The new issue of Destroyer will be out next Wednesday and contains some stuff you shouldn’t miss! There is an extensive interview with Bernard Alapetite, a column by our dear friend, artist Sidney Smith and an article about milkboys! :o)
Click on the cover for a preview:
Wahhh ein Interview :D *haben will*
Wow! I’m famous!
Well, lovely cover, very attractive ! I’m convinced : I buy all the collection for my birthday (it was yesterday and I wondered how I could make myself a gift… I know then ! ).
Thank you for your very interesting blog, Josh :-).
That has to be an awkward experience with the mailman…
Holy cow, Josh, you’re published and you’re going to be famous!
It’s too bad Destroyer doesn’t have an electronic subscription for those of us who live in places where we can’t risk having this sent to us in the post. Benign as Destroyer may be in America and Europe, there are those of us who don’t live there and are deprived of it for that reason.
Sadly, everything isn’t Love and Roses around the world.
Where do you live Alfred? I got my Destroyer in an envelope that looks totally harmless.
Adelmus, I am not about to write where I live. The fact that Destroyer comes in a totally harmless looking envelope means nothing. Government officials inspecting incoming mail which is obviously not simply a letter with only one or two pieces of paper inside will not be opened for inspection. Aerogrammes are also pretty safe to pass inspection without opening. But any envelope that has anything such as a magazine will be opened.
I don’t know where you live, but a person I know living in America ordered Destroyer some time ago and postal inspectors in the USA opened it but cleared it for delivery. However, about a month after receiving his copy my friend became the subject of “sting” operations attempting to get him to buy illegal materials and these continue to to this day.
He suspects he is now on some “pedo” list that the American government uses to entrap people who like young men. I would not be surprised if other Western countries use these tactics too.
I repeat my comment: it is a great pity for many of us that we cannot have an electronic subscription to Destroyer.
I feel with you if you live in a country where somebody can open your mail officially.
But as for the US I can assure you that Destroyer is 100% legal there as it’s it in Europe and nearly every other part of the world. IF they have any kind of “pedo list” (while the term “pedo” is wrong in this case but you know that) they would have had to put a lot of well known artists on it.
Josh, you certainly do not understand the powers that customs agents in almost all countries have. I will not dwell on the country I live in, but I know that in America customs routinely opens mail and it is done officially and within the law, just as customs agents have that same power to search all of your luggage when you enter a foreign country. Any piece of mail coming from another country is subject to official opening and inspection. This has 100% true for years. Under the new laws of the last few years it is 1000% true.
I am sure that Destroyer is legal in perhaps most countries. But there are even countries where magazines such as “Playboy” from the USA are prohibited. This includes places such as Thailand, Laos, India to name only a few. It is in these countries that it is likely that Destroyer would also be confiscated. In the country that I live you would risk arrest. I know for a fact that in America that Destroyer is 100% legal but customs examines many of these items and will hand over names of suspected pederasts, perverts or whatever word you wish to use, yes I know what they mean, to the FBI who will attempt to use “stings” to entrap those suspects into buying something which is known to be illegal. The FBI was using a sting operation not too long ago where even clicking on a URL that suggested it might be illegal pornography (even though it wasn’t) that led to arrests. I will try to find the story about that and post it here.
And just look at the most recent case in Australia involving the cover of an art magazine here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/07/07/2296980.htm
This is not the Bill Henson case which has finally been cleared. This is a new event and they are becoming more frequent all the time. For example, why have you had to move your server and that of Inkplum recently? Is that an indication that your legal rights are being protected? Usenet also is in the process of being decimated. Destroyer’s publisher has had serious questions raised about his magazine in his native Sweden.
This is a worldwide concerted effort to eliminate all suggestive images of anyone under 18 or even under 21 in some cases. In my country it is all illegal. We all don’t live in the “land of the free” be it Germany, England or America!
But even RinRin refers to what was published in the 60s and early 70s as “golden era”. Things are much worse today in Europe than they were even 20 years ago. Talk to the owners of places such as Intermale in Amsterdam and have a word with people like Don Mader. Even Janssen stopped his perfectly legal works with teenagers years ago and moved out of Berlin after selling his gallery. Bleisch went to prison. This is hardly a record of improvement when one looks back to the “golden era” that Sidney speaks of only a couple of decades ago. Ask Sidney to tell you about the visits he has had from agents trying to do a “sting” with him.
Hi again Josh. Here is that link to just one of the articles about the situation with a fake URL that claims has illegal porn. Clicking on it gets you a dawn visit from the FBI, all nice and legal just for clicking on something that is no more than a suggestion of something. No actual porn was ever involved but that did not prevent people from getting arrested and the the courts in the USA have upheld this. Imagine the fun they could have finding a copy of Destroyer addressed to you. Do you want to have to prove yourself innocent of anything like this against the forces of fascists?
Sure it’s legal, but it suggests the possibility of something more. And the future of law will be defending ourselves against what something “may” be, not what is. Study the direction things are taking. Were you not the one who mentioned the “federal trojan” in Germany?
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/20/2323247
And finally Josh, I seriously doubt that Destroyer is “100% legal in…nearly every other part of the world” as you have stated. I think if you looked into the laws of many Asian countries, big ones like Indonesia, Malaysia and the ones I have already listed in addition to most of the African countries including all of North Africa and almost all of the Muslim countries you will find serious consequences involved in having Destroyer sent by mail.
The only solution would be an electronic subscription for people in those countries since we have ways to circumvent our being tracked through our IPs and by way of secure connections which work well, at least for now even in the most repressive governments.
Alfred – interesting posts and links. I don’t think anyone here thinks the situation has improved over the last decades. I’ve met 3 of those you mention in your post in person and we have more or less exactly the same views on things.
As for Destroyer, I think you’re exaggerating. If a lot of people had had their parcels opened by customs I think I would know about it, and that readers would be reluctant to order again. Only one person has written me that his envelope was opened (and cleared) by customs, and even if there are more cases that I don’t know about, I don’t think it’s common at all. The envelope with Destroyer looks pretty much like a regular letter. (You might not know this, but the magazine is pretty slim and the format is smaller than normal magazine size.)
That said, I respect anyone who chooses not to order for those reasons.
Let me make it clear that the Destroyer readers live almost exclusively in the West. I’m very well aware that there are countries where Destroyer is as illegal as other gay magazines or any Western pop-cultural phenomena. I don’t ship to those countries. In fact, I don’t even reply on (the extremely few) orders from those countries.
Anyway, to comment on the core of your posts: An electronic version of Destroyer might be available in the future. But not anytime soon, for lots of reasons.
Thank you Karl. Maybe if you printed Destroyer on an Aerrogramme I would be willing to take a chance ordering it to be sent to my country. Yes, I hope that sometime in the future you offer an electronic version since I am not in a position to move away from where I live for a variety of reasons, unfortunately.
I went to school in America and have many friends there. I do not know a single person in the USA who is willing to take a chance on ordering Destroyer. Naturally there will be risk-takers and those who don’t know the dangers of allowing one’s profile to become too high. Aside from some big cities in America, outside them in the massive portions of that country, it is seriously inadvisable to let even your friends know you are a simple gay androphile. But when people think of America they think of New York, LA, San Francisco, Seattle or some such place which constitute only a tiny fraction of the population. Otherwise, how could they ever have elected a president such as they have? Twice over? And I will not overlook even Angela Merkel who seems to have a love affair with repressive forces.
And wasn’t it your own parliament Karl, who was considering passing special legislation just to ban your magazine? Please correct me if I am wrong. Even the direction that Czech Rep. is taking has been a big swing away from what it was only perhaps 10 years ago which I am sure comes as no surprise to you. Japan too, one of the most insular of all societies in the “developed” world is slowly moving also in this direction, yet it is still possible to survive there if one is Japanese and strictly conforms to the powerful cultural norms that exist in that country.
But as for me, I am stuck for the foreseeable future in the hell hole in which I find myself and without the benefit of being able to read Destroyer.
While Destroyer may be legal, the FBI can use it to add to a case against you if they arrest you for anything related to underage sexual contact. I have a close friend who had the first 5 issues of Destroyer and the FBI arrested him and took all of them, along with other legal products, to help build a case against him. This was in DC, so…America is less safe than it may seem. Especially with the frenzy in the media about ‘pedophiles’, no matter how incorrect the appellation may be at times.
Well, I WAS going to order a subscription. But after reading all of this, I’m scared.
Well, many thanks, Karl ! I have got my orders and I’m very very happy :-) ! “I love mags” service makes a very good work. The envelope is reliable, no problem at all. And I honestly don’t think it could be some trouble with the content according to european or north-american laws, if one is free from reproach.
Now, I can have some great time with “Destroyer”, thank you :-).