When ancient cultures were leaving their kids to die of exposure, we adopted them, and took care of them. We cared for the sick (even dying while helping plague victims) and built hospitals. We established centers of learning now called Universities. We outlawed the practice of throwing Hindu widows on funeral pyres. We led various international emancipation movements.
Right now, although attention is being given (rightly) to Life issues like euthanasia and abortion, as well as promoting traditional family issues; there’s another pressing issue not in the public eye.
Christians are looking to change that.
The issue is Human Trafficking. In the full sense of the term, we’re talking about modern slavery. And it’s more common than you think.
The TED talk video at the end of my recent column was one expression of it. There are many, many others.
Christians throughout the world, including Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker, drew a red “X” on their hands Thursday for “Shine A Light On Slavery Day” — advocates are calling for more aggressive government action, and pressuring corporate hotel chains and airlines to train their employees to recognize trafficking victims.
Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and longtime spiritual adviser to Tim Pawlenty, said trafficking has migrated from a niche concern among liberally-minded “social justice Christians” to an increasingly prevalent platform plank for Evangelicals across the political spectrum. And while the nonpartisan nature of the cause has largely kept the cable news bookers at bay, Anderson predicted it could become the defining issue of politically active Evangelicals in years and decades to come.
About the author: Wes Walker
Clashdaily’s Religion Editor, Wes Walker, believes that freedom, faith, family, and the flag need more than to be simply cherished. They need to be understood, articulated, defended and promoted, not just by a few voices in prominent places, but by every man or woman who truly prizes them. In fact, the reason he wrote “Blueprint For a Government that Doesn’t Suck” was so that every “ordinary Joe” will be able to do just that… and do it with confidence.
Did you notice how individual freedom is not the overarching story of human history? Usually, “The Many” have bent their necks to the yoke of “The Few”. Often, they have accepted that as the order of things.
Cultures throughout history have either tolerated or endorsed slavery of one sort or another. Some did through conquest, and direct ownership of servants — others through coercion and exploitation. Freedom is by no means humanity’s default position.
Even where traditional slavery is outlawed, social position will determine differences in someone’s personal worth, and even moral / legal accountability. The Caste System, and Feudalism are obvious examples, although others (like our own Celebrity Class) exist as well.
Living under our Western understanding of freedom, we might predict enslaved people would jump at their earliest opportunity to attain it, as with the Underground Railway, or Cuban refugees today. But in both ancient times and modern, these seem the exceptions that prove the rule.
Remember the Jewish Exodus from scripture?
Moses showed up, promising freedom from their slavery to Pharaoh, with mixed results. The first setback (bricks without straw) made them grumble — not against Pharaoh, but against Moses! Skip ahead to when Israel was wandering the desert, with former captors safely on the other side of a body of water. They grumbled some more.
And the people of Israel also wept again and said, “Oh that we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at.
(Numbers 11)
They had escaped the reach of their captors, but in their hearts, and in the way they viewed themselves, they remained slaves.
They even misread their own circumstances. Had they truly eaten for free back in Egypt? Feeling the bite of the lash across their backs, toiling in the hot sun. Was it for free that they got their food? Hardly. But those few creature comforts — the ones that made slavery seem tolerable — were gone. To get them back, some were willing to return to those shackles. (Think: The Matrix and the “Blue Pill”.) They were tragically setting their own purchase price at the paltry sum of a few fish, and a couple of vegetables. Little did they know what awaited their people beyond the Jordan.
Karl Marx once claimed that Religion was the opiate of the masses, something to keep paupers docile. Not so in Israel’s case. For Israel, the opiate was onions, fish and leeks. “Religion” (or more properly, God) was both the initiator and instrument of their freedom.
Back then, enslaved Israel — like battered wives today — was held in check by both a carrot and a stick. Fear of the lash on one hand, and the lure of things they thought they could not do without on the other, paralyzed them. What they needed was a rescuer; an intervention.
Tragically, that ancient generation had been so accustomed to their chains and the pressures of fear and need, they had been just as “domesticated” as a lion in a zoo.
Does this happen here today? Of course! We may not have sugar plantation owners today, but we have a different kind of slave, doing a different job. And people don’t mind because it seems like easy work, with a good payoff.
It’s simple: show up one Tuesday in November every fourth year, and write an “x” in the the correct box, and you have served your “massah” well.
The hoi polloi gets promised some variation of “hope” and “change”; (which apparently means food stamps and — retroactive — birth control) while the people offering the carrots get a backstage pass to the seemingly limitless personal power, influence, and wealth that life in the Beltway can offer.
Public service? National Interest? That’s cute. Now stand aside, plebe, there’s money to be made!
Moses first tasted freedom for himself. He had lived apart from the illusion of safety that chains represented. But it took time for Israel to embrace their freedom, to savour it, and own it for themselves. In their case, the older generation never quite came around. It had to come from their kids.
There is a sense in which Conservatives are more individualist than their counterparts, and disinclined to activism. In some ways, that’s even understandable.
But remember, Freedom is not the dominant theme of human history. It is vulnerable to entropy. When taken for granted, it becomes eroded, and eventually lost. To preserve it, we must hate, and oppose all forms of slavery, however mild or extreme their out-workings may be.
To defend another person’s freedom is to preserve your own. That idea was at the heart of the American foundations, and is near to the heart of the Christian faith that shaped it.
Freedom, in the Christian meaning, is corrosive to the chains of tyranny. It maintains that, regardless of sex, race, social standing, or any other factor, all people have equal worth and dignity. If we are all equal, it follows that nobody is elite. Leaders are not lords.
If you enjoy and appreciate your freedoms (plural) — make use of them! And then, encourage and assist others to lay hold of theirs, both at home and abroad. I for one, found this TED Talk on the topic inspiring. Maybe you will too.
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