Backpage Shuts Down Adult Section after Government Pressure about Sex Trafficking

Won’t all of this just move somewhere else on the web?

Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who led the bipartisan Senate investigation into the website, said Backpage’s move to shutter its adult ads attested to the damning evidence their team uncovered.

“We reported the evidence that Backpage has been far more complicit in online sex trafficking than anyone previously knew,” they said in a statement.

“Backpage’s response wasn’t to deny what we said. It was to shut down their site. That’s not ‘censorship’ — it’s validation of our findings.”

via LA TIMES

Backpage.com, one of the world’s largest classified ad websites and a frequent target in the political battle against sex trafficking, closed its adult ads section Monday in the United States, claiming to be the victim of a government witch hunt.

The extraordinary move came shortly after the release of a scathing U.S. Senate report that accused Backpage of hiding criminal activity by deleting terms from ads that indicated sex trafficking or prostitution, including of children.

The abrupt closure came on the eve of the scheduled testimony of Backpage’s founders, Michael Lacey and James Larkin, and the site’s CEO, Carl Ferrer, before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ subcommittee on investigations.

LA Times writes review of Hustla “Empire on the Rise” (starring Yung Brodee)

Hardly ever use this blog for self promotion but today I will. Check out the review of my mini movie Hustla “Empire on the Rise” starring Yung Brodee. Let me not forget everyone who worked on this and made it all possible. It was a great experience and we are getting set to come with Part 2 so stay tuned.

via Pop Hiss /LA Times

The “hood movie” has been an essential part of hip-hop for well over a decade. Partially pioneered by Master P,  the genre became a cash cow during the DVD boom of the early years of the last decade, with everyone from Game to 50 Cent to the Diplomats cashing in on the trend.

With the rise of YouTube and the popular online video emporium World Star Hip Hop, street-based reality films have tended to appear for free on the Web, and tend to boast a production value commensurate with third grade. Accordingly, keeping tabs on South L.A. rapper Yung Brodee’s productions has been a pleasant anomaly for the inconsistent genre.

LA Times RETRACTS DIDDY ROBBERY

LA Times who themselves have had shakeups in their news divisions this week with their focus being shifted to the web, have totally retracted their story provided by Chuck Phillips.The story “An Attack on Tupac Shakur Launched a Hip-Hop War” made news about two weeks ago when Phillips charged that he had evidence that Diddy and Jimmy Rosemond had prior knowledge of an violent shooting and assault on legendary rapper Tupac at a recording studio in NYC.

An article and related materials published on the Los Angeles Times website on March 17 have been removed from the site because they relied heavily on information that The Times no longer believes to be credible.

The Times has since concluded that the FBI reports were fabricated and that some of the other sources relied on — including the person Philips previously believed to be the “confidential source” cited in the FBI reports — do not support major elements of the story.

Full retraction here

Henchman Calls For Philips Head

The chips are starting to fall all over the place now that the LA Times has retracted their damaging story tying Diddy & Jimmy Henchman to the ambush that resulted in Tupac getting shot at Manhattan’s Quad Studio. Even though Chuck Philips has issued an apology Jimmy Henchman is calling for his head and Diddy is considering suing the Times. Check out the excerpt from an interview conducted with MTV’s Sway where Henchman lays his case out:

“I lived with the rumor of what happened to Tupac for the last 14 years,” Rosemond said Thursday afternoon. “And rumors are rumors — either you believe them or you don’t — but when you have a reputable newspaper like the Los Angeles Times with a Pulitzer Prize winner like Chuck Philips to validate a rumor, then it becomes real. It becomes real in your life, real to the people around you. When you Google me, this affects me regardless, forever. I could always rebut a rumor, but this is something that’s well more damaging. And I think Chuck Philips had no regards to my reputation, for myself as a businessman, myself as a father, a family man, somebody’s son. And I think he did irreparable damage to my career, my reputation and everything else. I don’t think there is no other reward for me or my family that he can do. An apology isn’t going to do it. There has to be some form of reprimand in the sense of his job. He needs to lose his job.”

CLICK HERE for the rest of the story.

LA Times Tupac Story Is Debunked By The Smoking Gun

Thanks to investigative work done by The Smoking Gun website it has been determined that the Los Angeles Times has been completely duped in their reporting last week about a Mafia-linked plot to have Tupac assassinated outside of Manhattan’s Quad Studio. The plot supposedly hatched by James Sabatino, a career con-artist and currently an inmate at Allenwood Federal Correctional Facility has been exposed to be a fabrication skillfully executed by the “attention-seeking” Sabatino whose claims seem to have fallen flat on their face.

Within a weeks worth of investigation The Smoking Gun has been able to debunk the fabrication that the LA Times, the country’s fourth largest newspaper ran on the front of their paper (website edition) discrediting reporter Chuck Philips, who has been duped on more than one occasion by unreliable informants. Apparently the court documents cited by the LA Times were forged documents, copies of “302’s” made by Sabatino from federal prison. I highly recommend that you CLICK HERE to read the rest of this explosive rebuttal of the story that has created a firestorm globally, linked Puff and BIG to the shooting of their nemesis Tupac Shakur.

Chuck Not Finished With Tupac Shooting

Source: EURWEB 

CLICK[ HERE ]VIDEO

LA Times reporter Chuck Phillips who set a new firestorm of press with his recent article about the shooting Tupac Shakur at Quad Studios. The article stated that associates of Sean “Puffy” Combs organized the ambush on Tupac and that he and Biggie Smalls knew of its occurence a week prior. Chuck has given a new interview which he feels that these murders of Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur would be solved if it were “Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie”. Click here for interview

Crooked I Has His Eyez on the Prize

The Los Angeles Times did a piece on Crooked I’s marketing strategy that has propelled him to the top of the list in many people’s discussion of breakout artist’s in 2007.  He explained how he utilized the power of the net to firmly place himself in the game.  Utilizing his blog on www.hiphopdx.com his goal is to turn out 52 freestyles in 52 weeks…keyword being “free!”  Instead of CD sales, he says his strength lies in placement on the front of websites.  Visibility opens up doors for the future, in his game plan.  Crooked said, “I saw, this is where it’s going. This is the future…. You can’t run from it, because pretty soon you’re going to be watching everyone’s music videos on your cellphone.”  Click HERE for the full story.