The British are starting to wake up to a problem in the Midlands and in Yorkshire.  Pakistani men are cultivating and pimping non-Pakistani British girls.  This video explains more:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Hat tip:  FrontPage Magazine

This problem has been obvious to many of us who have followed blogs that Chronicle the way in which Muslim men view the European around them.  Because the women go about unveiled and unescorted, the Muslim men automatically view them as prostitutes, and then treat them accordingly.  Wait, that’s not true.  One can treat prostitutes “accordingly” simply by paying them for sex.  These Muslim men treat them abusively (raping, acid attacks, murder, pimping, etc.), and then justifying it by claiming that, owing to their attire, the women deserve what happened to them.  It’s classic abuser conduct, carried out on a vast and brutal culture scale.

That’s the problem with the Muslim side of the equation.

The video above, though, hints at a reality few what to acknowledge — bullies don’t exist in a vacuum.  I remember reading aeons ago that someone, observing schoolyard activity, noticed that it wasn’t always the bullies who sought out the victims.  Sometimes, the victims gravitated to the bullies.  It doesn’t mean anyone deserves to be or is asking to be a victim.  It does mean, however, that sometimes there can be a complex dynamic between bully and victim that goes beyond the garden-variety situation in which a predator randomly seeks out prey.

Beginning at 2:55, Former Labour Home Secretary and current Blackburn MP Jack Straw starts a very laborious analysis of the problem.  Both as a matter of decency and a matter of fact, he tries not to implicate the entire Pakistani community, even though he admits that there is a significant segment of men within the Pakistani community that views non-Pakistan British girls as legitimate prey for their sexual desires and appropriate fodder for their prostitution business.  But the key language shows up at 3:50.  There, Straw says the following:

These young men are in a Western society.  In any event, they are like any other young men; they are fizzing and popping with testosterone.  They want some outlet for that, but Pakistani-heritage girls are off-limits and they are expected to marry a Pakistani girl from Pakistan typically, so they then seek other avenues, and they see these young women, white girls who are vulnerable, some of them in care, who for sure and [sic] are not being subject to normal parental support, who they think are easy meat.  (Emphasis added.)

“Some of them in care” and “are not being subject to normal parental support” are both polite ways of stating that, while Pakistani girls may be over-protected by Western standards, white British girls are being under-protected by any standards.  I’m too lazy to find links now, but if you’re not as lazy as I am, you’ll be able to confirm that, in England, women are drinking more, drugging more, having children out-of-wedlock more, sleeping around more, etc.  More than what?  More than before and more than in most other Western countries.  They “are not being subject to normal parental support,” and they are raising second and third generations of girls who also “are not being subject to normal parental support.”  The Pakistani men in England may be plucking this fruit, but the politically correct, morality free, socialist English society is growing it.

Back when it first came out in 1990, many of my friends swooned about how romantic Pretty Woman was, while I alternated between gagging and fulmination.  I thought it was a truly disgusting movie insofar as it encouraged prostitution as a reasonable line of work to meet a sensitive millionaire.  My intuitive sense was that prostitution isn’t charming and romantic, it’s degrading.

I knew that what the movie didn’t show was that, the day before Julia Roberts showed up at the hotel to meet Richard Gere, she’d given blow-jobs to seven men, four of whom were weak on personal hygiene; and had unprotected sex with another eight men, two of whom had sexually transmitted diseases.  One of them liked his sex rough, and she was sporting a large bruise on her lower back, and one of her teeth felt a little loose.  For these emotional assaults, physical pains and life-ending risks, she earned $100.  But all that my friends saw was Julia, shopping on Rodeo Drive and dissing the snotty store clerk.

Frankly, I thought less of those friends who liked the movie and, to the extent some of them had moved out of town, I made little effort to maintain those friendships.  They saw the tagline “Who knew it was so much fun to be a hooker?”  I saw the human cost.

Even in 1990, when I was still an unthinking liberal, I had an intuitive sense of the real price of prostitution.  Over at American Thinker, Janice Shaw Crouse spells out the actual numbers, and they are appalling — and all the more appalling because of legalization.  We are not talking about college girls who engage in hook-ups, although that’s bad enough, both in terms of their own well-being and in terms of societal health.  Instead, we are talking about a world-wide industry that systematically degrades and abuses women, all the while serving as a conduit for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases:

Prostitutes call their work “paid rape” and note the friends who “didn’t make it out alive.” Nearly half of the women in prostitution attempt suicide.

Most (90%) desperately want out.

Any discussion of prostitution must center on a basic fact: Control and exploitation of another person is slavery. Pimps control 80%-95% of all forms of prostitution. Nearly 70% of those in prostitution entered before age 16. In the U.S., the average age of entry is 12. Twelve!

In Amsterdam, 80% of prostituted women reported that they were there by force. In Germany, over 60% of the prostitutes are foreigners; in Spain, it’s 80%, many coerced by gangs. In Germany, legalizing prostitution hasn’t improved conditions for prostitutes. The women do not want (or are not allowed by their pimps) to register, get health checks, pay taxes, or adhere to rules that might affect business. For example, johns are willing to pay extra for sex without a condom. Further, Germany found that legalization did not increase tax revenues like expected — mafias don’t pay taxes.

One study found that 80% of prostitutes were assaulted by their pimps, and over one-third receive death threats for themselves or their families. Nor does legalization end corruption — laissez-faire Amsterdam closed one-third of their legal brothels because of ties to organized crime while acknowledging that the illegal brothels are thriving outside the official zone. Neighboring countries call the Netherlands a “failed experiment.”

Legalizing prostitution increases sex-trafficking because demand exceeds supply. So traffickers fill the demand with girls and women from other countries — lured, tricked, or sold, they end up without their passports, assaulted and forced into sex slavery. After legalization in Australia, illegal brothels increased 300%, pulling thousands more vulnerable women into prostitution.

We’re not going to get rid of prostitution any time soon.  To the extent that woman have something to sell, and men have something they want to buy, there will always be a black market.  Efforts in legalization operated on the erroneous belief that getting rid of this black market would empower women and equalize the transaction, thereby doing away with the abuse.  What a wrongheaded idea that was.  This is sex we’re talking about, not widgets.  This is a job most women do when they can do nothing else, so they start out downtrodden.  This is a job that has an incredible imbalance of physical strength.  I can type just as well as the next guy, but when it comes to the drug-ridden, demoralized 120 pound woman, and the drugged-out, lust filled 200 pound man, all the legalization in the world won’t create an equal balance of power.

If legalizing prostitution ever comes to the ballot, I will do my bit by voting no.  I will also try to run out of office any politician who backs such a plan.  But politics isn’t everything.  When it comes to protecting those around me, I also do my bit by using my carpools with the older children as a forum to talk about personal integrity, self-respect, decency, and morality.  So far, none of the other moms have called me to complain (so either the kids aren’t talking or the moms are okay with what I say).  One mom I know is most appreciative of the fact that her daughter has been enfolded into my family.

Honest to God, you really can’t go wrong by selling old-fashioned morality.  It’s definitely not one size fits all, and there are people who, sadly, slip between the cracks, but a few thousand years of Judeo-Christian trial and error have left us with the least harmful system imaginable.

With regard to Eliot Spitzer, a defense is springing up all over the MSM and the liberal blogosphere:  it’s stupid to make prostitution criminal; therefore, Spitzer shouldn’t be in trouble for paying for prostitutes.  In response to this defense, I would point out that whether it should be criminal is not the issue here.  The fact is that it is criminal.  If Spitzer thinks prostitution should be legal, he should use his bully pulpit to change that fact legislatively.  What he did was to break the law.  Jonah Goldberg has also correctly grasped that there is nothing wrong with showering shame on Spitzer regardless of ones views about laws prohibiting prostitution (h/t Earl):

Intellectually I can understand the argument for legalized prostitution, even if I disagree with it. And, I can understand, even sympathize, with the view that there should be more than a rice-paper thin Japanese teahouse wall between one’s private life and public life, even for politicians.

So let me concede, for the sake of argument, that Andrew is right that the law is an ass when it comes to prostitution (though if we are going to be loyal to Dickens, shouldn’t that be “a ass”?) Let us also concede that it is something like a private matter for a married man to visit a prostitute (though obviously it isn’t private for the wife and the kids — or for the prostitute if, as in many circumstances, she’s forced into such work).

Still, to say that something is a “private matter” is not the same thing as saying something is beyond the scope of our judgment. If Tom is a drunk, it may be a private matter but that hardly means I must approve of his “lifestyle.” If one of my married friends was repeatedly visiting hookers, I might say for the sake of social peace that it’s none of my business, but I would still think much less of him. And, if he became more and more brazen — and hence more and more humiliating for the man’s wife and family — the more likely it would become that I would feel compelled to say something.

Goldberg has more in this same vein, which you will find here.

I would be remiss if I did not point out to you that Democratic NY Governor Elliott Spitzer has some problems with prostitution — and it’s not that he disapproves of it:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer has been caught on a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel last month, according to a person briefed on the federal investigation.

The wiretap recording, made during an investigation of a prostitution ring called Emperors Club VIP, captured a man identified as Client 9 on a telephone call confirming plans to have a woman travel from New York to Washington, where he had reserved a room. The person briefed on the case identified Mr. Spitzer as Client 9.

The governor learned that he had been implicated in the prostitution probe when a federal official contacted his staff last Friday, according to the person briefed on the case.

The governor informed his top aides Sunday night and this morning of his involvement. He canceled his public events today and scheduled an announcement for this afternoon after inquiries from the Times.

If the story is true, my deep sympathies to his wife. If it’s false, I wish him the best of luck.

Of note is the fact that nowhere in the New York Times article from which I quote is Spitzer ever directly identified as a Democrat. Instead, there is a single oblique reference to his party buried in paragraph 9: “In recent weeks, however, Mr. Spitzer seemed to have rebounded, with his Democratic party poised to perhaps gain control of the state Senate for the first time in four decades.”

The “spot the party” trend continues in other news stories on the subject:

The AP story never once uses the words “Democrat” or “Democratic.”

The CNN story never once uses the words “Democrat” or “Democratic.”

The LA Times blog breaks ranks and reports on Spitzer’s status as a rising Democratic star.

USA Today‘s story, which is being repeatedly updated, as of 3:36 EST has no mention of Spitzer’s Democratic ties.

Reuters Canada (which is the only Reuters story I’ve found so far) is mum about Spitzer’s political affiliations.

Once again, as interesting as the story itself is the story about the story. The underlying story is a typical political plot: rising young prosecutor and political can’t resist temptation. Frankly, as a story, it’s been done before. The much more interesting story, of course, is the chronic inability members of the MSM have, when one of their own (i.e., a Democrat) is caught doing something bad, to fulfill their obligation to report the story, with all the who, what, where, why and how questions answered. In the case of Spitzer, given his prominence in the Democratic party, the who question should properly be answered by identifying his party affiliation. It’s shoddy, deceitful journalism that reporters are persistently trying to hide that ball.

UPDATE: It’s emerged that the prostitution ring was fairly ritzy, with hourly rates (!) running from $1076 to $5921. AJStrata asks the right question, which is “where in the heck did Spitzer get that kind of money?”

UPDATE II: Apropos the above, Spitzer was paying at the high end, coming in at $4,300 per hour. Big money for a government employee, right?

UPDATE III:  Regarding that $4,300 figure, Reader Iam let me know that this number is not quite as straightforward as the reports would have it.  Looking at some of the original legal documents squirrelled about over the internet, Reader Iam thinks that the more accurate description of that number is that it “reflects not just the cost of the Feb. 13 encounter specifically, but also a deposit toward unspecified future activity to avoid some of the issues connected with the “service provider’s” not receiving mailed funds in a timely fashion.  (The subtext, stated in some places, is that Spitzer was eschewing  other, more efficient, payment options which more typical clients used.)”  Thanks for the clarification, Reader Iam.