Auto auction just a sad metal meat market
David Booth, National Post · Jan. 27, 2012 | Last Updated: Jan. 27, 2012 3:13 AM ET
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. – I am not sure the good folks at Barrett-Jackson will appreciate the association, but, in person, the world’s most famous car auction feels a lot like the Moonlite BunnyRanch brothel that was forced into our hotel room TVs by HBO’s Cathouse: The Series. Oh, for sure, the Barrett-Jackson playground literally dwarfs the BunnyRanch, which always looks as if it is a bunch of double-wides thrown together. And, certainly, the money changing hands at Barrett-Jackson is off the charts; the purported US$100-million that customers plunked down for their lead sleds would require the girls at Las Vegas’s Ranch to work some serious overtime.

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Combating crime in South Phoenix one house at a time
by Sybil Hoffman
azfamily.com
Posted on January 26, 2012 at 10:10 PM
Updated
today at 10:21 PM
PHOENIX — It’s the worst of the worst in one of the Valley’s toughest neighborhoods. For years, drug use and prostitution have brought down property values and made the communities extremely dangerous.
Just because the criminals overtake homes, turning them into magnets for illegal activity, it doesn’t mean the neighbors have to put up with it.
There’s never a dull moment patrolling the South Mountain Precinct. For more than a decade, Detective Lance Hunt with the Phoenix Police Department has been trying to turn around the many neighborhoods plagued with prostitution and drug use in South Phoenix.
Hunt believes at the core of the problem isn’t necessarily the criminals but the properties used for illegal activity.

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And so nonviolent portions of the various religions – and they are there, albeit often hidden and censored – can be erroneously painted with the same brush that justifiably condemns the hypocrisy and the violence.
It is certainly true that the Catholic Church endorsed and/or orchestrated the genocide of the Crusades, the Inquisition and many wars of colonization and exploitation — with the origins of these atrocities in fundamentalist interpretations of “holy” scripture.
But I do have to take exception to the blanket condemnation of the entirety of the religion by pointing out one reality — that the original form of Christianity, the church of the first generation after Jesus and even most of the first three centuries was a religion of pacifists, oppressed women, orphans, those forced into prostitution, despised people of all stripes and others of those called “the least.”

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Shannan Gilbert’s mother and sister made their first pilgrimage Saturday to Oak Beach, L.I., where the prostitute’s remains were found one month ago.
Mari Gilbert, 48, made the emotional trek with about a dozen heartbroken relatives and friends to hold a vigil near the marsh where Gilbert disappeared.
“I had to see where my daughters’ remains were. It’s important to remember her and keep fighting for her as a person and as a daughter,” Gilbert told the Daily News.
After Gilbert went missing in May 2010, police searching for her discovered 10 victims whose remains were scattered in miles of brush along a parkway that leads to Jones Beach.

See the full article from “New York Daily News”

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WASHINGTON (AP) -
 An Arizona man has been convicted of felony murder in the death of a strip club manager in a fire.
Forty-one-year-old Vasile Graure of Phoenix was convicted Friday. He faces a minimum of 30 years in prison at sentencing on March 23.
Vladimir Djordjevic, the club manager, was burned over 90 percent of his body in the fire on Nov. 3, 2007 at the Good Guys Club.
He died on May 17, 2010.
Graure was convicted of assault and arson in 2008 and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
He was indicted on the murder charge after Djordjevic died.
According to court documents, Graure, angered that he had been ejected from the club, poured gasoline over the front of the club and Djordjevic and set it on fire.

See the full article from “KPHO Phoenix”

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Police: Chandler man accused in assaults, ‘It was easy’
A Chandler man charged Thursday with sexually abusing two young girls told officers he didn’t think the alleged victims are “whole people” and that he committed the acts because “it was easy,” police said in a court document.
Michael Edmund Madrid, 45, was charged with multiple counts related to the serial abuse of the two girls, who were 9 and 11 years old at the time the attacks started in 2005 and continued for almost a year, police said.
Madrid admitted to fondling the girls and did not deny that he molested others, the court document states. His excuse was “it was easy,” and that other sexual outlets, like strip clubs, did not “offer the kind of excitement he craved,” police said.

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A Chandler man charged Thursday with sexually abusing two young girls told officers he didn’t think the alleged victims are “whole people” and that he committed the acts because “it was easy,” police said in a court document.
Michael Edmund Madrid, 45, was charged with multiple counts related to the serial abuse of the two girls, who were 9 and 11 years old at the time the attacks started in 2005 and continued for almost a year, police said.
Madrid admitted to fondling the girls and did not deny that he molested others, the court document states. His excuse was “it was easy,” and that other sexual outlets, like strip clubs, did not “offer the kind of excitement he craved,” police said.
One girl, who was in fifth grade at the time, stood up to Madrid in after a particularly upsetting incident in June 2006 and told another adult, who reported Madrid to the police, the court document states.

See the full article from “AZ Central.com”

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… I think he’s been good. I think the other night, just his passing range and stuff – he’s been good, so yeah, there are options for us and I think that’s also another strong part of the reason we have elected to keep him on board.”
Smith’s best performance of the season came in last month’s 3-1 loss to the Melbourne Victory when he stood out in a beaten side and added the Wellington outfit’s only goal with a well-taken finish.
The 26-year-old is somewhat of a footballing nomad having spent a year with FC Dallas in Major League Soccer in the United States in 2005-2006, then, after giving away the game for a few seasons, re-emerging for Fraser Park in the NSW Super League in Australia in 2010.
He was contracted to Gold Coast United at the beginning of this season, but when he was hobbled by an ankle injury, the Glitter Strip club bought out his contract and waved him off in to the sunset.

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These photos are of a location to be used for a scene set in 1905. The location is to be known as a brothel, and HBO Watch had the details about the reason for this flashback. The site said the following:
For this season there has been speculation that Pam, Eric Northmen’s friend and confidant, will have her origin story explored. Alan Ball, lead writer on the True Blood team is looking for new cast members in particular. A non-threatening man in his 30s and a prostitute oddly named “Washcloth Helen.” Both of these characters will be introduced to fans during a flashback to a San Francisco brothel in 1905. The date is significant because 1905 is supposedly the date where Pam becomes a Vampire according to author Charlaine Harris.

See the full article from “Examiner.com”

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Gilbert, 24, who worked as a prostitute, disappeared in May 2010. The hunt for her led to the discovery that bodies of sex workers were being dumped around Gilgo Beach and that perhaps a serial killer or killers were at work.

See the full article from “Newsday”

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