112 People Arrested Across Europe in Crackdown on Child Porn (Europol, Friday)

[Magda Hassan]

The proportion of police resources devoted to a shoplifter who steals a sandwich, or a four pack of beer, dwarfs the police resources dedicated to bringing organised child abuse rings to justice.

The whole legal establishment is set ip for the protection of property. Property rights trump human rights time and again.

A lust for abusing children appears to be a routine trait in many powerful figures such as politicians and businessmen. These figures are "squared" (a phrase I use very deliberately) by the provision of children (often street children or orphans) and once the abuse has occurred, these figures are controllable through blackmail threats.

Very senior figures arrived at NATO, the IMF, and the EU after allegations of child abuse surfaced in their home countries. These figures were not prosecuted. Rather they became key apparatchiks in international institutions.

Guaranteed to do Their Master's Bidding.

Indeed, those powerful figures in politics and business have a lust for power and privilege and are routinely blackmailed in order to do the bidding of others. For those that don't personally have a personal fondness for youth they can be set up with an apparently willing and interested adult woman/man who often then with draws to the bathroom momentarily to be substituted by a child all caught on the waiting camera and no explanation possible.

Now, if (and it's an important if) adults are genuinely consenting and paid to be filmed having sex, then it's a perfectly legitimate means of making one's way through a material world.

I would agree but there is rarely any genuine consent. The relationship is clearly one of gross exploitation. The women are in most cases addicts and poor, unskilled and desperate. They are not in control of their lives in any way and have few choices and are easily manipulated by others. It is an illusion of male consumers and manufacturers of pornography to think that these women actually choose this for them selves and absolves the male consumers for thier role in the abuse of these women. Former performers in the industry that have survived at all will look back and say as much. But the myth of consent continues because it is so very profitable and convenient for it to continue for so many self entitled males. The same disregard for the continued abuse of women enables the abuse of children as well. So while the extremely unlikely possibility of a fully empowered woman who makes a free and informed decision to enter the pornographic industry as a viable form of paid employment above all other options may hypothetically exist it can never exist for children.

Our whole culture is becoming pornified. Male and female sterotypes are more limited than ever. It is so hard to avoid it at all. It used to be that one had to go seeking it in hard to find places. Now it is hard to avoid it. All part of the normailisation process.