Latest issue 24

A fine offering for Melon Farmers everywhere. It crams in an incredible amount of detail for an awful lot of films from the world of horror, exploitation, giallo etc. Most of the featured films are hardly what you would expect to find at your local video stores though. It certainly is packed with ideas for adding to one's collection.

Produced by US sex workers with the aim to build community and destigmatize sex work by providing a forum for the diverse voices of individuals working in the sex industry.

Latest Issue:

• Lust for Life: Inside America's Only Worker Owned Peepshow
• Respite from the Streets: A Home for Mexico City's Elderly Prostitutes
• Calculate Your Rate as an Escort
• The *Real* Media Whores: Uniting Against Sensationalism in the Wake of Spitzergate

See more details at $pread Magazine

Campaigning anti-censorship magazine with much in common with the Melon Farmers. Based in Australia but many of the issues are of shared interest

Well produced and always an interesting read. One of my favourites.

See www.eros.org.au

Latest issue received Nov 2008: Volume 9 No 4

• Internet Censorship: How Far will it go?
• Preaching to the Perverted: X18+ porn still banned from shops
• Dealing with Robbery

But on the downside, Eros are a bit selective with their liberalism. They spoke out against making an adults only rating for computer games. In fact Fiona Patten of Eros:....congratulated the South Australian Attorney General over his stance on not allowing violent R rated computer games

Most migrant women, including those in the sex industry, have made a clear decision, says a new study, to leave home and take their chances abroad. They are not "passive victims" in need of "saving" or sending back by western campaigners.

It is always refreshing to read a book that turns an issue on its head. Laura María Agustín's trenchant and controversial critique of the anti-trafficking crusade goes a step further: it lays out the matter - in this case, "human trafficking" - on the operating table, dissects it, unravels its innards, and shows the reader, in gory, sometimes eye-watering detail, why everything we think about it is Wrong with a capital W. It's a jarring read; I imagine that those who make a living from campaigning against the scourge of human trafficking will throw it violently across the room, if not into an incinerator. Yet it may also be one of the most important books on migration published in recent years.

Pornography has always been central to debates about sex and emerging new media technologies. Today, debate is increasingly focused on online pornographies.

This collection examines pornographys significance as a focus of definition, debate, and myth; its development as a mainstream entertainment industry; and the emergence of the new economy of Porn 2.0, and of new types of porn labor and professionalism.

It looks at porn style behind the scenes of straight hardcore, in gay, lesbian, and queer pornographies, in shock sites, and in amateur erotica, and investigates the rise of the online porn fan community, the sex blogger, the erotic rate-me site and the visual cultures of swingers.

Treating these developments as part of a broader set of economic and cultural transformations, this book argues that new porn practices reveal much about contemporary and competing views of sex and the self, the real and the body, culture, and commerce.

Available at US Amazon
Available via UK Amazon

A collection of articles on the subject of the media inspired censorship hysteria of the video nasty.

Available from UK Amazon

Great Britain, 1980: the dawn of the video age. With new video companies appearing on a weekly basis, competition for shelf space was fierce. Eye-catching cover designs were essential to succeed in this saturated marketplace. Video was new, unregulated and out of control. These were the outlaw years. These glory days spanned just five years, before a legal crackdown in 1984 banished most of these outrageous videos from the shelves forever. Marc Morris was one of the few to rescue these covers from obscurity, and this book delves deep into his unrivalled collection.

DVDs may have replaced videos in terms of film quality & content but they are hardly compete when it comes to cover art.  This book focuses on the cover art but also includes some accurately researched time line details of exactly when each video turned up on the prosecutor's (DPP) list. Excellent research.

Available at £19.99 from UK Amazon

It's this sexual history of video games that Damon Brown, who covers technology for Playboy, obsessively details how Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and other Sexy Games Changed Our Culture.

Approaching such topics as arm-length pixelated penises and breasts that deserve their own planetary orbit with a sense of humor, Brown explores how virtual sex has gone from the crude, joystick-controlled adult games on the Atari 2600 and text-only cybering in early-'90s AOL chat rooms to bumping uglies in the virtual world Second Life and banging prostitutes in Grand Theft Auto."

He also examines how video vixens went from having bodies practically built out of Lego blocks to becoming ever more realistic -- at least, as much as porn-industry bodies can be called realistic.

The book is available at UK Amazon

ISBN: 0953326160

ISBN: 0953326152

As mentioned by Refused Classification

Just released, and worthy of your attention. It's an interesting look into the history of Australian wowserism. A time that the Religious Right would like to see return. More details, and ordering information can be found at ABC Books.

Won the 2010 Erotic Award for the best publication.

Susan Quilliam took Alex Comfort's original best-seller and made it thoroughly modern, sensitive and inclusive.

The illustrations are beautiful and make the book bountiful. We think The New Joy of Sex should make an important contribution to end the sexual ignorance which prevails in our society and around the world and propose it should become required reading in all schools, colleges and homes, including homes for older people.

Available at UK Amazon

This is a fantastic book. I couldn't put it down had to stay up and read it from cover to cover. Who but Julian Davies would have thought of getting prostitutes to talk about their lives. I didn't think he could top his first two books but he has. This book is funny, sad , frightening and full of sex. Not only is Julian the most handsome writer around he is also one of the most talented.

Available at UK Amazon

A new book details the extent to which countries across the globe are increasingly censoring online information they find strategically, politically or culturally threatening.

Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering challenges the long-standing assumption that the internet is an unfettered space where citizens from around the world can freely communicate and mobilise. In fact, the book makes it clear that the scope, scale and sophistication of net censorship are growing.

There's been a conventional wisdom or myth that the internet was immune from state regulation, says Ronald Deibert, one of the book's editors: What we're finding is that states that were taking a hands-off approach to the internet for many years are now finding ways to intervene at key internet choke points, and block access to information.

China may be one of the world's most Internet-repressive regimes. But its Great Firewall is a clumsy and ineffective tool compared with the subtle information control techniques developed over the last few years by Russia and many of the former Soviet states.

That's one of the conclusions of Access Controlled, a new book out from the Open Net Initiative, a consortium of academics focused on free speech and government interactions with the Internet. A sequel to Access Denied, the Open Net Initiative's 2008 report on the state of global Internet censorship, one of the book's theses is that government control of the Internet has shifted from directly blocking sites to slicker ways of repressing dissidents online.

China and Iran still filter the most content online, according to the ONI. In its country-by-country survey of Internet filtering. But while states like Russia and Belarus perform much less of what the ONI calls first generation or Chinese-style filtering, they're increasingly adept at second and third generation control of the Web.

Second generation censorship, as ONI authors Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski define it in an early chapter, includes tricks like requiring Web site owners to register with the government and using the process to weed out dissident sites with red tape, a tactic often used in Kazakhstan and Belarus. In Belarus and Uzbekistan, veracity and slander laws are used as a pretense for shutting down dissident sites.

Available at UK Amazon.
Available online at www.access-controlled.net

Has become a standard text in the field

Highly recommended

Available from Amazon

With a contribution by yours truly

Over the course of ten seminal issues in magazine format and a hugely successful book format edition, Flesh & Blood became established as the leading brand name in cutting-edge film criticism during the latter years of the Twentieth Century. Always one step ahead of the rest, Flesh & Blood featured the world's best writers reporting on the most important sex, horror and exploitation cinema in the world. Flesh & Blood Compendium is simply The Best of The Best.

Ground-Breaking Articles on eye-opening subjects including: Prosthetic Sex Films, RealiTV and Death Film, Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Marquis de Sade, Jack the Ripper, Postmodern Slasher Movies, British Trash Films from the 70s, Charles Manson, Rape/Revenge movies, African Witchdoctors, French vampires, Japanese Ultra Violence and Belgian artcore...

With a contribution by yours truly

Available at £19.99 from UK Amazon

An excellent read by an author who suffered a police raid whilst researching the book.

Review from Loaded
Book of the Month: Here, in intricate and quite literally anal detail, is the history and background to all the major hardcore films of the last four decades. Every key porn star and director gets a lengthy entry, so to speak: John Holmes, Mary Millington, Traci Lords, Jenna Jameson, Ben Dover, the woman from the Oxo ads and Leslie Philips....Flint avoids mere titillation in favour of hard details. A moist 9/10.

Available at £11.03 from UK Amazon

  Suggested by Alan

Niki Flynn is an actress/model specialising in spanking and the like. She has appeared in films and photoshoots produced in her native USA, Britain, the Czech Republic and Austria (at least).

She is really the ideal antidote to the idea of subs "not really consenting" which was initially touted as a reason for the Dangerous Pictures Act.

A bit more about Niki's book on her Not Blog

Available at £6.39 from UK Amazon for release 4th October 2007

Amazon synopsis:

Niki Flynn is a young woman on a journey into the dark heart of her own sexual fantasies. She is regularly restrained, spanked, caned and whipped in the most notorious adult films of modern times. And she doesn't do it for financial gain. Nor because she's a masochist. Niki Flynn makes extreme adult movies because of her curious and profound love of surrender and punishment. Her desires are all about authority and power in situations when she has none. Where she is at the mercy of others who lack just that. And for the thrill of dread, anticipation, and the euphoria that follows when she admires the marks from the headmaster's cane or the pirate's whip, Niki Flynn is willing to endure torment. Flown to the secretive underground world of taboo film-making, this strange art has led her all over the world. From schoolgirl canings in England to spankings in California, from a Stasi interrogation in Germany to a forced haircut in Prague, Niki Flynn progressed to her darkest role ever - in Bratislava, where she danced with the fiercest werewolves of all.

ISBN: 0753512289

Fascinating study of the porn business particularly concentrating on the money to made from porn and who makes it.

Available from UK Amazon

Novel set in the world of film censorship by Paul Hoffman who was previously a senior examiner at the BBFC.

Available from UK Amazon who also have the following details

Synopsis: Monuments of Censorship

Do you remember the video nasty? It is 1984 and video has just arrived in Britain's homes. With it comes a widespread distrust and fear. The public dread a deluge of porn, ultraviolence, cannibalism and dismemberment. Eager to reflect the public mood, Parliament decides to panic too, and gifts sweeping powers to the chief film censor, Nick Berg. Every film ever made has to be reclassified for home viewing. But rather than become a tool of moral hysteria, Berg has a grand plan. He will create an entirely new kind of censorship - benign, thoughtful, intelligent. First he must create a team to implement his wishes. This 'Magnificent Seven' will have the power to decide what others can and cannot see.

They will encounter the great monuments of censorship - The Exorcist, Cannibal Holocaust and Reservoir Dogs - as well as the obscure and unexpected: Rupert Bear and Little Yum and the almost unwatchable Nappy Love. But off-screen, all is soon not well in the inner sanctum. What Berg doesn't realize is that his prized rationale is flawed. Fault lines appear within his team of seven. And a struggle for power is set in motion.

Review: Four Stars

This book is gripping, thought provoking, and very enjoyable. The problem is that it's enjoyable because of what it has to say about censorship rather than because it's a great novel. The narrator is hard to sympathise with, many of the other characters are not drawn that fully, there are a few unresolved and rather irrelevant themes, and the plot revolves, in the end, around some petty squabbling. An interesting examination of ethics, and a great book, but not really much of a storyline. Still gets four stars from me, though!

An excellent history of video classification and censorship in the UK from the "video nasties" controversy to the present day. Includes chapters on the history of video, the "video nasties", the black market, the prosecutions of traders in unclassified material, media effects, and sex vids. A well written and intelligent study, well worth reading. (David Alexander)

Available from UK Amazon

ISBN: 1 900486 10 5

Like the banned films he so dearly loves, it's very difficult to classify. It's part documentary, part adventure movie, part love story and, of course, part horror (in homage to his favourite movie, The Exorcist). It's one hell of a ride though.

I found myself frequently laughing out loud, particularly at the saga of how he got into broadcasting (radio) in the first place - a real eye-opener if you listen to his weekly film reviews with Simon Mayo.

I'd love to hear this as an audiobook in the actual words of Ol' Big Hands himself (he'd have to slow down though - he'd gabble through it in about 25 minutes if his radio performances are anything to go by!)

In the meantime, I'd thoroughly recommend this book to absolutely anyone who likes films.

Book available at UK Amazon
Kindle edition available at US Amazon

ISBN-10: 184794602X

From Amelia May Kingston

Some time ago I decided that my contribution against the proposed bill outlawing the possession of "extreme pornographic images" would be to write and publish a semi-autobiographical novel The Triumph of Hope to show how BDSM can be part of a rounded life-style practised by intelligent, caring, creative people.

It is not pornography, but a challenging, erotic, autobiograpy detailing the changing perspectives of a disabled, middle-aged female psychotherapist as she interacts with the world of alternative sexuality. It follows her journey as a determined survivor from childhood to maturity through varied life-experiences in many parts of the world and at last to a joyful and shameless old age in which she finally recognises and accepts herself.

Is it really about me? Now that would be telling ... but my playmates may recognise themselves in some of the composite characters I have created.

Available at £11.53 from UK Amazon
More details at www.youareunique.co.uk/TOH.htm

ISBN 1-4116-7695-5

Violence and Sex Work in Britain explores violence and homicide in the context of sex work, showing how current law and repressive policing tactics exacerbate vulnerability. It exposes inadequacies in the criminal justice system, leading to failures in investigations and prosecutions and failures to prevent violence from known offenders. It attacks the radical feminist ideology currently driving government policy, arguing that its stigmatization of sex workers' clients ignores sex workers' own experiences and testimony while colluding with policies that make sex work more dangerous.

Hilary described her findings that it is generally not clients who perpetrate violence against sex workers, but individuals who pretend to be clients to gain access to a brothel or persuade a sex worker to get in their car, as well as community vigilantes, law enforcement staff and robbery gangs targeting sex workers in the knowledge that as well as having cash on the premises, they are unlikely to report.

Available from UK Amazon

From AVN

Dr. Marty Klein's recently published volume, America's War On Sex, is quite simply the best book yet written dealing with the collision between the adult industry, sex-positive activism and the religious right. Every single page contains valuable information and analysis for anyone involved in the adult industry, and should be considered required reading for anyone who wants to understand why so many people in the United States, particularly the so-called "cultural leaders," are so fucked up when it comes to all subjects sexual.

Those who are trying to 'clean up' America say they're fighting for a number of critical reasons: the family, marriage, morals, education, community safety," Klein perceptively notes at the outset. But this isn't really true. It's a war against sex: sexual expression, sexual exploration, sexual arrangements, sexual privacy, sexual choice, sexual entertainment, sexual health, sexual imagination, sexual pleasure.

Klein's thesis is broken into several chapters dealing with such subjects as sex education, reproductive rights and the media, both broadcast and Internet, but as becomes quickly evident, those are really just different aspects of the same war, fought with the same weapons, using the same (mis)information and targeting the same objective: To control and restrict everyone's sexuality, even their own.

And what better place to start than with the kids?

The "anti-sex educators" received $200 million in 2006 alone to teach "abstinence education," but as Klein explains at length, it's a doomed enterprise.

Kids using abstinence this weekend will have sex. They've promised they won't, but they will. How do we want to prepare them for this? We tell kids to wear seatbelts, even though we don't want them to crash. We tell kids to call if they'll be late, even though we want them home on time. What do we offer kids who don't refuse sex the way we want them to? Nothing – no backup plan, no mnemonic devices, no support, no information to protect themselves. Ask an abstinence proponent what a kid should do if he or she has sex, and they reply, 'Don't have sex.''

Available in hardback at $30 from US Amazon

Don’t judge a book by its cover (or its title, for that matter). I figured that I was in for another tedious anti-gaming screed full of myths and hysteria about games and gamers. Boy, was I wrong. Massively wrong.

Lawrence Kutner, PhD, and Cheryl K. Olson, ScD, cofounders and directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media, have written the most thoroughly balanced and refreshingly open-minded book about video games ever penned. They cut through the stereotypes and fear-mongering that have thus far pervaded the debate over the impact of video games and offer parents and policymakers common-sense advice about how to approach these issues in a more level-headed fashion. They argue that:

Today, an amalgam of politicians, health professionals, religious leaders and children’s advocates are voicing concerns about video games that are identical to the concerns raised one, two and three generations ago with the introduction of other new media. Most of these people have the best of intentions. They really want to protect children from evil influences. As in the past, a few have different agendas and are using the issue manipulatively. Unfortunately, many of their claims are based on scanty evidence, inaccurate assumptions, and pseudoscience. Much of the current research on violent video games is both simplistic and agenda driven.

...

They conclude, therefore, that “children are drawn to violent themes because listening to and playing with those frightening images helps them safely master the experience of being frightened. This is an important skill, perhaps even a life-saving one.” They also argue that “Video games give free rein to fantasies of power, glory and freedom. That’s quite different from the mundane lives of must children.” (p. 121) In this sense, Kutner and Olson’s argument is very much consistent with the work of Gerald Jones, who wrote the brilliant book Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super-Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence. In that book, Jones argued that:

One of the functions of stories and games is to help children rehearse for what they’ll be in later life. Anthropologists and psychologists who study play, however, have shown that there are many other functions as well—one of which is to enable children to pretend to be just what they know they’ll never be. Exploring, in a safe and controlled context, what is impossible or too dangerous or forbidden to them is a crucial tool in accepting the limits of reality. Playing with rage is a valuable way to reduce its power. Being evil and destructive in imagination is a vital compensation for the wildness we all have to surrender on our way to being good people.

Available via UK Amazon

There are an estimated one million swingers in the UK and according to the author of a new book, the sexy pastime could become even more common place thanks to the credit crunch.

Ashley Lister, who wrote and researched Swingers: Female Confidential, reckons that in the coming months more people will shun expensive restaurants and nights out in favour of cheaper pleasures.

And for many that means meeting regularly to have sex with someone other than their partners.

Ashley says: With a recession on its way, swinging is about to go through a boom period because it is such a cost effective way for people to enjoy themselves and to get maximum enjoyment from minimum outlay.

Ashley spoke to students, single mums in their 20s, unemployed swingers, top lawyers and even swinging doctors - of every age, size and shape imaginable.

And he discovered that contrary to popular belief, most shun the notorious swingers parties in favour of getting to know a small number of similar minded people socially. Then it is simply a case of consenting adults taking part in whatever sexual practice they desire generally, with the full support and encouragement of their partner, husband or wife.

Ashley said: I found it riveting to talk to these people about a subject that is normally forbidden. They really are just normal people, it's just they have a liberated attitude towards sex. They could be your neighbour, your boss or even the person who sits next to you at work and you would never know. But what I enjoyed about it all was the openness among themselves and they actually seemed empowered by what they do in that they could state exactly what they want and just do that.

Having researched and written his insight into the world of swinging, Ashley was only left with one question about the ever growing phenomenon - why do women do it?

Ashley said: Nobody asked me why men did it, they seemed to understand men would do that kind of thing for more sex, but everyone asked what motivated women, so I decided to look into it and write Swingers: Female Confidential.

The taboos around sexual equality in the bedroom are finally being broken down and if we continue in the current vein they will be ultimately vanquished.

It used to be that a woman with a libido was considered to be dangerous or insane and there has long been the double standards between male and female promiscuity. To some extent that is still true today, but I don't think it has the same severe connotations that it used to have.

Society has become more open, we have the Ann Summer shops on the high street, we have erotic fiction in print and there is an acceptance now that women are allowed to be sexual creatures unrestricted by the double standard hierarchy imposed on them by a patriarchal society.

And liberated women are more free to do what they want and that's why I think they turn to swinging.

Available from UK Amazon

Antony Loewenstein, a Sydney-based freelance journalist and blogger, has recently published his new book: The Blogging Revolution. This book talks about the impact of blogging on six countries: Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, China and Cuba.

He says:

I chose the six countries in the book because they are routinely referred to in the West as “enemies” or “allies” of Washington and we were rarely gaining true insights into life for average citizens, away from stories about “terrorism”. I wanted to talk to bloggers, writers, dissidents, politicians and citizens and hear their stories, removed from “official” perspectives.

The paperback is available at UK Amazon

It was 20 years ago this month that Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced his fatwa on Salman Rushdie. I inform all zealous Muslims of the world, he proclaimed: that the author of the book entitled The Satanic Verses . . . and all those involved in its publication who were aware of its contents, are sentenced to death.

This was not just a brutally shocking act that forced Rushdie into hiding for almost a decade; it also helped to transform the character of British society. The Rushdie affair was the moment at which a new Islam dramatically announced itself as a political force — and the moment when Britain realised that it was facing a new kind of social conflict.

Muslim fury seemed to be driven not by harassment or discrimination, but by a sense of hurt that Rushdie's words had offended their deepest beliefs. Where did such hurt come from? How could a novel create such outrage? Could Muslim anguish be assuaged and should it be?

Available at UK Amazon for release on 1st April 2009

Comprehensive info about the Nasties which is particularly strong at providing lots of press cuttings giving a good feeling for the hysteria

Available from UK Amazon

ISBN: 0953326187

Thanks to David Alexander

Interesting book, written a few years back. A well argued corrective to the "radical" feminist critique of porn. Some of your readers may be interested. It's an easy read.

Now available online here: www.zetetics.com/xxx/index.html

See book review from the Sydney Morning Herald

The front cover of The Porn Report - hot-pink lettering on a sinister black background - would seem to reinforce this sense of pornography as something dark and dangerous.

But this is the very view with which the book effectively takes issue. In that sense, the authors have followed the example of Alfred Kinsey and Shere Hite, whose reports on human sexuality sought to debunk pervasive myths, or ended up debunking them. Whether or not one agrees with their conclusions, the fact that they've broached the subject at all is sure to have a positive effect. Too often the debate about pornography is commandeered by capital-letter moralists and demagogic politicians who can always buy a few cheap votes by engineering a moral panic.

The book is based on the Understanding Pornography in Australia research project, funded by the Australian Research Council. It begins by placing pornography, obscenity and censorship in a historical context and shows how the moral emphasis has shifted from protecting women and the working class to protecting children. This is followed by a modest survey exploring pornographic consumption (including interviews with some respondents), a study of pornographic content and a discussion of various ethical issues connected with the making and consumption of porn.

On the whole, the authors are fairly sanguine about the nature and effects of porn. Indeed, I think they are rather too sanguine. For example, there is a lengthy survey of "cottage industry" or "DIY" porn but hardly any consideration of the seamier regions of the internet (with child pornography an exception).

Available at US Amazon

Wide ranging study of porn in Britain and the US

Available from UK Amazon

Porno Manifesto will change your view on porn films

Numerous people still have a lot of reservations when it comes to watching porn films. They perceive them as something dirty and think that they are watched only by people who are perverse and immoral. That is why we recommend the book Porno Manifesto which was written by a French porn diva Ovidie several years ago. Let us look at what the book is actually about and why it might change your view on porn films and industry.

Ovidie, born in 1980 in France, a persistent feminist and a graduate in philosophy, is convinced that porn business is good for a woman's self-confidence and erotic films do not humiliate women. She is also convinced that every woman should make time to enjoy her sexual life if she wants to be a real woman. So at the beginning, Ovidie is convinced that watching and shooting porn films is a good thing. It is these films that raise self-confidence in women. Moreover, acting in such films turns a woman into a real woman. Of course, this is an exaggerated statement because a real woman does not need to prove her sexuality in that way, but Ovidie has her own mind and speaks from her experience. The reason she speaks in such a provocative way is that she is a porn star and she wants to enlighten women in her own unique way.

Available at UK Amazon

ISBN: 2842712374

This book argues in no uncertain terms that the entire approach to sex and sexuality in Britain today is discriminatory, in that it presumes a normal and correct (heteronormative) way for individuals to conduct themselves - and therefore sees all alternative forms of sexual conduct as needing to be subject to strict legal safeguards. The latter may carry the stamp of outward respectability from an essentially white, middle class and male psychiatric profession: however, they are little more than old-fashioned puritan morality dressed up as rational standards.

As religion's hold over society fades away, so the modern pseudo-science of psychiatry tightens its grip on the law-making process!

Were this the case in any other field of human endeavour, there would be a national outcry: but because the discrimination under scrutiny is in respect of sexual conduct, and the British attitude to debating sex and sexuality has rarely raised its head above the level of seaside postcard humour, almost all attempts to engage in discussion of this issue are met with polite put-down.

Nonetheless, discrimination victimises against individuals for doing no more than engaging in perfectly legal and consensual activity with other adults. This book documents cases where individuals have lost job, home life and family as a direct result of societal prurience.

It highlights how the current approach to Equal Rights - about to be strengthened through the Equality Bill - does little to protect anyone who falls outside recognised minority groups. As one academic comments: Equality is the framework that makes discrimination possible.

It proposes an alternative and radical Human Rights-based approach, in which discrimination itself is redefined not in terms of groups affected, but relative to the harm done to innocent individuals.

Book available from CAAN

The Assault on Liberty , Dominic Raab’s lament for Britain’s lost liberal democracy should reinforce the arguments of those already worried by the state of British human rights; and it should make those who dismiss these concerns think again.

The roots of the problem are, according to Raab, a mix of the political day-to-day and the philosophical underpinning of a pro-European centre-left party. The 24-hour news culture and baying for blood of the tabloids has meant that successive prime ministers and home secretaries have needed to sound tough. The more crime was perceived to rise, the more ministers vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’. This auction of fear led to antisocial behaviour orders; the events of 9/11 in America and 7/7 at home led to a similar trade-off of our liberties to counter the terrorist threat. So far, so incontrovertible.

I do wonder, though, how a future Tory government would deal with these dilemmas. Would David Cameron or his shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve (for whom Raab works as chief of staff) really face down the Sun and the Daily Mail once in office? Would they put their concerns over prison overcrowding into practice, by agreeing to early releases, or telling the courts to take a more subtle approach to sentencing, as those perfidious Europeans do? Somehow I doubt it.

Available at UK Amazon

Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema

As Jasper Sharp's excellent, exhaustive study Behind the Pink Curtain: The Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema makes clear. Many of the leading directors in the Japanese film industry today, especially those who entered it after the studio system collapsed in the early 1970s, learned their craft in the porno industry.

Sharp explains in thoroughly researched, fluently written detail, Japan's adult film industry has long since passed its two-decade heyday, which began with the migration of the movie audience to television and the subsequent loosening of on-screen restrictions on sex and nudity in the 1960s, and ended with the rise of video in the 1980s, which sent erotic films for theatrical release into a long, irreversible decline.

In the past two decades, the adult film (as opposed to adult video) industry has solidified — or rather fossilized — into a small circuit of specialized theaters supplied by a small number of companies. The makers of what are now called "pinku eiga" (pink films) have developed a rough formula that Sharp carefully defines, but essentially amounts to a one-hour running time, with scenes of simulated bonking tossed in every 10 minutes or so.

All in all, however, Sharp has written a monumental work in a long-neglected field that no one will probably feel the need to expand on significantly for years, even decades. Behind the Pink Curtain is as close as a book comes to being a category killer.

Available at UK Amazon

In 1973, short on cash and with the rent due, a peacenik former Broadway gypsy living in Manhattan's Meat Packing District signed on to cook for the cast and crew of a new film, The Devil in Miss Jones. She soon found herself cast in the lead role, and her legendary erotic performance launched her on a career that would come to define the era of Porn Chic.

This is the story of Georgina Spelvin, a poignant and wholly bawdy memoir of her life before and after porn fame, full of riveting anecdotes and marvelous gossip from time spent among the famous and the infamous. With a storyteller's touch, Georgina takes us to the bright lights of Broadway, the glamour of Manhattan's Latin Quarter, the fervor of the Vietnam Era peace movement, and, of course, the so-called Golden Age of Porn.

Thirty years in the making and five years in the writing, there are more laughs than tears, but no apologies or excuses. It is not a victim's whine, but a romping good read, filled with the colorful details of a road less traveled.

Available at UK Amazon
Available at US Amazon

I have just finished reading Alan Travis' book and found it an excellent read. The majority of the book is about book burning from the 20's up to and including the 60's. It provides a fine illustration of how a few mad Home Secretaries, Public Prosectors and Customs could so successfully keep the Home Office furnaces well fired with fine literature. During this period, the authorities maintained a secret list of a 1000 books that were liable to burning. Roy Jenkins comes out of it heroicially as he added a defence to the Obscene Publications Act allowing literature to be exempted. This was the begining of the end of book censorship in the UK

Available from UK Amazon

The official history of the D notice system, the voluntary self-censorship arrangement between the media and Whitehall, has just been published - though, ironically, only after five chapters had been excised.

The history, written by Rear Admiral Nicholas Wilkinson, one of the more enlightened past secretaries of the Committee, provides telling insights into the relationships between editors and Britain's defence, security and intelligence establishment. The voluntary nature of the D notice system - it has no legal status - meant that personal friendships were crucial. Some would say they still are.

Plans are afoot to publish the full history - including the past 12 years - as soon as Labour is out of power. Self-censorship acts in mysterious ways.

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Found to be an illuminating read, especially regarding the lengths Mary Whitehouse and friends will go to prevent a film being shown, although the book is now a bit outdated

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