The Sound of Freedom

[RomaVicta 29900]

On facebook, many of my acquaintances from high school are raving about the movie. I don't go to reunions or speak directly with many of them for this very reason. They've become a very righteous and god-praising crew in their pre-dotage. I prefer them as they are in memory. 

['stache 21793]

I’ve seen some posts from friends who are fairly liberal that the movie raises serious issues. I truly hope the movie itself doesn’t assign blame politically but I still won’t see it because the Caviel guys intent is definitely about librul sex rings and is using it as a tool for this even if the movie itself doesn’t mention his truly insane political nonsense.

[NWBuck 8552]

1 hour ago, Celery Man said:

I'm curious - let's talk about the teenagers working in a slaughterhouse in Iowa (or whatever is going on in Seattle). What does that look like? Are we talking, kids from some foreign country whisked away and taken here where they are put to work in a sweatshop? That is owned by the traffickers, or the people who own the workplace look the other way and don't ask questions about the young looking laborers, and pay the.... traffickers? Is there a good reality based doc somewhere to understand how this happens?

 

[C-Man 27184]

23 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

The closest that I can think about in terms of an actual pedo sex ring was the Dean Corll story in Houston. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Corll 

I'd never heard of this monster until last night. Just reading that whole Wiki article is nightmare fuel. Jesus, what a sick fuck.

 

23 hours ago, chainsaw said:

They aren't interested in saving children. They are interested in cashing in on hypothetical valor.

A lot of what your seeing in the response is people patting themselves on the back, telling themselves that they're good people. They're not going to do anything of substance to combat the issue, of course.

 

19 hours ago, Longhorn_Fan68 said:

lol, one of the characters (I assume the bad guy) is named Vampiro. Did they even try?

Akin to James Cameron's unobtanium?

[Celery Man 20931]

i'm surprised at anyone here who hasn't heard of the candyman

[Nice Guy Eddie 13508]

1 hour ago, Neonmoon said:

Here is my guess

1. Trafficker promises riches in America. 

2. Victim wants a better life and agrees

3. Trafficker shoves as many people in a shipping container as possible. They arrive in USA. Some die, some don't. 

4. Victim is forced to work in Sweatshop/Brothel/etc to pay off "debt" of travel, and now housing/food 

It's modern day slavery

 

Is the shipping container method that common with traffickers? I know that is shown on TV dramas like The Wire, but I didn't know if it was believed to be frequently employed.

For some traffickers, is it difficult or expensive to get a travel visa for the people? I'm ignorant of what it takes to legally temporarily to get into the US and then overstay your visit.

Edited July 13, 2023 by Nice Guy Eddie

[Pancho 44693]

I’m seeing all over that this movie is doing very well, #1 at the box office—BUT it’s because a few people are buying all of the tickets and just giving them away. 

[RomaVicta 29900]

If you get past the grimness of this event, it's amusing that Hollywood-hating lunatics are going Hollywood. Suddenly, it's important what an actor thinks and what his movie says. 

Fuckin' Ronald Reagan

[C-Man 27184]

48 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

i'm surprised at anyone here who hasn't heard of the candyman

If I had, it had totally slipped my mind. Maybe a generic sense of the 'Candyman' but didn't know much of the story. I was born in Houston right in the middle of this murder spree. I'm going to ask my parents if they remember all of that going down.

[956 Worldwide 34697]

On 7/11/2023 at 9:38 PM, wildcat09 said:

The Q-Anon Anonymous episode on Jim Caviezel is one of the most hilarious and batshit crazy things you will ever hear in your life.

You ain’t lying. I’m sick at home with strep and doing lots of podcasts and that even got me to smile. 

[Pig Bellmont 8712]

29 minutes ago, Pancho said:

I’m seeing all over that this movie is doing very well, #1 at the box office—BUT it’s because a few people are buying all of the tickets and just giving them away. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if it all just was one billionaire propping up the “buying tickets for others” scheme 

[Sawbonz 27534]

10 hours ago, NWBuck said:

Possibly off topic (at least this new course of dialogue), but I have some friends and former students who work as legal advocates for persons who've escaped human trafficking (Seattle has quite a bit, being a major port city to Asia). That persons are exploited sexually is tragically factual, the majority of persons trafficked are enslaved in roles that are more "labor" based- Domestic labor, agricultural work, sweatshop production.

One of my colleagues often says that the focus on sexual exploitation is important, but it also provides a convenient distraction to the fact that all of us benefit from (in her language "are complicit in") the larger amount of human suffering due to our participation in an economy that emphasizes low consumer costs and high corporate profits over human dignity and thriving. 

It's a perfect connection to the modern GOP- Focus on sex, use "save the children" as a rallying cry (without meaningful actions), and ignore the things that might implicate and undercut their corporate donors.

Back to your discussion of Barbie

Did you post this from an Apple device or an android?

[Longhorn_Fan68 33859]

I think it's gonna fizzle out. Look at the company its in:
 

[956 Worldwide 34697]

47 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Is the shipping container method that common with traffickers? I know that is shown on TV dramas like The Wire, but I didn't know if it was believed to be frequently employed.

For some traffickers, is it difficult or expensive to get a travel visa for the people? I'm ignorant of what it takes to legally temporarily to get into the US and then overstay your visit.

The visa fee is about $170 but the problem with that route is the much higher likelihood that a consular officer will sense something off during the interview and just say no. And for certain classes of visas you even get a flyer to outline warning signs. Getting papers eases operations but also, people with papers are more likely to realize they have options and recourse. 

The big containers into ports happen but not as much as in the shows.  A lot of this happens on the southern border and globally— much of it happens inside the borders of a country. So yes, child sex trafficking happens here, but it’s far more likely to be “struggling teenager runs away to the city, said teenager falls into sex work, and soon a pimp is moving them across the country to try and earn more.” And of course, these kids are disproportionately more likely to be a racial or sexual minority or both, and QAnon doesn’t like to think of that, no sir. 
 

Far more frequent are cases where a child follows after his parents are here and gets diverted or the family blackmailed, or the family trusts a friend or distant relative who says they can get the kid in an American school. And then the kid gets here and he gets a package of fake docs and told to go sweep floors or slaughter cattle, and the Iowa GOP will defend his right to do that with vigor. 

[Biff Tannen 45663]

1 hour ago, Pancho said:

I’m seeing all over that this movie is doing very well, #1 at the box office—BUT it’s because a few people are buying all of the tickets and just giving them away. 

It's the same tactic as the R fuckstick PACs buying their own books to boost them on the NYT Best Seller list.  They are the most disingenuous people.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13508]

6 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

It's the same tactic as the R fuckstick PACs buying their own books to boost them on the NYT Best Seller list.  They are the most disingenuous people.

There's a element in this country that solely rely on volume or ratings to determine worth. Examples include Trump and twitter followers or Aggies and the attendance levels at Kyle field. 

I agree that these metrics can equate to money but it doesn't necessarily equate to high value.

[Nivek 16916]

2 hours ago, Pancho said:

I’m seeing all over that this movie is doing very well, #1 at the box office—BUT it’s because a few people are buying all of the tickets and just giving them away. 

They are just using the same marketing strategy that Just Mayo used.   Buy all of their own goods and pretend that is the demand.  

[wildcat09 29341]

Well this is suspicious...

Tim Ballard Has 'Stepped Away' From Operation Underground Railroad, Org Says:

Quote

Tim Ballard, founder of Operation Underground Railroad, has quietly parted ways with the controversial anti-trafficking group. The news comes as Sound of Freedom, a heavily fictionalized depiction of Ballard’s work for a division of ICE and his early career as a private anti-trafficking operator, continues to draw at the box office. The movie has brought in just under $50 million, largely on the strength of a marketing campaign encouraging religious audiences to not only attend the movie but  “pay it forward” by buying tickets for other people, bringing unprecedented attention to both Ballard and OUR.

In recent days, sources with knowledge of OUR began to tell Motherboard that Ballard had left the organization. By one account, he’d gone to donors in a state of upset, saying that he’d been forced out and asking for their help with a new organization. Another person who’s worked with the group said that to the best of their knowledge, he was no longer with OUR and was focusing on his work with the Nazarene Fund, a Glenn Beck-backed organization that has focused on religious minorities in the Middle East but has more recently operated in Afghanistan and Ukraine. A third person familiar with OUR fundraising said that they had heard just this week that Ballard had broken with the organization.

In a statement, an OUR spokesperson said, “Founder, Tim Ballard has recently stepped away from Operation Underground Railroad prior to launch of the film, ‘Sound of Freedom.’” They added, “Matt Osborne continues to serve as the President and COO of the organization.” On LinkedIn, Osborne is listed as having served as the president and COO since February 2023, six months ago.

Ballard has made no mention of his departure from OUR as he began a one-man press tour focused on the film and the Jim Caviezel-played character based on him. In recent days, he’s been interviewed on Fox News, telling Jesse Watters that criticism of the film by mainstream media outlets was playing into the hands of pedophiles, and by the New York Post, where he said “enforcing the border” is “the only compassionate thing to do if you care about children.” (Ballard has long claimed that a porous southern border leads to sex trafficking of children, a view not shared by most experts in anti-trafficking work.)

On his program, Watters introduced Ballard as the founder of the Spear Fund, a new organization that has not previously been mentioned. A barebones website for the Spear Fund lists Ballard as a co-founder along with a woman named Jessica Munoz, whose LinkedIn says she is an emergency medicine nurse practitioner in Hawaii. Ballard’s biography on Instagram—the platform he’s most active on—describes him as OUR’s founder and the current CEO of the Nazarene Fund. Though the website has few additional details—a description reads only, “The SPEAR Fund relies on experts in the field of anti trafficking to consult on its many projects”—a donation page is already active. 

Ballard—who was appointed by the Trump administration as co-chair of  the Public-Private Partnership Advisory Council to End Human Trafficking, a group tasked with advising the federal government on anti-trafficking policy—has long been a highly controversial figure. A variety of lurid stories he’s told about his and OUR’s improbably cinematic exploits have turned, on closer inspection, to not be accurate, and the organization was the subject of a protracted criminal investigation examining, among other things, whether whether OUR operators engaged in sexual acts with human trafficking victims; whether OUR operations had created demand for trafficking victims; and whether OUR has committed human trafficking itself by enticing people who were not previously traffickers with large sums of money. That investigation ultimately closed without charges being brought, but did real damage to the organization’s image with donors, according to multiple sources over the past three years who have spoken with VICE News. OUR nonetheless raised tens of millions of dollars each year, based largely on Ballard’s image and reputation and that of the supposed “jump team” which OUR claimed went abroad to enact daring raids and rescues of trafficked women and children.

In recent years, Ballard has firmly established himself in the right-wing media ecosystem, and Sound of Freedom has provided him a fresh opportunity to promote his brand as the leading authority on sex trafficking to new audiences. OUR referred further questions to a media contact for Ballard, who’s also listed as a spokesperson for Angel Studios, the force behind the distribution and marketing of Sound of Freedom; that person did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

[chainsaw 9857]

3 hours ago, Pancho said:

I’m seeing all over that this movie is doing very well, #1 at the box office—BUT it’s because a few people are buying all of the tickets and just giving them away. 

It was not #1 for any weekend or week. They are juking the stats probably because of what you said with the bulk purchasing being attributed to a single day.

[Celery Man 20931]

it was #1 in the box office for a few select shithole states

[mdmost 42999]

It was #1 on July 4th, which was its release day. It then wasn't #1 again until this Monday and Tuesday. Insidious and Indiana Jones beat it on the other days. It will be destroyed by Mission Impossible. But they really showed those groomers at Disney...for a day. 

 

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl4254237441/?ref_=bo_hm_RECENT_WEEKEND_WIDGET_3

Edited July 13, 2023 by mdmost

[mchookem 16321]

1 hour ago, wildcat09 said:

Well this is suspicious...

Tim Ballard Has 'Stepped Away' From Operation Underground Railroad, Org Says:

 

 

[chainsaw 9857]

13 hours ago, NWBuck said:

Possibly off topic (at least this new course of dialogue), but I have some friends and former students who work as legal advocates for persons who've escaped human trafficking (Seattle has quite a bit, being a major port city to Asia). That persons are exploited sexually is tragically factual, the majority of persons trafficked are enslaved in roles that are more "labor" based- Domestic labor, agricultural work, sweatshop production.

One of my colleagues often says that the focus on sexual exploitation is important, but it also provides a convenient distraction to the fact that all of us benefit from (in her language "are complicit in") the larger amount of human suffering due to our participation in an economy that emphasizes low consumer costs and high corporate profits over human dignity and thriving. 

It's a perfect connection to the modern GOP- Focus on sex, use "save the children" as a rallying cry (without meaningful actions), and ignore the things that might implicate and undercut their corporate donors.

Back to your discussion of Barbie

Sexual assault is terrible, and we are fortunate to have harsh laws on the books focused on that. At the same time, it's a bit disingenuous from these Q types to fixate exclusively on pedophilia and child sexual exploitation since the laws are about as harsh as they could possibly be and the enforcement is about as strong as it could realistically be, at least when it comes to the international crime syndicates.

So yes the "bad guys" are extremely "bad" and yes they do exist, but that doesn't automatically mean we should submit to an authoritarian police state nor does it mean that skeptics or opponents of expanding police power are siding with pedophiles and child traffickers.

The moral panic they want to create, to me, is obvious and it's dangerous. Pizzagate-style vigilante justice never has prevented and never will prevent a single act of child sexual exploitation. But even if I were to stipulate that it has ever happened, or even that it could ever happen, vigilante justice still would never prevent more than a nominal amount of child sexual exploitation and even in those few cases the preventative role of the vigilantism would be slight, debatable, and in all likelihood coincidental or fortuitous.

It's also problematic, even looking past authoritarianism and vigilanteism, to feed into the conflation of legitimate expressions of non-heteronormative sexuality and gender identity (which is not harmful to anyone) with child sexual exploitation. The logic, as I understand it, goes something along the lines of "we need to combat child sexual exploitation, therefore we need to shield children from everything we deem to fall under the umbrella of 'sex'" and sure enough anything that isn't heteronormative falls under that "sex" umbrella. And if you push back on that, or even expose the obvious fallacious reasoning, you're a groomer and child abuse enabler. That's literally what they say every day on Daily Wire especially Matt Walsh and that other weirdo Michael Knowles.

The truth is that comprehensive sex education (not just about anatomy and biological functions but also about the sociological and interpersonal issues that bear on intimacy and sex including communication, respect, arousal, consent, trust, and privacy) is beneficial to children and helps prevent child sexual abuse precisely because it gives them to tools they need to detect when a dangerous situation is possible. One fictitious example that comes to mind is

Spoiler

the backseat scene in Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade

 

 

which is exactly the kind of situation, far more plausible than something from a Liam Neeson movie, in which someone under the age of 18 could be sexually exploited. If the Qs and Charlie Kirk crowd had their way, children would have no idea what is going on in dangerous situations like that and would be much less able to avoid those situations in the first place. And even if they do avoid sexual exploitation, they will be clueless when they enter their first relationships or first become sexually active in college. Not just clueless but potentially dangerous if they were not taught how consent works.

 

[DDD Dad 14324]

20 hours ago, Anastasis said:

There are certainly posters that I will take criticism from, but it’s not gonna be the guy who doesn’t know what a question mark looks like nor the one that registered in June 2020 rolling out a cut and paste job. 

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13508]

What’s the over/under in months that Ballard announces that he has separated from his wife and is now in a “brand new” relationship with his cofounder? And those two items are completely unrelated to each other.

https://thespearfund.org/
 

[Dutchrudder 11133]

Was really hoping the cofounder was a dude and his "roommate"

[elfenix 34223]

9 hours ago, C-Man said:

I'd never heard of this monster until last night. Just reading that whole Wiki article is nightmare fuel. Jesus, what a sick fuck.

episodes 210-213 of last podcast on the left

[Pancho 44693]

[Celery Man 20931]

after a google I'm determining that Chaya Raichik is behind the "LibsofTikTok" account and must have posted the empty "sold out" theater picture as evidence that librul hollywood elites are trying to prevent you from seeing the truth rather than evidence that The Sound of Freedom is grifting brainworm addled republicans past the price of a single ticket.

[Biff Tannen 45663]

[Gatorubet 30185]

On 7/13/2023 at 10:47 AM, Celery Man said:

i'm surprised at anyone here who hasn't heard of the candyman

I hear that he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good. 

[Neonmoon 38129]

19 hours ago, Dutchrudder said:

Was really hoping the cofounder was a dude and his "roommate"

He’s a Republican that weirdly overdramatizes sex trafficking. I would easily have bet underage girl 

[956 Worldwide 34697]

1 hour ago, Celery Man said:

after a google I'm determining that Chaya Raichik is behind the "LibsofTikTok" account and must have posted the empty "sold out" theater picture as evidence that librul hollywood elites are trying to prevent you from seeing the truth rather than evidence that The Sound of Freedom is grifting brainworm addled republicans past the price of a single ticket.

This is a brilliant grift. Well-worn ground in the religious community, expanding it to grab even the non-churchgoing loons is a master stroke. 

[conVINCEd 21469]

On 7/13/2023 at 10:47 AM, Celery Man said:

i'm surprised at anyone here who hasn't heard of the candyman

Knockin Boots?

[chainsaw 9857]

2 hours ago, Pancho said:

[Willfully Horn 8000]

1 hour ago, Gatorubet said:

I hear that he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good. 

Here he comes then he’s gone again.

[henrygandorf 29189]

haven’t read this thread, but here’s one i skimmed. 🧵

so does buying a ticket for this count as a charitable/political donation?  about to do my taxes and such. 

[Neonmoon 38129]

It should. 

As someone pointed out in that thread. It’s the same bullshit conservatives writers use with book sales. See Ted Cruz

[GW Hayduke 1953]

On 7/13/2023 at 10:31 AM, NWBuck said:

 

The use of "human trafficking" in the US is almost entirely fearmongering that points at the "others" as being bad and evil and distracts from the real drivers of the problems described in the documentary. 

The title of the doc should be "A Broken US Immigration System" or "Poverty in Central America" or "Corrupt Corporate Power." Fix any of those three root causes and there would be no market for smuggling or the problems presented in the doc.

Frontline's story starts with a Guatemalan family making one dollar a day.  They struggled to feed their teen kids. The spooky evil "trafficker" provides the teens with an illegal means of reaching the US and making money for the cost $15K, which the teens/family have to pay back over time.  

They made it to the border and were apprehended by CBP. The "trafficker" organized fake sponsors in so the teens were sent Ohio. They were provided with crowded/impoverished living conditions and given a job at Trillium Farms - one of the US' leading producers of eggs, 3.65 billion eggs annually. It has been known since the 90s that this particular farm had workers living in crowded/impoverished conditions.  The farm actually owned the crowded trailers. The Farms are ok with hiring illegal immigrants.  The "trafficker" in this story was a third party contractor for Trillium Farms.  

The "traffickers" are simply providing a transportation service to people living in poverty and meeting the corporate demand for workers.  The title of this story should be about poverty in Central America that has a significant part of the population desperate to subsist. The title of the story should be about a broken US immigration system that doesn't allow enough legal immigrants to support industry leading to corporations providing impoverished living conditions and illegal immigrants with any rights or power to change their living situations. The story should be about an immoral corporation motivated by a quest for low waged workers leading to hiring teens, firing workers without the proper immigration status, and providing impoverished living conditions for their teen workers.

[Queen Bitch 1692]

It's a breathtaking grift. Ask hardworkin', lib-tears sluprin', 'murica first folks to donate money to the producers to buy tickets to give away for free.

The producers are buying tickets all right... but they aren't exactly giving them away. 

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13570]

Maybe they are but it's similar to when someone would hand you a leaflet on the West Mall.

"Can you throw this away for me?"

[BrickHorn 18216]

The Sound of Freedumb, imo

[Sawbonz 27534]

9 hours ago, GW Hayduke said:

The use of "human trafficking" in the US is almost entirely fearmongering that points at the "others" as being bad and evil and distracts from the real drivers of the problems described in the documentary. 

The title of the doc should be "A Broken US Immigration System" or "Poverty in Central America" or "Corrupt Corporate Power." Fix any of those three root causes and there would be no market for smuggling or the problems presented in the doc.

Frontline's story starts with a Guatemalan family making one dollar a day.  They struggled to feed their teen kids. The spooky evil "trafficker" provides the teens with an illegal means of reaching the US and making money for the cost $15K, which the teens/family have to pay back over time.  

They made it to the border and were apprehended by CBP. The "trafficker" organized fake sponsors in so the teens were sent Ohio. They were provided with crowded/impoverished living conditions and given a job at Trillium Farms - one of the US' leading producers of eggs, 3.65 billion eggs annually. It has been known since the 90s that this particular farm had workers living in crowded/impoverished conditions.  The farm actually owned the crowded trailers. The Farms are ok with hiring illegal immigrants.  The "trafficker" in this story was a third party contractor for Trillium Farms.  

The "traffickers" are simply providing a transportation service to people living in poverty and meeting the corporate demand for workers.  The title of this story should be about poverty in Central America that has a significant part of the population desperate to subsist. The title of the story should be about a broken US immigration system that doesn't allow enough legal immigrants to support industry leading to corporations providing impoverished living conditions and illegal immigrants with any rights or power to change their living situations. The story should be about an immoral corporation motivated by a quest for low waged workers leading to hiring teens, firing workers without the proper immigration status, and providing impoverished living conditions for their teen workers.

We could fix 90% of our immigration issues by legitimizing economic refugee status for Central Americans and starting a guest worker program with Mexico that is separate from the immigration process. But republicans would never go for the former and not one enough on either side would go for the second. Oh well

Edited July 15, 2023 by Sawbonz

[Biff Tannen 45663]

5 hours ago, Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand said:

Maybe they are but it's similar to when someone would hand you a leaflet on the West Mall.

"Can you throw this away for me?"

I employed the “fist hands” method. 

[hayden_horn 11362]

14 hours ago, Sawbonz said:

We could fix 90% of our immigration issues by legitimizing economic refugee status for Central Americans and starting a guest worker program with Mexico that is separate from the immigration process. But republicans would never go for the former and not one enough on either side would go for the second. Oh well

wow. it's almost like you've taken a critical thinking problem solving type of approach to this issue. you big dummy.

[PenelopeWitherspoon 19100]

I'm starting to see people on my social media feeds going to see this shit.  Guess I know who to unfollow.

[Irwin F Fletcher 3550]

I'm starting to see people on my social media feeds going to see this shit.  Guess I know who to unfollow.

Don't unfollow. Enjoy calling them out. They'll remove themselves in short order.

Though, I will.admit, Facebook gets pretty boring when you can't stir up shit.

[mchookem 16321]

[Nice Guy Eddie 13508]

Seeing more and more online about how operation Underground Railroad spends little of their revenue and pays their execs a large percentage of the spending.  Basically for 2020, the last reported year, they took in 45m but only spent 13m including 1m to execs. Now perhaps they’re unaccustomed to the recent growth of contributions and their ops hasn’t grown by the same amount but that is just making excuses.

Other child trafficking advocacy groups spend a much larger percentage.

[Longhorn_Fan68 33859]

go on...