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Agree all. And a public campaign against backpage is far cheaper and easier than rooting out the traffickers themselves. Also will help sweep the problem out of the eye of the electorate, the gummints' primary concern.

Locals accused them of defecating in the citys moat, causing accidents by driving recklessly, and defacing several tourist attractions, according to the Bangkok Post. Apparently, the Chinese have rather more casual views on excretory functions than most Westerners do. From birth, children are taught that taking a whiz or a dump in public is quite acceptable. And, after reading this little blurb on Chinese public toilets, I can see why pooping in a moat in a Thai garden might seem like a welcome upgrade from the typical Chinese loo. Most of them are squat toilets with little, if any, screening, no hooks for coats or packages, and a floor that has not been washed since Chairman Mao put the finishing touches on his Little Red Book.

This won't surprise lookin or anybody else who has been in or near the food processing industry. Inside the food industry: the surprising truth about what you eat http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/feb/21/a-feast-of-engineering-whats-really-in-your-food

Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour wins Oscar http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/23/edward-snowden-documentary-citizenfour-wins-oscar

Friday, February 20, 2015, 2:48pm EST Mass. AG supports human trafficking lawsuit against Backpage.com Mary Moore Boston Business Journal Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has filed an amicus brief in a federal lawsuit against website Backpage.com, urging the court to move forward a case alleging that the website assisted in human trafficking. The amicus brief was filed in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. Ropes & Gray filed Doe vs. Backpage.com LLC on behalf of three women who allege that they were sold for sex through the website. Some of them were minors at the time. The original complaint included just two women plaintiffs and a third woman was added in late 2014, said a spokesman for the law firm. The amicus brief filed by the AG's office comes in response to Backpage.com's request that the court dismiss the case. "Websites that actively facilitate human trafficking should be held liable for this serious and widespread problem in the commonwealth," Healey said in a press release from the AG's office. "Backpage is known for advertising commercial sex, and its recent growth and dominant position in the market call into question its supposed efforts to curb prostitution and child exploitation." The complaint alleges that one of the women was sold for sex in 2012 and 2013 when she was 15-and-16-years-old through the backpage.com website. Between June and September 2013 alone, she was was sold for sex more than 1,000 times at locations in Greater Boston and in Rhode Island, according to Ropes & Gray. Another plaintiff alleges she was sold for sex when she was 15-years-old in Boston, Saugus, Cambridge and Somerville between 2010 and 2012, according to the complaint. The women allege that, when they were sold for sex, pimps use Backpage.com to identify and communicate with customers. The named defendants are Backpage.com, Camarillo Holdings LLC and New Times Media LLC. None could be immediately reached for comment. http://m.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2015/02/20/mass-ag-supports-human-trafficking-lawsuitagainst.html?r=full

My own speculation would be that the primary concern is getting some prosecutors quality face time on local TV.

When you read through the narrative of the manual, either the Thai's are insulting the Chinese or the Chinese are not good tourists. Based on all the good things I have read about Thailand, I assume the manual does not apply to the behavior of American tourists in Thailand. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/thailand/11416014/Thailand-issues-good-behaviour-manual-for-Chinese-tourists.html

Now San Francisco has joined Atlanta, Denver, Houston, Philadelphia and Portland in filing friend of the court briefs in support of the Massachusetts lawsuit. I guess I'm a bit unclear on what these folks have in mind for a strategy to curb what they call "sex trafficking", particularly as it relates to minors. If I were serious about tracking down underage prostitutes and their pimps, I think I'd be inclined to use Backpage as a very handy list of the folks I want to track down, along with their current contact info. I'd be setting up appointment after appointment to find these underage, unwilling prostitutes and get them into supportive environments before another week went by. I'd also get them to help me find their pimps and lock them up, again on a very aggressive timetable. It seems that shutting down Backpage before I snared all these folks would take a very useful tool out of my hands before I had a chance to use it. Perhaps these attorneys general think that, by shutting down Backpage, all the underage prostitutes will go back to school and all their pimps will find lawful employment elsewhere; but I'm gonna need some convincin'.

Nowise a surprise. In fact, fairly predictable when food company managers get paid on profit and not on the nutritional value of their products. With no correlation between nutrition and profitability in the food industry - in fact, some may say a reverse correlation - our capitalistic system virtually ensures a steady decline in the healthfulness of our food supply. The past half-century has brought us where we are today and it's a crapshoot where it will bring us in the next fifty years. Not that I'm pimping for the replacement of capitalism, primarily because I can't think of a better system. But what I do advocate is a better allocation of costs within our current capitalistic system. For a long time, cigarette companies found increased profit in pretending their decisions didn't worsen the health of their customers, but they eventually had to factor in more of the costs of their decisions and modified their products and their marketing tactics to be less harmful. And, in my opinion, one of the most helpful outcomes of Obamacare is the deeper discussion and focus on how our healthcare system can be rewarded financially for actually promoting better health rather than merely trying to fix bad health. A small start, no doubt, but it's a start. Eventually, my hope is that the food industry will find more profit in better nourishing their customers and see increased costs in promoting malnutrition. They certainly have the expertise, or at least a good shot at developing the knowhow, to put healthier food on the table. And, while government regulation is another way to get us there, many of our politicians will fight such regulations on principle. I'd very much like to see a system of cost allocation that puts the expense of caring for malnourished folks right back on the companies that feed them chazerai. Once food companies become responsible for the costs of removing nutritional value from their products, it's up to them to deal with these costs better than their competitors and figure out how to make a buck by improving nutrition. If they do, their stock and compensation will go up. If they don't, they'll go out of business. And isn't that what successful capitalism is all about?

We bleed for you.