Sign of the Times: Porn Now Doing Brisk Business in Iraq

I blame Bush.

The nude women on the DVD cover in a Baghdad street stall say it all: Change, whether you like it or not, is afoot in Iraq.

Hundreds of porn DVDs are stacked elbow-deep on a wooden table in Jassim Hanoun's ramshackle stall on a downtown sidewalk. His other tables have Hollywood blockbusters, like "King Kong." But not surprisingly, it's the sex that sells best.

"I've got everything," Hanoun says of his sex selection, flashing the kind of impish grin only a 22-year-old in tight jeans and slicked-back hair can pull off with any real conviction. "What do you want? I've got foreign films, Arab, Iraqi, Indian, celebrities — whatever you like."

The porn, in an odd way, has told the story of Iraq's security and political situation since Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003. It emerged in the anything-goes atmosphere that erupted in the vacuum immediately following the U.S. invasion — then went back into hiding amid the anarchy when armed militias roamed the capital through 2008, targeting those they saw as immoral.

Its reemergence since then reflects how security has improved but also how the fragile government is busy with more pressing issues than spicy videos.

You want spicy? How about some very creative movie titles?

And the demand is there. Hanoun unloads scores of adult movies a day — at nearly $3 each.

His stock ranges from the mundane to the startlingly extreme, including bestiality.

The titles alone — many along the lines of "The Rape of the Coeds" — offer disturbing insight into the possible psychological effects the years of indiscriminate violence have had on Iraqis.

Many have seen, if not first hand, then certainly on video and TV, children blown up, people kidnapped and beheaded and prisoners abused by U.S. forces.

The films don't show actual rapes — they're just titles tacked onto mainstream porn films downloaded from the Internet as well as homemade movies of amateur Arab couples.

In a nod to the politically elusive dream of Arab unity, Hanoun carries a collection entitled "Cheap Meat."

"It's got Syrian, Egyptian, Lebanese girls," he says. "All the Arabs."

But, in an ironic symbol of the difficulty with which Arabs have had coming together, the DVD gets stuck in a loop in the first five minutes.

Coming Soon: Paki Fatwa on Google

Let's face it. When people find out you folks in Pakistan are the world's leading purveyors of the art of donkey sex, world travels fast and lots of face is lost. Oh, and searching for child sex and camel sex isn't quite going to help your street cred with all that "Land of the Pure" nonsense.

THEY may call it the "Land of the Pure", but Pakistan turns out to be anything but.

The Muslim country, which has banned content on at least 17 websites to block offensive and blasphemous material, is the world's leader in online searches for pornographic material.

Google ranks Pakistan No.1 in the world in searches for pornographic terms, outranking every other country in searches per person for certain sex-related content, FOXNews.com said.

Pakistan has ranked No.1 in searches per-person for "horse sex" since 2004, "donkey sex" since 2007, "rape pictures" between 2004 and 2009, "rape sex" since 2004, "child sex" between 2004 and 2007 and since 2009, "animal sex" since 2004 and "dog sex" since 2005, according to Google Trends and Google Insights, features of Google that generate data based on popular search terms.

The country has also been No.1 in searches for "sex", "camel sex", "rape video" and "child sex video".

Google Trends generates data of popular search terms in geographic locations during specific time frames. Google Insights is a more advanced version that allows users to filter a search to geographic locations, time frames and the nature of a search, including web, images, products and news.

"We do our best to provide accurate data and to provide insights into broad search patterns, but the results for a given query may contain inaccuracies due to data sampling issues, approximations, or incomplete data for the terms entered," Google said in a statement, when asked about the accuracy of its reports.

The Embassy of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan did not reply to a request for an interview.

Anyone Surprised By This?

Stunner: Government employees sit around checking out porn sites all day?

Whodathunkit?

At the SEC, all they thought about was SEX.

The country's top financial watchdogs turned out to be horndogs who spent hours gawking at porn Web sites as the economy teetered on the brink, according to a memo released Thursday night.

The shocking findings include Securities and Exchange Commission senior staffers using government computers to browse for booty and an accountant who tried to access the raunchy sites 16,000 times in one month.

Their titillating pastime was discovered during 33 probes of employees looking at explicit images in the past five years, said the memo obtained by The Associated Press.

It says 31 of those probes occurred in the 2-1/2 years since the country's financial system nearly crashed.

The report was written by SEC Inspector General David Kotz in response to a request from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa).

Among the startling findings:

- A senior attorney at the SEC's Washington headquarters spent up to eight hours a day looking at and downloading pornography. When his government computer ran out of hard drive space, he burned the files to CDs or DVDs. He later agreed to resign.

- An accountant was blocked more than 16,000 times in a single month from visiting "sex" or "pornography" sites, but still managed to amass a collection of "very graphic" material by using Google to bypass the SEC's internal filter. He wound up with a 2-week suspension.

- Seventeen of the randy employees were "at a senior level" earning salaries of up to $222,418.

- The number of cases jumped from two in 2007 to 16 in 2008. The cracks in the financial system emerged in mid-2007 and spread into full-blown panic by the fall of 2008.

At Last: Porn for the Blind

Finally the visually-impaired can fell the wondrous joys of the male love robot. At last we have equality.

A pornographic magazine for the blind has been launched - complete with explicit text and raised pictures of naked men and women.

The book, the brainchild of Lisa Murphy and called Tactile Minds, is designed to be 'enjoyed' by the blind and visually impaired - and is on sale for £150.

Among the 17 raised images include a naked woman in a 'disco pose', a woman with 'perfect breasts' and a 'male love robot'.

Canadian Lisa says that she made the book to fill a gap in the market, adding: "There are no books of tactile pictures of nudes for adults.

"We're breaking new ground. Playboy has an edition with Braille wording, but there are no pictures."

She said that she made the book after realising that the 'blind have been left out in a culture saturated with sexual images'.

Keep Your Eyes on the Road and Ignore That Porn Video Playing on the Billboard

Sometimes you've got to admit hackers have a twisted sense of humor. It's a shame we don't have some traffic-cam video to see the reaction of motorists.

Traffic jerked to a standstill as rubbernecking motorists ogled a pornographic clip posted by hackers on big-screen video billboards in Moscow, Russian news agencies reported on Friday.

The company that operates the billboards, Panno.ru, said hackers were behind a graphic sex video broadcast late Thursday night on two roadside screens along Moscow's Garden Ring Road, one of the city's busiest arteries.

"This was an attack by hackers on the computers, as a result of which one of the commercial video clips was swapped for an indecent video," Panno.ru commercial director Viktor Laptev told RIA-Novosti.

He speculated the attack could have been linked to competition on the advertising market, or simply "hooliganism."

Witnesses said traffic crawled to a halt as unbelieving motorists craned their necks to stare at the X-rated clip which ran for about 20 minutes on the oversized screens.

They say within three minutes they discovered they'd been hacked yet it took another 12 minutes to shut it down. Guess they wanted to watch the video as well.

'No One Gets Brought Up Thinking They'll Be a Floozy'

A real banner day for the teaching profession. First we had the New Jersey teacher busted in a cash-for-grades scheme.

Now here we have a teacher fired in April now doing porn. Heck, the school year hasn't even begun and we have two early candidates for teacher of the year.

A Floridian biology teacher fired after posing for racy pictures has landed a new career – in pornography.

Tiffany Shepherd, 31, made headlines in April after bikini-clad pictures of her on a fishing charter got her canned from Port St. Lucie High School. She turned to doing porn, she told a Florida news outlet, after losing custody of two of her three kids to her ex-husband and sending out 2,500 resumes – some even to prisons – without landing a new teaching job.

"I'm not particularly proud of it. To be honest, I hate it," Shepherd told Page2live.com. "I'm an educated woman, but I never thought it would come to this. No one gets brought up thinking they'll be a floozy."

On screen, Shepherd goes by the name Leah Lust and has filmed five feature films, including one titled ‘My first sex teacher,' where Shepherd portrays the very job she's been trying to get back.

"It's very professional," says Shepherd on the Web site. "Everyone's tested -- for venereal diseases and AIDS -- and I'm carrying around my little piece of paper that says I'm fine. They love me because I take care of myself and I don't run out to party with my money.

More here.

Under the name Leah Lust, she's appeared in movies such as Please Bang My Wife and My First Sex Teacher. Shepherd is angry about the second film, saying, "I’m livid about that one. It wasn’t supposed to be about a teacher and a student. I didn’t even know the name of the film until I saw it online.”

Imagine that! Unethical porno makers.

'It's Felony Stupid, But It's Not a Crime'

A bunch of kids at the Isabelle Jackson Elementary School in California could really be hot for teacher this summer.

California teacher Crystal Defanti sent her students home with a video of class memories, but the DVD contained certain "memories" that were not appropriate for the students to see, Associated Content reports.

The class memories DVD contained six seconds of the teacher having sex on a couch spliced between shots of the children, students at Isabelle Jackson Elementary School in California, sharing their memories in class.

The teacher learned that the sex clip had been included in the DVD when a parent called to let her know. She then called parents to alert them of the sex clip and ask them to get rid of the DVDs, the Associated Press reports.

"Just destroy them," Elk Grove Unified School District spokeswoman Torrey Johnson said of the DVDs.

Apparently Ms. Defanti won't be losing her job.

The Elk Grove Unified School District says they are investigating, but legal experts say it's unlikely that the teacher will lose her job.

"It's felony stupid, but it's not a crime," said defense expert Ken Rosenfeld. "Is it something that she should be disciplined for? Absolutely, but fired for? She didn't intend for this to happen."

Hard Times in New York: Paterson to Tax Online Porn

Pretty soon there'll be nothing left to tax. This gives new meaning to screwing the taxpayers.

Talk of a New York tax increase just got a little, er, hotter.

It turns out that New York Gov. David Paterson's proposal on downloads of music and software would also apply to downloading pornography, an element unnoticed in the public debate so far.

The state Division of Budget confirmed to The Associated Press that the tax would apply to skin flicks, whether they are downloaded online or purchased through pay-per-view on television.

``By taxing it you're legitimizing it,'' said Michael Long, chairman of New York's Conservative Party. ``You're sending a message to the children, you're sending a message to the teenagers, if you're taxing it _ how can it be wrong? I don't know how you can sink much deeper.''

And because of recent court decisions over the relatively new area of taxing Internet transactions, the sales tax would apply only to pornographers who are located in the state. It's a break for out-of-state Web sites that wouldn't have to collect from New Yorkers.

``It's absolutely outrageous if they're profiting off of pornography,'' Long said of the state. ``If they're raising funds, it's encouraging the citizens of this state to download it.''

It's difficult to tally how much people spend for online porn, but TopTenREVIEWS.com, a sight reviewing products and ranking their quality, performance and revenue, says the industry brought in $2.84 billion in 2006. The cable, pay-per-view and phone sex industries brought in $2.19 billion that year, according to the site.

I doubt there's much of the porn industry in New York State as it is, and whatever is there will probably pick up and leave, just like most businesses that have been taxed out of state or out of business.

'She's Definitely a Tramp -- Just Nasty'

The folks in this Tennessee town are shocked--shocked!--that a scene from a porn flick was shot on a local playground.

Granted, it's probably pushing the envelope and they'll probably hunt down the offenders.

But the most amusing part is the reporter for the TV station surfing the porn website--fore research purposes only, of course. Check out the video clips at the link.

Bartlett Grove Park sits in the middle of a subdivision. It's a favorite spot for children, and was recently the site of an adult website porno shoot.

The video clip we discovered begins innocently enough.

"I thought I'd come out for the day," says the "model."

She then exposes herself on the playground slide.

"She's definitely a tramp -- just nasty," parent Barbara Taylor said in reaction to the video.

Taylor had a typical reaction.

"I think it's disgusting," she said. "I think I'm not letting my kids go down that slide anymore."

Danny Berryhill is a Baptist minister who lives right across the street.

"I don't have the words," he said. "I'm a Baptist minister, and I have no words."

Except for hubba hubba and what was the website address?

Japanese Bureaucrat Suspended for Surfing Porn Sites All Day

Look at the bright side. While he's suspended from work, he can surf for porn all day long.

A city bureaucrat in western Japan was suspended from his job after officials discovered he visited porn websites at work almost every day, often spending hours gazing at nude photos, a city official said.

The 57-year-old man, who was working in the construction division of Kinokawa City in Wakayama, surfed porn sites from an office computer almost every day for eight months from June 2007, spending up to three hours a day on the websites, said Kazuhiko Ueyama, a Kinokawa City official.

Angered citizens called city hall all day on Friday, saying the suspension was not enough, he added.

The city only found out about his activities in February when it noticed that his computer had picked up the same virus repeatedly from the sites, Ueyama said.

"These were foreign 'adult sites' and they got through the security net" that the city had installed for its computers, he said.

"The man apologized each time we spoke to him, but we couldn't quite get him to explain to us why he did this," Ueyama added.

Here's a clue: Maybe he likes porn.

Godzilla's Sketchy Nuptials

A rather strange announcement from New York Yankees slugger Hideki Matsui.

"Godzilla" has taken a bride.

Yankee slugger Hideki Matsui stunned his fans and teammates Thursday when he revealed he secretly wed a longtime girlfriend at a New York City chapel.

"I met somebody who felt right. That was it," the 33-year-old outfielder said upon returning to the Bombers' spring training camp in Tampa.

Matsui refused to reveal many details about Wednesday's wedding or his new wife, only saying she is 25 and from Japan, where she formerly worked "in a reputable position at a highly respected company."

He is so secretive about his wife's identity that he held up a drawing of her, rather than a photo, at a press conference where he showed off the silver band on his left hand.

"I have decided to spend my whole life with her," said Matsui, considered the most eligible bachelor in his native Japan.

As teammates congratulated him, Yankee captain Derek Jeter and outfielder Bobby Abreu claimed they were conned into a bet by the newlywed slugger.

Don't expect to see Derek Jeter walking down the aisle any time soon. Do I even need to explain that to anyone?

Meanwhile, this little nugget jumped off the page.

Matsui, also known back home for his large collection of porn films, said he and his wife have been planning their wedding for a year. He began dating her during the 2006-07 off-season. He said the nuptials took place in New York City at an undisclosed chapel.

Large collection of porn films?

Dude!

And boy, do they mean large.

Take porn, for instance. While porn is not publicly displayed, every fakir worth his rod has a vast all-inclusive personal museum of deviance that would make Casanova blush. For comparison’s sake, according to Sports Illustrated, Yankee outfielder Hideki Matsui has 55,000 distinct items in his porn collection.

Hello! 55,000 distinct items? How does this man find the time to play baseball?

Update: Thanks to Hot Air and Ace of Spades HQ for the links.

Iran May Execute Porn Stars

Life is so much fun in the Thirteenth Century.

All this time I figured Little Mahmoud had a thing for gay porn.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's parliament on Wednesday voted in favor of a bill that could lead to death penalty for persons convicted of working in the production of pornographic movies.

With a 148-5 vote in favor and four abstentions, lawmakers present at the Wednesday session of the 290-seat parliament approved that "producers of pornographic works and main elements in their production are considered corruptors of the world and could be sentenced to punishment as corruptors of the world."

The term, "corruptor of the world" is taken from the Quran, the Muslims' holy book, and ranks among the highest on the scale of an individual's criminal offenses. Under Iran's Islamic Penal Code, it carries a death penalty.

The "main elements" refered to in the draft include producers, directors, cameramen and actors involved in making a pornographic video.