UPDATED & EXPANDED !
NL-This morning I woke up to an overwhelming amount of breaking stories in my mail box. The big one being a link to a pastebin of an email chain involving several AIDS Healthcare Foundations big wigs plus Tim from AIM fame, Shelley Lubben of Pink Cross and much more. There are pages and pages to go through. Just a quick scan shows people being paid to support AHF’s side, and people being paid to find the people to support AHF’s side. And that’s just the beginning… Luckily Whiteacre gets up earlier than I do and already had dissected a lot of this info and since emails HE WROTE appear in the mix, he took on the task of reconstructing and opining about it.
OP/Ed by Michael Whiteacre
Dozens of AHF emails have now been leaked on pastebin.com. Links to these communications were emailed to various journalists, activists, bloggers, government bureaucrats and industry insiders. The content of these emails is truly startling, and provide an alternatively fascinating, illuminating and disturbing glimpse into an organization where a battle-oriented mentality reigns supreme.
What stands out as most obvious is that Michael Weinstein runs his organization as a dictator. There is no sign that he answers to anyone – not even the AHF board of directors. He is revealed as the ultimate micro-manager.
The emails also seem to reveal a level of collusion, or at least a suspicious level of cooperation, between several persons and institutions that are (at least in theory) supposed to be neutral parties.
I decided to write my personal construction of AHF’s war on the porn industry, utilizing the leaked emails (which contain so much private information, including mentions of and emails from myself, as well as emails from pothers that I had been forwarded previously by the parties who sent them, that they are undoubtedly authentic) in conjunction with historical material and my own interviews and research materials. Here is part one.
This is the story of master manipulator Michael Weinstein of AIDS Healthcare Foundation – who played the City of LA against LA County, and the mainstream “straight” porn industry against the gay porn business; colluded with like-minds at Cal-OSHA, UCLA and LA County Department of Public Health; and chewed up and spit out an assortment of pathetic adult industry fringe players.
The Common Denominator: Sensationalism = Profit
Weinstein doesn’t speak much of his early life; he doesn’t seem to have many credentials, other than his tremendous savvy and his flair for sensationalistic grandstanding.
According to his official bio, before becoming involved in HIV/AIDS related issues in the 1980s, he was a businessman and graphic designer. Then, in 2001 he received an honorary Doctorate Degree from Whittier College for his career achievements.
Before founding AIDS Healthcare Foundation in 1987, Weinstein had served as coordinator of the Stop the AIDS Quarantine Committee and then as executive director of the Los Angeles AIDS Hospice Committee, which led the fight for hospice care in the mid-eighties.
Under Weinstein’s leadership, AHF grew from “a group of friends dedicated to the creation of dignified care for people in the last stages of AIDS to the largest AIDS organization in the United States.”
Weinstein also created the popular Out of the Closet thrift store chain, the nation’s largest AIDS-related retail business. Out of the Closet now boasts stores in California and Florida, some of which offer free (Elisa-based) rapid HIV testing.
AHF’s financial statements make clear, the vast majority of AHF’s revenue derives from its AIDS drug pharmacies. And with those many millions of dollars in pharmacy revenues annually, Weinstein is, in effect, one of the biggest drug dealers on the planet.
This didn’t happen by accident. Michael Weinstein knows how to do three things exceptionally well, and they are all interdependent characteristics: he knows how to generate publicity, he knows how to shake down his targets, and he does it all while never dropping his “AIDS Advocate” halo.
In July 2004, after having sued Abbott Laboratories over its recent 400% price increase for the drug Norvir, AHF outraged the activist community with its settlement of the suits: under the terms of the settlement, Abbott would not reduce the price of Norvir, but instead contribute to treatment programs run by AHF.
This betrayal drew fire from the AIDS activist community. The AIDS Treatment Activists Coalition (ATAC), which called AHF’s efforts “half-hearted and self-promoting”
"This was a carefully orchestrated sell-out by AHF," said Thomas Gegeny, Executive Director of The Center for AIDS in Houston.
Martin Delaney, founder of Project Inform in San Francisco, was not surprised: "AHF has a history of bargaining for its own interests to the exclusion of those in the community as a whole.”
In January 2007, AHF announced it was suing Pfizer over Viagra. Weinstein claimed that the pharmaceutical giant was “promoting Viagra as a party drug … leading to more infections with sexually transmitted diseases such as HIV.”
Weinstein said, “We estimate that a majority of new infections in this country are related to the use of crystal meth, and the majority of crystal meth users are also using Viagra.” (He also called AHF “a victim of Pfizer’s irresponsibility.”)
According to the Bay Area Reporter, when pressed to back up his assertion with data, Weinstein mentioned recently speaking with a group of black youth who said crystal meth "use is rampant" within their community.
The problem was, Viagra’s television commercials relied exclusively on images of heterosexual couples; yet AHF would have you believe that Pfizer was directing its marketing at gay men.
"The idea that people on speed are having wild sex with Viagra because they saw a halftime commercial during the Super Bowl is ridiculous," former San Francisco AIDS policy adviser Jeff Sheehy told the B.A.R. "I don’t like direct to consumer TV ads, but the rest [of the suit] is just extortion."
What Weinstein didn’t mention is that he had AHF filed suit only after Pfizer had failed to jump at AHF’s demand for a multi-million dollar funding request.
"I should have known that the petty, small-minded [Weinstein] wouldn’t give up on this", commented AIDS activist Michael Barr.
Weinstein knew better than to roll over – despite the fact that, in 2003, GlaxoSmithKline’s then-CEO, Jean-Pierre Garnier, accused AHF of blackmail after it had sued the company over its drug prices, he was generally extremely successful at squeezing money out of corporations. His simple tactic was to shame them into it.
And it worked again – AHF sued for an unspecified amount of “damages”, and walked away with a reputed multi-million dollar grant as a settlement. Not too shabby.
In April 2008, Weinstein wrote an op/ed for the Los Angeles Times in which he prescribed that the US stop funding AIDS vaccine research, and instead redirect those billions of taxpayer dollars toward treatment and prevention services – the kind which, coincidentally, AHF provides.
On June 11, 2009, Weinstein opened up the Los Angeles Times and saw a headline that declared: “Porn actress tests positive for HIV.” The story of the performer known only as “Patient Zero” was breaking everywhere.
Weinstein saw an opportunity. He was litigious, and was convinced that the adult industry – a bunch of amateurs by comparison to Big Pharma — could be easily arm-twisted.
A battle with the porn industry required Weinstein alter his tactics. Unlike Pfizer, porn companies don’t have shareholders and institutional investors.
He needed to besiege and undermine the industry, because you can’t shame the shameless.
Anything With Porn In The Title
It all started as a crusade for condoms. Weinstein is a proud “condom nazi” and the reason is quite simple: condoms are an essential element required to “sell” AIDS fear and hysteria. Condoms in porn – permanent, universal, legally mandated condom use in porn – means the normalizing of the “sex leads to death” parable upon which AIDS profiteers like Weinstein rely.
Armed with a canon of cynical buzz-words — the porn industry was “greedy” and didn’t care about “worker safety” – Weinstein was certain this was going to be a press field day.
But there had been so few instances of HIV in the porn world, and no actual outbreak (where HIV was spread within the industry from one performer to another) since 2004. They needed a statistical, medical, basis for their actions. They needed an “epidemic.”
Enter Dr. Peter Kerndt, Director of LA County Department of Public Health’s “Sexually Transmitted Disease Program.” In 2007, he’d co-authored a paper entitled, “The Adult Industry: Time to Regulate?” which trumpeted a public health rationale for abridging freedom of speech:
“The portrayal of unsafe sex in adult films may also influence viewer behavior. In the same way that images of smoking in films romanticize tobacco use, viewers of these adult films may idealize unprotected sex. The increasingly high-risk sexual behavior viewed by large audiences on television and the Internet could decrease condom use. Requiring condoms may influence viewers to see them as normative or even sexually appealing, and devalue unsafe sex. With the growing accessibility of adult film to mainstream America, portrayals of condom use onscreen could increase condom use among viewers, thereby promoting public health.”
The authors (who thanked UCLA’s Paula Tavrow, for her input) also recommended “restricting distribution of adult movies to condom-only films” and pressuring “large hotel chains, video retailers, and cable networks … to purchase adult films under a condom-only ‘seal of approval.’”
Then, LA County Drs. Kerndt and Robert Kim-Farley, who had seen the raw data turned in by AIM Healthcare in accordance with the law, famously cooked the numbers to order for AHF, by comparing STI rates in performers with those in the (largely untested) population at large. These reports were, as Dr. Lawrence S. Mayer MD, MS, PhD, of Johns Hopkins would conclude in 2011, “fatally flawed” and “without basis in science”,
Armed with these figures, AHF went to town — press releases cited Kerndt, and referenced “the rampant epidemic of STDs in Los Angeles’ adult film industry”
Soon, however, it was revealed that Patient Zero was simply an ex-performer attempting to get back into the industry who was already infected, and no one else was impacted. In other words, the AIM system worked.
Nonetheless, in July 2009, AHF sued Los Angeles County alleging that public health officials had failed to prevent the spread of STDs, and to enforce laws requiring employers to protect workers against exposure to bodily fluids.
Enter Shelley Lubben
A self-described “professional liar” and “con artist”, Lubben’s trouble with the cops began in her teens. At age 18, she ended up a prostitute in L.A., before trying her hand at a porn career six years later. After appearing in a handful of long-forgotten low-end porn videos in the mid ‘90s, she married her drug dealer and eventually ended up in Tacoma, Washington, where she found Jesus. Diagnosed bi-polar, and prescribed Lithium and Zoloft, Lubben now claims that God has healed her of all her medical and mental problems.
Lubben claims it wasn’t her eight years as a hooker, but her brief porn career (which occurred before AIM existed) which led to a host of medical problems, including herpes (which she can’t prove she had, because God miraculously healed her of it) and miscarriages (which, in reality, began in high school and ended years before she ever set foot on a porn set).
Quietly, the staff at AHF despised Lubben, who considers homosexuality an abomination, and believes that gays can and must be cured of their gayness through Christ, but they were so out-of touch with the “straight” porn business (and happily so) that they took whoever they could find. It’s telling that, to the folks at AHF, the overdone, glammed-out Shelley Lubben looked like a genuine porn star.
The ultimate attention whore, Lubben sought press for the non-profit group she created (and which paid her), Pink Cross Foundation, and thus sought to form an alliance with AHF. Lubben’s goal was to end all porn, while Weinstein’s was merely to co-opt it, so compromise had to be struck.
Simply put: Lubben would simply not bring up her true goal – nor her belief that homosexuals (including the SHF executive staff) not “cured” or their gayness are presumably going to burn in hell — at AHF-sponsored events. As she wrote Weinstein in a newly-released 2010 email,
“If I get asked by media about his [sic], I am going to do what you taught me and say my beliefs are irrelevant to working with AIDS Healthcare or the health department or any other organization fighting to enforce safety and health laws within the adult film industry.”
However, sometimes Lubben just couldn’t help herself when a microphone was placed in front of her cosmetically-altered face, as in May 2010 when she was interviewed by msnbc, and said plainly that she’d “love to see porn come down.”
“Lubben acknowledged that the AIDS Healthcare Foundation had different long-term goals, but she said she was happy to work with anyone who could advance the Pink Cross mission.
“’We believe the beast can be stabbed in seven different places and bleed to death,’ she said…. Right now, the issue that’s working is workplace safety, and, through it, Lubben has ‘found a common denominator’ with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.”
When Lubben attached herself to Weinstein’s agenda – creating what adult industry director Ernest Greene has termed “one of the most peculiar alliances since 1938” — she turned it into a full-blown crusade.
On August 20, 2009, vowing "never to stop pushing" for condom use in porn, AHF, joined by Lubben, announced its filing of third-party complaints with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal-OSHA), against “16 production companies that refrain from using condoms in their films.” Said Lubben,
"We want the fans to know what they’re contributing to…. We want to educate them to exactly what they’re watching — diseased people….”
Cal-OSHA, like LA County, had been all-too-happy to stay out of the messy business of porn production, but, like any regulatory agency worth its salt, it never turned down the opportunity to claim provenance and authority. Whether or not it desired to enforce rules in the adult industry, Cal-OSHA was never going to cede its power to do so should it so choose.
Weinstein and his right hand man Brian Chase understood this, just as they understood that, once called into action, Cal-OSHA had a legal duty to investigate once complaints were filed.
The folks at OSHA – who, to their great credit, had made careers out of protecting workers — could be easily manipulated by Weinstein’s sham concern for “worker safety” in the porn industry. These were “true believers”, and, armed with a duty to investigate, they would play their part out until the very end.
Weinstein’s strategy would be successful beyond his wildest dreams, for despite their initial reluctance, the people from OSHA quickly grew into their new roles as Weinstein’s “enforcers.” No longer mere bureaucrats, they became jack-booted bureaucrats.
Reportedly, Weinstein and Co. were guided by the erroneous belief – born of utter ignorance of the workings of the industry it claimed to want to save – that it was adult producers who paid directly for AIM’s testing of performers, and thus pressed its theory that AIM was an arm of production, and thus an “employer” subject to regulation (and records inspection) by Cal-OSHA.
Cal-OSHA proved willing to buy into AHF’s cock-eyed theory, and, the same day AHF announced its 16 complaints, Cal-OSHA noted that it had subpoenaed patient records from AIM, but that access was being challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union, alleging a violation of patient privacy.
That very same day, August 20, 2009, writer Matt Siegel posted an article which gay publication The Advocate had previously published in edited form. It featured a particularly scathing comment from Weinstein:
When offered the proposition that, “If the government tries to make any regulations, the production companies will immediately up and move causing the state to lose billions of dollars in tax revenue, if the government tries to regulate, porn will go underground and/or abroad which would invite more risky behavior on set.” Weinstein said,
“So let them move. I don’t think that’s the basis on which we decide what public policy should be. These people are fabulously rich. Larry Flynt has made a large fortune by exploiting young people. His wife died of AIDS. He watched her wither and die. Shame on him. Why should we care whether their profits go down? Why would we put that on a higher level than the health of these young people?”
On December 22, 2009, a propaganda piece entitled “Safe Sex Sells” was published on Forbes.com by Whitney Engeran-Cordova (of AHF), Peter Kerndt, Cristina Rodriguez-Hart (of UCLA’s Reproductive Health Interest Group), Jane Steinberg (director of Programs and Policy at the Los Angeles Department of Public Health STD Program) and Paula Tavrow (program director of UCLA’s Bixby program in Population and Reproductive Health).
“Testing is important as a containment strategy but should not be confused with prevention. If the industry was doing ‘an excellent job’ in protecting its performers, it would require all performers to use condoms…”
“It is also possible to use filming techniques to reduce the visual effect of condoms, by using flesh-tone condoms or by digitally erasing them in post-production.”
Then, in January 2010, AHF was contacted by a man named Tim Tritch.
For six years, Tritch was employed by the labs that tested the specimens drawn at AIM: Heathline Clinical Laboratories and later Westcliff Clinical Labs. As the Account Representative for the AIM Healthcare account, Tritch took home a small commission on every test. He also hung out at AIM quite a lot.
Until 2008 – when for reasons not revealed publicly, Tritch’s association with the lab ended.
Subsequently, Tritch had also worked as a consultant to the Licensed Adult Talent Agency Trade Association (LATATA).
His unctuous persona hid a deep bitter frustration and seething anger that often reared its head in his pseudonymous postings on porn gossip boards (“Joe Know” was a frequent moniker), which often sat side by side with overly-ingratiating posts under his true name. Tritch was also the source, anonymously (or pseudonymously, as “Sam”) for many porn industry posts by a hateful (pseudonymous) blogger known as Darrah Ford. Birds of a feather do flock together, for Ford was also Shelley Lubben’s biggest fan and booster.
On the surface, Tritch could appear typical of the kind of personalities that hang out on the fringe of the porn business: he would talk about the close personal terms he was on with porn stars (“I don’t know most stage names,” he’d brag, “I know most performers by their real names.”). The difference was, Tritch was intimately affiliated with the organization at the very heart of the adult film industry. He would work their booths at adult fan conventions, and had even helped build two of AIM’s locations. “I hung doors, painted walls, set up computers, whatever was needed,” Tritch wrote in 2010.
He had a proposal for Weinstein: he offered to speak with politicians and health officials as an expert, and to lobby his allegedly vast collection of friends in the adult industry to “negotiate with AHF.” He would also disabuse AHF of its false notions of how AIM, and its testing/database system, actually worked.
Tritch seemed to believe that AHF could actually force positive change on the adult industry and ultimately strengthen the safety net for performers. Now that the Cal-OSHA process had been set in motion, Tritch envisioned the possibility of a vigorous, healthy debate based on the facts – facts which he was willing to provide to AHF.
Naïvely, he believed that was what Weinstein wanted too.
Tritch seemed eager and he was willing to work cheap – between $1,500 and 2,500 a month as an independent contractor – “to build a plan” with AHF.
Weinstein met with Tritch personally at the beginning of February, and presented himself as the ultimate “insider”: he had precious first-hand knowledge of adult industry medical protocols (i.e., the way AIM, and its testing/database system, actually worked) as well as its hiring practices, and was seemingly on close personal terms with almost everyone.
Tritch’s contacts in the industry were likely the deciding factor for Weinstein; Weinstein had, since day one, sought a “divide and conquer” approach to his crusade. He understood the tremendous potential PR value of having current, active performers speak out against the “unsafe” adult industry, or at least in favor of AHF’s purported cause, but he needed an “in.”
Leaked emails reveal Shelley Lubben “working on” delivering “current adult film workers who want safety in the workplace and condoms.” She clearly had no public relationship with any such performers, but she excused the complete lack of visible evidence of any such effort by claiming, “I’m not doing it publicly … but privately I’m gathering the troops whose voice will make a difference.”
Inevitably, Lubben would fail in her mission time and time again, leaving Weinstein to stamp his feet like Rumpelstiltskin at having to settle for her delivering that which he didn’t really want: more disgruntled and washed up former porn performers.
Weinstein saw potential in a relationship between Tim Tritch and AHF; he listened intently, and his plan began to evolve. Tritch reportedly opened up about what he later wrote in emails to this author: that the achilles heel of AIM’s system was patient privacy — although Tritch saw AIM as having become another arm of production, via the “business relationship” between the clinic and producers who could access performer test results.
On February 24, Weinstein wrote Tritch:
Brian Chase [AHF’s Assistant General Counsel] will prepare a simple contract. You can submit an invoice electronically next week for the first month’s fee. Thanks.
The AHF party line was that AIM had grown too close to the porn producers: they had conferred an unfair monopoly on the clinic, and thus AIM was essentially a “front” for the producers. This was, in key respects, the very opposite of Tritch’s construction of the relationship between AIM and the producers.
In Tritch’s view, it was the producers who had moved closer to AIM, turning what had been designed and operated as an extremely effective harm reduction program into a shield against claims that the industry was not doing enough to safeguard performers. To Tritch, it was this change in the balance that was creating the unhealthy perception that AIM was nothing more than an arm of production, in that AIM had passively allowed producers to claim the clinic as their own, for their own benefit, not the benefit of performers. In other words, AIM’s mission was far too important to allow it to be hi-jacked by producers who simply wanted to claim that AIM was “sufficient.”
In fact, to Tritch, the AIM clinic, with its so-called monopoly, and its centralized database system were absolutely essential to the health of the industry.
Which was precisely why Weinstein needed to destroy it.
That Sunday afternoon, February 28th, Weinstein got down to business with Tritch by soliciting for plaintiffs in his anti-AIM campaign:
Dear Tim – We are interested in finding performers who would be willing to participate in filing a suit against AIM for violating their privacy. Do you know anyone? We would cover any legal costs.
Weinstein’s strategy had coalesced – AHF’s focus would now shift to AIM Healthcare. AHF immediately dashed of a press release announcing its new target:
AHF Calls for Investigation of Porn Clinic AIM, Alleging Violations of Performers’ Privacy Rights
Weinstein would embark on a campaign to obliterate AIM. "AIM testing is a fig leaf that does not protect actors from the risks of unprotected sex during filming," said Weinstein.
On March 4th, AHF mounted a protest in front of the AIM clinic in Van Nuys Blvd. Protesters carried signs reading, “Shame on AIM,” “AIM Owned By Porn” and, in a play on the famous “Silence = Death” AIDS slogan, one particularly offensive placard read: “AIM = Death.”
AHF’s charges of "patient privacy" violations were ironic to the point of nausea, for AHF had a huge medical privacy scandal of its own raging.
Although the law forbids unauthorized disclosures about a person’s HIV status, from 2007 to 2009, AHF was illegally provided the names, and addresses of some 5,000 HIV-positive Medi-Cal recipients from The California Department of Health Care Services. Gay porn producer Paul Morris, whose company was also targeted by Weinstein, noted: "[Weinstein] believes that it’s perfectly acceptable for the government to covertly funnel extremely private information about the HIV status of patients of public clinics in order to bolster the client-list of AHF. Control trumps privacy for the good gay."
Cal-OSHA’s Standards Board was set to meet on March 18th. Weinstein himself composed the confident title of the press announcement: “California Embarks on Setting Condoms in Porn Rules”
AHF trotted out Lubben at the meeting (“representing” performers), and Tritch testified. At this point, AIM’s co-founder Sharon Mitchell was already aware that he had gone to work for the enemy.
In late March, Tritch reported the backlash against him to Weinstein:
I’ve … been called everything, ‘Judas’, ‘backstabber" etc. All this does is let me know that I am doing the right thing.
Not only was Tritch apparently not the bona fide trusted industry insider he claimed to be, Weinstein must have thought, those that did know him now considered him a traitor. If Tritch had ever actually tried to rally support for AHF’s agenda, he now certainly appeared stymied in those efforts.
Without support from active industry members, AHF’s divide and conquer plan which would have been supported by Tritch’s “connections” was not gaining traction. AHF launched a second front:
On April 14, 2010, AHF announced it would file complaints with the California Labor Commissioner against nine porn talent agencies, because the agencies “procure performers for adult film productions who the talent agencies advertise as available to participate in unprotected sexual acts that may result in the exchange of bodily fluids.”
Emails now reveal that, by April 16, the focus had shifted so far to AIM, that Chase had to suggest to Weinstein, “I don’t think it would confuse our press strategy to go after both AIM and porn companies. I think it would have the opposite effect. If we make the suit it all about AIM, they can try to portray themselves as the little nonprofit clinic that’s just trying to keep the girls healthy.“
That same month, AHF canceled Tritch’s contract over his inability to make the introductions he’d promised he could. Weinstein was now all-in, but all he had left was that whack-job, Lubben.
To be continued…
Glad to have Michael Whiteacre on our side.
The adult side, the right side..
Thank you, Dave. You’re one of the good guys. Much respect.
You all wanted to hear about our old idiot pal Joe Know — there he is. Tim Tritch.
In my view, his involvement with AHF led DIRECTLY to AHF’s destruction of AIM. The emails and the historical timeline bear this out.
Yet I’m fairly confident that wasn’t that he wanted. As he wrote me on December 11, 2010, in the wake of AIM’s mortal wounding:
“This closing of AIM has got me pretty pissed off. I was a big part of AIM for a long time and I don’t like this at all.
“OSHA, AHF, and County Health have a dispute with the employers,,,not the employees,,,and to attack the organization that assists the employees, in order to get at the employers, is bullshit.”
Then again on December 12:
“I find it a disgrace that LA COUNTY Heaht would go after the talent, and close AIM, than fight the battle against PRODUCERS, who are the EMPOYERS.”
Yes, you gotta love his spelling. And his claim that the was “a big part of AIM.” LOL
My theory is that Tritch saw the job of protecting talent as one that should have befallen someone better, someone … like … him! Maybe he hoped Weinstein would see that leadership ability and caring nature in him, and let Tim run the “new and improved” AIM.
There was never going to be a new and improved AIM, Tim. You didn’t just sell out Sharon Mitchell, or the producers — you sold out the industry. You sold out the performers.
Weinstein and Lubben together on the same page is a perfect storm of master manipulators and blackmailing bullies that push their agendas forward while lining their pockets at the same time.
So Weinstein courted health professionals…wow why didnt WE think of that?
Im no fan of this whole condom mandate thing but AHF has played their hand perfectly and they will win….and what scares me is what will they do next?
I can see the FSC’s next move here’s the preview slugline from the LA Times
Porn Organization sues for the right of performers to contract STDs.
We deserve what we get yall….
You got that right, Karmafan. although Lubben is a rank amateur by comparison (not to mention a blithering idiot, to boot).
The things the boys from AHF said about Lubben amongst themselves in these emails was so humiliating and insulting — just like the things she reportedly said about those sodomites in private.
A sample of Lubben’s public statements on homosexuals can be found here (the slightly extended version of my Saints & Sinners video):
I have to hand it to him — only AIM hater (and FSC hater) Mike South could come up with that construction of the history of AHF’s war on the adult industry.
AHF destroyed the health clinic for performers but Mike, who claims to love porn performers, doesn’t see a problem with that because of his grudge against Mitch and AIM. Way to cut off the industry’s nose to spite its face!
Mike, in this regard you are no better than that traitor, Tim Tritch. Shame on you. No wonder AHF favors (and sometimes contributes to) your gossip site.
No, Mike — AHF didn’t simply court health professionals, it used and promoted lies to further its agenda. Sure that’s politics, but its hardly commendable.
It also used a man – Dr. Kerndt — with views that someone like you should find repugnant — that is, if you were even slightly philosophically consistent.
As for your slam about the right to contract STD’s — get this straight Mr. Libertarian:
I am an individual and I reserve the right to be contaminated.
Tim Tritch is Joe Know???!!! How come his articles for LIB were so readable?
Cindi used spell check before posting. She even references spell check in the intro to one of them.
https://www.lukeisback.com/?p=14636
And besides, “Tim” was the unctuous, cautious side of his personality. Joe was the frothing beast.
Could Tritch be the source for Donkey’s 15000 names? PWL as an AHF Trojan Horse…or Shelley’s.
@Larry – That’s a question I was asked by the feds back during PWL. I don’t know the answer.
I never saw ANY hard evidence to support that theory, only the general facts that he had: knowledge of the database (and the type of security on at least one system, which he described in an email to me); familiarity with AIM protocols; and general access to AIM’s office and personnel up until 2008 (or possibly up until he testified at that OSHA hearing in Costa Mesa). But so did a lot of people.
As for Shelley, I was told that two Pink Cross email addresses were found in the Donkey’s address book, and that this reflected or indicated some level of correspondence between himself and Lubben’s camp — but I have never seen that confirmed with any actual email, either.
You know, “Joe Know” had serious issues, he misspelled a lot, he’d scream in caps, he called me midget more times than the Roypist. He also didn’t like homosexuals. Anyone who call themselves “Joe Know” in the first place is obviously not all there. Joe Know didn’t know that his name would’ve made more sense if he called himself Joe Knows. Fuckin’ idiot!
@jeremy – Yes, an angry, deluded fan boy. A performer once described Tritch to me as a guy who she thought likely to sneak a taste of a porn star’s urine sample on the way to the lab in order to feel “closer” to the performers he wanted to “serve.”
I don’t know him personally, so I can neither confirm nor deny this level of creepiness. All I know is what I’ve learned from those who worked around him, his actions that were a matter of public record, his demeanor and statements at the UCLA Condoms in Porn panel from November 2010 (which are memorialized on video), his “writings” here on LIB and elsewhere, and the content of his emails to me and those just released to and from Weinstein.
In my opinion, he’s either a massively conflicted piece of shit, or simply a huge piece of shit.
As my friend Tera Patrick used to say of people like Tim, “He doesn’t have issues — he has a subscription.”
sigh…anyone can comment on my site including people who support and oppose AHF
So AHF lies…gee there’s a shock…next you will tell me that the FSC and AIM never lied or mislead anyone….It’s politics…it’s the ART of lying.
As anyone who can read knows I editorialized against this measure on the basis that putting it on the ballot panders to the unwashed masses and circumvents any issues that the informed people in the industry may have, call me traitor or anything else you like I could care less, I just call it as I see it and while AHF may have lost some battles they are clearly winning the war.
We could circumvent him but nobody in porn has enough sense to see how to do it. Its poly sci 101.
btw I wasnt upset with the loss of aim for the simple reason that in my opinion they perpetrated fraud on the very people they were supposed to protect.
In other words…it was a fucking ugly baby…deal with it
Yes, Mike, anyone “can” comment on your site, but they’ve obviously found a reason to actually do it. It’s not hard to explain — you have many of the same enemies as AHF.
Just to clarify, Mike, I’m not calling you a traitor, precisely, only that your position in in this instance is, ethically, no better than that of this one particular traitorous individual. To be a traitor against the mainstream porn business, you would have actually had have been a relevant part of it at one time…
On THIS issue, you are simply a hypocritical, griping owner of a small COMPETING business.
I’m a capitalist — I think money-making enterprises are great — but for you to pretend that your competing product would not benefit from having your competitors in the market handicapped by AHF’s crusade in CA is patently absurd and disingenuous.
And for the record, AHF (and Cal/OSHA) have not merely lost “some battles” in court, they have lost EVERY DAMN ONE — and court is where this is headed.
I too just call it as i see it.
What you are doing today is the most important work that you have ever done. You have far surpassed anything that Luke did. Please focus on the Michael Whiteacre point of view in your future coverage. Chris
Tim Tritch seems like such a reasonable guy. Joe Know was quite pugnacious. Any more proof that they are both the same person?
How deep did the Feds get into PWL? Why? Did anyone sit down and look at Donkey, its Donkey, I would love someone to interview Donkey about this.
@origen — How “reasonable” a guy Tim is depends on who you ask, I’m afraid. Yes, there’s proof. It’s actually quite lengthy: some of it is being saved for the pieces I’m writing (I’ll publish them, but I don’t want to ruin the impact of the selections by throwing them away to prove a point), and some parts of it would betray the confidences of, or needlessly involve, others, so I can’t reveal those portions. I’ll put something up later as a side-by-side, origen, just for you ‘cuz I think you’re cool.
But let me point out this one inarguable fact right here and now: as soon as I quoted an excerpt from a Tim Tritch email in a Joe Know thread last year (the content and wording of the email quote was nearly identical to the comment Joe had just left), Joe immediately disappeared from LIB (at least as Joe Know).
His email address was published by Tim himself here on LIB (it’s also in the leaked AHF emails) – why don’t you contact him and ask him. LOL Why would he lie to you? LMFAO
@Larry — As has already been disclosed, FSC, after determining that Federal internet-relalted crimes were being committed in the PWL affair, had to contact the authorities, which in this case was the FBI. They FBI interviewed a lot of people who were victims, and a lot of people around AIM, and knowledgeable about the Donkey. They examined the AIM servers and server logs, they received copies of all the PWL materials that were handed over by PWL insiders, they looked into Joe Blow, etc… They tracked everything, step by step. It is my understanding that the cases (there was more than one aspect to PWL, handled by different departments) are still open.
More I read, more I think Donkey, Joe Blow, Tara were tools of someone with a larger agenda. Could Weinstein be Hyman Roth? Someone leaked inside FSC because if Sean looks in his archives there were a bunch of attacks on Diane Duke. Of course I am probably repeating stuff here. If you look that everything started C3X and the Earl, Donkey and Tara started the fire and someone else brought more gas. Did anyone ever find out how actors and actresses ID’s and even SS#’s ended up there. To me the only good thing there was that Chelsea Zinn takes a damn good DL picture.
@Larry – Well, is AHF “bigger than U.S. Steel”? LOL Michael Weinstein more closely resembles Solazzo to me.
I’ve already identified the FSC informant who spoke out of church to people like Darrah Ford. As for the rest, I’m keeping mum for now, but I know more than these fuckers dare to imagine.
@origen – Okay, I put something together for you. There is SO much material I could use, but here’s an easy one.
I mentioned, above, that after I quoted a Tim Tritch email on LIB, Joe Know took a hike. Here’s that exchange, followed by some other comments by Tim as Joe on LIB, and by Tim as himself on LIB:
https://www.lukeisback.com/?p=17153
June 13th, 2011 at 9:46 p
joe know Says:
Jeremy, UFC fighters are under the State Athletic Commision. They must pass a legislative legally mandated physical, that includes HIV tests, before they are granted a license by the state to fight. They are true independent contractors, and thus do not fall under OHSA’s jurisdiction.
Why does everyone keep making this comparison? Would the porn industry support a program like the Athletic Commision, or the system in Nevada to have a legal license for sex workers,or porn performers?
One of the major obstacles to being identified as independent contractors, but not the only obsticles for porn performers, is the lack of any license to perform the job that porn perfomrers do. Plumbers need a license. A haidresser needs a license. An electrician needs a license. A UFC fighter must pass the Commision physical to get a license. A taxi driver needs a license. ANd thats what makes them independent contractors. Why not legal sex workers. If they were licensed then OSHA couldnt touch them.
I responded:
@joe – Sorry we didn’t get to chat at the OSHA meeting –
From an email to me, December 12, 2010:
[This was an email written to me by Tim Tritch. I quoted it to send him a message that I knew Joe Know’s identity]
“Boxers and MMA fighters in California are Required by law to be HIV tested in order to get a license to fight. Doesnt it seem kind of odd that boxers must get tested for HIV, but porn actors, legal sex workers, dont. And there has to be a joke somewhere about the boxer wearing the glove. Nina Hartley has recently started calling porn performers “sexual athletes.’ Maybe they should be licensed through the State Athletic Commision.(and that is not as much of a joke as it sounds)”
@origen, also compare this to Tim writing in his own name her on LIB:
November 21st, 2010 on LIB
Tim Tritch Says: Thank you for brining up boxers Michael. Did you know that boxers, through the State Athletic commision, are required by law to have and HIV test done before they are granted a license to box? And every single day in the adult industry someone catches an std, and this I know firsthand to be a fact. And i am not just talking about herpes.
At the OSHA hearing last June, Deborah Gold said, ”Condoms are ALREADY required for sex scenes, and any production that does not use them is breaking the law.” That sounds pretty clear to me. And I havent’t seen a company leave California or go underground since then. And since then OSHA has not issued any new citations. I just dont’t see any more enforcement from OSHA.
OSHA does not have the authority to make pre employment testing part of their regulations. That would take an act of legislation, and that is not coming any time soon. Boxers and MMA fighters have to comply with the rules of the State Athletic Commision, which require testing for HIV. I also find it interesting that a boxer is required by law to have an HIV test, but a porn performer having unprotected sex is not. Do you think the industry would support legislation to make testing mandatory, not voluntary as it is now?
And compare it to:
June 7th, 2011 on LIB
joe know Says: UFC fighters are under the State Athletic Commision. THey are required by l aw to be HIV tested and pass other physical before being granted a license to fight by the state. There is no cmparison with porn performers. Would the industry support MANDATORY testing, and physicals for performers, to grant a license to porn performers like the Nevada system of licesing brothel workers, or the California Athletic Commision for boxers and MMA fighters.
Also June 7th, 2011 on LIB
joe know Says: THere is one thing in this article above that shows that this entire series of meetings are a complete facrce, with a predetermined outcome. CAL-OSHA HAS NO AUTHORIRY TO MANDATE PRE EMPLOYMENT TESTING. If they even talk about PRE EMPLOYMENT testing it shows that everything they are saying is bullshit. Did anyone at the meeting even mention this? Or did anyone representing the industry EVEN KNOW THIS????
Ari, God wants me to give you a message.
When you fight against our good work, you fight against God, not humans. We are the ones who care about the health of performers and you care more about if you are heard.
You’ve been wanting attention since you were a very young boy. God saw that. God also saw the injustice done to you and He wants to heal you from that injustice.
You don’t have to be angry anymore. You don’t have to scrutinize everything that has breath. You don’t have to be the hero for a demonized industry. God has SO MUCH MORE for you.
This isn’t easy for me to do this because I am just a human but God wants me to love you. I actually pray for you often, even though it’s very hard for me because my flesh wants to fight with you. But I refuse to give in and fight with you.
I want to please God and love you. Is there any way you would meet me in Las Vegas on Saturday night for dinner?
I want the opportunity to speak with you myself.
Just like when you took the opportunity to film me at the Rainbow Club. Will you be courageous and meet with me in Vegas?
You are very courageous with your words against us but will you be as courageous to meet with me for dinner?
No cameras. Just us.
God loves you Ari and I have tried hard to love you. I hope you will take me up on my invitation.
My dearest Shelley, I have a message for you, too.
I gave you every chance in the world to do the decent thing, and to come clean once and for all. Had you done that, I would have embraced you like a sister and supported you.
But I knew that you would never do it, for that is not your destiny.
You’re weak, Shelley; I understand. You’re a damaged, hurt little girl with a fractured mind and a tortured, addiction-ravaged soul. All the nonsense that you just wrote about me as a child is your own projection. It’s YOU, Shelley — right out of your own book. It’s so sad. Everyone in the world can see it but you.
You have sinned, Shelley, You have spit in the face of every thoughtful, honest, caring, trusting person on this planet, you have acted dishonorably, you have betrayed and abused others, you have lied and blasphemed — and worst of all, you did it in G-d’s name.
Shelley, oh Shelley, I am so sorry but there is not one thing that you can EVER do or say that will stop me from pursuing righteous justice against you. To do that would be to sin — to sin against you, my poor sister, and to sin against G-d’s Holy Word.
Shelley, I will see you humiliated and ruined (these revelations about what the sodomites at AHF really think about you is only the beginning). You will face legal action after legal action. You will be forced to sell all your ill-gotten possessions. Your ministry of fear will crumble like the walls of Jericho, ground into dust and scattered in the wind.
But unlike you, who danced when AIM was shuttered, I will not gloat. I will quietly pray and I will know that I have done God’s will.
And do you know who will be standing beside me, praying? Your own family, Shelley. Your parents and your brother, whom you have punished by denying them the chance to love your children because they dared speak the truth about you. You are so sick that you call the truth blasphemy against the Gospel of jesus Christ when it does not fit your self-created myth.
You are a weak backslider, Shelley. But no one has can rightly forgive you until you forgive yourself. You are so weak Shelley, but I am going to help you.
You could say that we two are alike Shelley. We both undertook a self-proclaimed calling. We were drawn toward each other, Shelley; can’t you see that? We are like magnets, you and I. It was planned that we meet. I am the fulfillment of your destiny. I am your shepherd. I am your destroyer.
I AM THE PATH TO YOUR REDEMPTION.
You will have nothing, Shelley; you will be humbled and then you will be free. All the sycophants that you currently pay to be around you will fall away, and you will finally be free. Praise G-d you will be free!
It has been a terrible burden having to think about you — to listen to slur your lies in that Bobcat Goldthwait rasp; to read your blasphemy and libels; to watch you stumble and mumble and sputter, and make a public spectacle of yourself again and again; to subject yourself to painful scorn and ridicule; to have to hide the fact that you needed to spend time in a mental ward in February, and then in rehab this summer; to watch you alter and distort your body and face in the name of vanity — always searching for something you can never have, always trying to fill that un-fillable hole inside you.
It hurt me to see you like that, Shelley, because I know how much you are hurting inside. G-d showed that to me, Shelley, and He showed me what I had to do. That has been MY cross to bear, if you like. I did it not to be a hero for an industry that your illness prevents you from consciously admitting you are still drawn to — I did it out of love, Shelley. Out of the greatest love there is — G-d’s love for all of us.
There will be no compromise, there will be no olive branch — there will be a reckoning, Shelley.
A reckoning.
That is what G-d wants for you. Pray Shelley — not that my justice does not find you; pray that it does.