She decided to do a giveaway for the summer. Check out all of the fun items that you could win?!?! SO fun!
Simply click on the "a just for fun Summer giveaway" logo below and enter to win!!
13 Ekim 2012 Cumartesi
Who doesn't love a contest and giveaway!?!
To contact us Click HERE
A friend of mine is SUPER talented and has started her own design company. I am in fact feeling like my entire house needs a makeover by her. Her designs are ADORABLE and super reasonable. (I just ordered some personalized notecards that I'm super excited about.)
She decided to do a giveaway for the summer. Check out all of the fun items that you could win?!?! SO fun!
Simply click on the "a just for fun Summer giveaway" logo below and enter to win!!
She decided to do a giveaway for the summer. Check out all of the fun items that you could win?!?! SO fun!
Simply click on the "a just for fun Summer giveaway" logo below and enter to win!!
Ending Demand Won't Stop Prostitution
To contact us Click HERE
OPINION
A Misguided Moral Crusade
By NOY THRUPKAEW
Published: September 22, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/ending-demand-wont-stop-prostitution.html?pagewanted=2&tntemail1=y&emc=tnt
BEATEN. Burned. Branded with a bar code or with a pimp’s name carved into her thigh. Thrown into the trunk of a car for punishment. Forced to provide sexual services for countless callous and violent men. This is the dominant image of young people in the sex trade, and it is fueling deeply flawed campaigns against prostitution.
Galvanized by public outrage and advocacy groups, policy makers have started to push to eradicate all prostitution, not just the trafficking of children into the sex trade. Under the catchphrase “no demand, no supply,” they advocate increasing criminal penalties against men who buy sex — a move they believe will upend the market that fuels prostitution and sex trafficking.
These tactics have gained significant momentum, prompting an initiative by the National Association of Attorneys General, law-enforcement stings and sweeps across the country, and even attempts to prosecute clients as traffickers. The problem is that the “end demand” campaign will harm trafficking victims and sex workers more than it helps them.
In a ballroom at Boston’s upscale Westin Copley Place Hotel this spring, more than 250 law-enforcement officers, advocates and survivors of the sex trade, sat riveted, some openly weeping, as they watched a video of a young woman in a dreary motel room, taking her clothes off, telling her grim life story to one uncaring, unhearing man after another. The videos’s final message: If men didn’t buy her, pimps couldn’t sell her.
For these modern-day abolitionists, ending all prostitution is the only solution. As Lina Nealon, director of Demand Abolition, told the gathered participants through tears, “Because of the work you are doing, my 2-year-old daughter and my soon-to-be-born daughter will find the idea of buying people for sex as incomprehensible as separate water fountains are to me.”
End-demand advocates’ prototypical victim — an abused teenage girl raised in the blight of the inner city and forced into the sex trade by an older man — does exist. But they disregard the fact that individuals, including boys, men and transgender people, enter the sex trade for a variety of reasons. The pimped girl who has inflamed the public’s imagination needs government services and protection, not to be made into a symbolic figure in an ideological battle to eradicate the entire sex industry, which, like many other sectors, includes adults laboring in conditions ranging from upscale to exploitative, from freely chosen to forced.
Unfortunately, despite their righteous anger, the end-demand crowd is quick to dismiss what many sex workers actually have to say. Some activists have gone so far as to brand those who criticize their campaign as “house slaves” unable to recognize their own oppression.
The end-demand crusade is premised on the idea that all prostitution is inherently exploitative. Some end-demand advocates came to their position from their work against pornography in the 1980s; others worked with a coalition of conservatives and evangelical Christians during George W. Bush’s presidency to abolish prostitution. Not surprisingly, these abolitionists ignore the legal distinctions between prostitution and human trafficking. Federal law states that trafficking for forced prostitution occurs only when a commercial sex act is induced through force, fraud or coercion, or when the person induced to perform it is under 18. Indeed, not all prostitution is trafficking, and not all trafficking — as those exploited and sexually assaulted in homes, fields and factories across our nation know too well — is prostitution.
Although it emerged out of anti-trafficking rhetoric, the end-demand campaign is actually a movement to change prostitution policy from our current legal framework — the criminalization of both buying and selling sex — to the “Swedish model,” in which selling sex is not illegal, but buying sex is a criminal offense. (Two other models exist: full legalization with government regulation and registration of sex workers, as in the Netherlands, and full decriminalization of both buying and selling sex with minimal state oversight, as in New Zealand.)
Based on an appealing, proactive vision of gender justice, the Swedish model has caught on in Iceland and Norway — even though it hasn’t panned out as planned in Sweden, where street-level prostitution dropped temporarily after the law took effect in 1999, only to climb again. Sweden’s sex workers say they are forced to rush negotiations and have to rely more on intermediaries to access wary clients. Prostitution hasn’t gone away; it’s simply gone underground.
Translating Swedish laws into an American context presents even more problems. America lacks the extensive services of Sweden’s social welfare state, which are vital to anyone leaving the sex trade. And American politicians don’t want to be seen as soft on crime or morally lax, making it unlikely that selling sex could ever be decriminalized here.
In this environment, any uptick in law-enforcement actions aimed at buyers inevitably results in increased criminalization of those selling sex. New York City’s “Operation Losing Proposition” earlier this year resulted in nearly 200 arrests; the operation allegedly targeted the demand side of prostitution, but it netted 10 individuals who sell sex as well. Attempting to implement the Swedish law in our punitive environment would most likely mean the criminalization of even more of those it’s intended to help — without a Scandinavian-style safety net for those leaving the life.
“You will see that in any country, when you criminalize both parts, the police go for the women,” said Kasja Wahlberg, a Swedish detective and the country’s rapporteur on human trafficking. According to Meagan Morris, a Colorado researcher who has studied law-enforcement approaches to prostitution, even so-called “victim-centered” approaches disproportionately hurt women, leaving them more vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation because they have criminal records, which limit their access to affordable housing and sustainable-wage jobs.
End-demand strategies could also lead to more pressure on sex workers from pimps and traffickers. “Pimps don’t accept the rationale that there’s a new law and fewer johns now,” said Paul Holmes, a counter-trafficking expert and former Scotland Yard official. “So if a girl is working 16 hours, she’ll have to work 20, and under more brutality. You’ll also drive the trade underground, which makes it more dangerous for them and more difficult for us.”
However well-intentioned law-enforcement strategies might be, they have been engineered with little attention to the wants and needs of sex workers — and to the violence many of them have faced from government employees.
A study in Illinois found that police account for 30 percent of all reported abuse, compared with just 4 percent arising from pimps. According to one young person cited in the Young Women’s Empowerment Project’s study: “I was going to meet a new john. It turned out to be a sting set up by the cops. He got violent with me, handcuffed me and then raped me. He cleaned me up for the police station, and I got sentenced to four months in jail for prostitution.”
In New York, a woman who was trafficked into the sex trade as a minor told me sometimes “the cops are the ones abusing you, taking your money, beating you up” and they offer no help “even if I get raped” by a john. “I’ve had to provide services more than once in exchange for not being arrested,” she added. “Who is really going to hold them accountable?”
THE best law-enforcement strategy to prevent trafficking into forced prostitution is not an end-demand campaign that harms current sex workers. What’s needed instead is a commitment to seriously investigate and prosecute traffickers and impose harsh punishment on those who rape and assault sex workers. Police departments also need public ombudsmen, tough internal-affairs bureaus and vigorous monitoring to combat corruption and abuse. If those in the sex trade felt comfortable reporting rape to the police rather than running from them, police departments would have a much easier time discovering cases of trafficking.
But law enforcement is only one part of the solution. Many young people living on the streets turn to “survival sex” in exchange for food or shelter — and many do so without an intermediary. “I ran away from all the drug activity at home at 11,” one woman in Chicago told me. “I had to do it just to have somewhere to sleep, something to eat.”
Nearly 90 percent of the minors profiled in a John Jay College study indicated they wanted to leave “the life” — but cited access to stable housing as one of the biggest obstacles. In New York City alone, almost 4,000 homeless youths lack stable housing, yet there are barely more than 100 long-term shelter beds to serve them.
Starting in 2008, staff members at the Queens County AIDS Center could barely get the door open on cold days: the office was packed with young people sleeping on the floor. One of them was Donna, a transgender 25-year-old who started selling sex at 13 after running away from abusive foster and group homes.
For people like Donna, ending demand for prostitution is not the answer; satisfying the demand for basic social services is. Shelter, job opportunities and a responsive and sensitive law-enforcement system are vital to those who want to leave the trade. “People call you a survivor after you leave the life,” Donna told me. “But I was a survivor when I was in it.” She added: “I didn’t really like prostituting. But then, I had no other way out.”
OPINION
A Misguided Moral Crusade
By NOY THRUPKAEW
Published: September 22, 2012
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/ending-demand-wont-stop-prostitution.html?pagewanted=2&tntemail1=y&emc=tnt
BEATEN. Burned. Branded with a bar code or with a pimp’s name carved into her thigh. Thrown into the trunk of a car for punishment. Forced to provide sexual services for countless callous and violent men. This is the dominant image of young people in the sex trade, and it is fueling deeply flawed campaigns against prostitution.
Galvanized by public outrage and advocacy groups, policy makers have started to push to eradicate all prostitution, not just the trafficking of children into the sex trade. Under the catchphrase “no demand, no supply,” they advocate increasing criminal penalties against men who buy sex — a move they believe will upend the market that fuels prostitution and sex trafficking.
These tactics have gained significant momentum, prompting an initiative by the National Association of Attorneys General, law-enforcement stings and sweeps across the country, and even attempts to prosecute clients as traffickers. The problem is that the “end demand” campaign will harm trafficking victims and sex workers more than it helps them.
In a ballroom at Boston’s upscale Westin Copley Place Hotel this spring, more than 250 law-enforcement officers, advocates and survivors of the sex trade, sat riveted, some openly weeping, as they watched a video of a young woman in a dreary motel room, taking her clothes off, telling her grim life story to one uncaring, unhearing man after another. The videos’s final message: If men didn’t buy her, pimps couldn’t sell her.
For these modern-day abolitionists, ending all prostitution is the only solution. As Lina Nealon, director of Demand Abolition, told the gathered participants through tears, “Because of the work you are doing, my 2-year-old daughter and my soon-to-be-born daughter will find the idea of buying people for sex as incomprehensible as separate water fountains are to me.”
End-demand advocates’ prototypical victim — an abused teenage girl raised in the blight of the inner city and forced into the sex trade by an older man — does exist. But they disregard the fact that individuals, including boys, men and transgender people, enter the sex trade for a variety of reasons. The pimped girl who has inflamed the public’s imagination needs government services and protection, not to be made into a symbolic figure in an ideological battle to eradicate the entire sex industry, which, like many other sectors, includes adults laboring in conditions ranging from upscale to exploitative, from freely chosen to forced.
Unfortunately, despite their righteous anger, the end-demand crowd is quick to dismiss what many sex workers actually have to say. Some activists have gone so far as to brand those who criticize their campaign as “house slaves” unable to recognize their own oppression.
The end-demand crusade is premised on the idea that all prostitution is inherently exploitative. Some end-demand advocates came to their position from their work against pornography in the 1980s; others worked with a coalition of conservatives and evangelical Christians during George W. Bush’s presidency to abolish prostitution. Not surprisingly, these abolitionists ignore the legal distinctions between prostitution and human trafficking. Federal law states that trafficking for forced prostitution occurs only when a commercial sex act is induced through force, fraud or coercion, or when the person induced to perform it is under 18. Indeed, not all prostitution is trafficking, and not all trafficking — as those exploited and sexually assaulted in homes, fields and factories across our nation know too well — is prostitution.
Although it emerged out of anti-trafficking rhetoric, the end-demand campaign is actually a movement to change prostitution policy from our current legal framework — the criminalization of both buying and selling sex — to the “Swedish model,” in which selling sex is not illegal, but buying sex is a criminal offense. (Two other models exist: full legalization with government regulation and registration of sex workers, as in the Netherlands, and full decriminalization of both buying and selling sex with minimal state oversight, as in New Zealand.)
Based on an appealing, proactive vision of gender justice, the Swedish model has caught on in Iceland and Norway — even though it hasn’t panned out as planned in Sweden, where street-level prostitution dropped temporarily after the law took effect in 1999, only to climb again. Sweden’s sex workers say they are forced to rush negotiations and have to rely more on intermediaries to access wary clients. Prostitution hasn’t gone away; it’s simply gone underground.
Translating Swedish laws into an American context presents even more problems. America lacks the extensive services of Sweden’s social welfare state, which are vital to anyone leaving the sex trade. And American politicians don’t want to be seen as soft on crime or morally lax, making it unlikely that selling sex could ever be decriminalized here.
In this environment, any uptick in law-enforcement actions aimed at buyers inevitably results in increased criminalization of those selling sex. New York City’s “Operation Losing Proposition” earlier this year resulted in nearly 200 arrests; the operation allegedly targeted the demand side of prostitution, but it netted 10 individuals who sell sex as well. Attempting to implement the Swedish law in our punitive environment would most likely mean the criminalization of even more of those it’s intended to help — without a Scandinavian-style safety net for those leaving the life.
“You will see that in any country, when you criminalize both parts, the police go for the women,” said Kasja Wahlberg, a Swedish detective and the country’s rapporteur on human trafficking. According to Meagan Morris, a Colorado researcher who has studied law-enforcement approaches to prostitution, even so-called “victim-centered” approaches disproportionately hurt women, leaving them more vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation because they have criminal records, which limit their access to affordable housing and sustainable-wage jobs.
End-demand strategies could also lead to more pressure on sex workers from pimps and traffickers. “Pimps don’t accept the rationale that there’s a new law and fewer johns now,” said Paul Holmes, a counter-trafficking expert and former Scotland Yard official. “So if a girl is working 16 hours, she’ll have to work 20, and under more brutality. You’ll also drive the trade underground, which makes it more dangerous for them and more difficult for us.”
However well-intentioned law-enforcement strategies might be, they have been engineered with little attention to the wants and needs of sex workers — and to the violence many of them have faced from government employees.
A study in Illinois found that police account for 30 percent of all reported abuse, compared with just 4 percent arising from pimps. According to one young person cited in the Young Women’s Empowerment Project’s study: “I was going to meet a new john. It turned out to be a sting set up by the cops. He got violent with me, handcuffed me and then raped me. He cleaned me up for the police station, and I got sentenced to four months in jail for prostitution.”
In New York, a woman who was trafficked into the sex trade as a minor told me sometimes “the cops are the ones abusing you, taking your money, beating you up” and they offer no help “even if I get raped” by a john. “I’ve had to provide services more than once in exchange for not being arrested,” she added. “Who is really going to hold them accountable?”
THE best law-enforcement strategy to prevent trafficking into forced prostitution is not an end-demand campaign that harms current sex workers. What’s needed instead is a commitment to seriously investigate and prosecute traffickers and impose harsh punishment on those who rape and assault sex workers. Police departments also need public ombudsmen, tough internal-affairs bureaus and vigorous monitoring to combat corruption and abuse. If those in the sex trade felt comfortable reporting rape to the police rather than running from them, police departments would have a much easier time discovering cases of trafficking.
But law enforcement is only one part of the solution. Many young people living on the streets turn to “survival sex” in exchange for food or shelter — and many do so without an intermediary. “I ran away from all the drug activity at home at 11,” one woman in Chicago told me. “I had to do it just to have somewhere to sleep, something to eat.”
Nearly 90 percent of the minors profiled in a John Jay College study indicated they wanted to leave “the life” — but cited access to stable housing as one of the biggest obstacles. In New York City alone, almost 4,000 homeless youths lack stable housing, yet there are barely more than 100 long-term shelter beds to serve them.
Starting in 2008, staff members at the Queens County AIDS Center could barely get the door open on cold days: the office was packed with young people sleeping on the floor. One of them was Donna, a transgender 25-year-old who started selling sex at 13 after running away from abusive foster and group homes.
For people like Donna, ending demand for prostitution is not the answer; satisfying the demand for basic social services is. Shelter, job opportunities and a responsive and sensitive law-enforcement system are vital to those who want to leave the trade. “People call you a survivor after you leave the life,” Donna told me. “But I was a survivor when I was in it.” She added: “I didn’t really like prostituting. But then, I had no other way out.”
American Bar Association Responds
To contact us Click HERE
Victims of Human Trafficking
Published: October 9, 2012
To the Editor:
“To Combat ‘Modern Slavery’ ” (editorial, Oct. 2) rightly stresses the need for government policies that rigorously break the demand for forced labor and help human trafficking victims.
The legal community also has a key role to play, by changing the way it looks at victims, some as young as 10.
The American Bar Association is working to ensure that law enforcement officials are trained to better identify victims so they can help instead of punish.
Two bright spots in this effort are the Illinois Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the New York Legal Aid Society, where legal and social service entities team up in their efforts.
Human traffickers prey on the vulnerabilities of their victims and count on police officers, prosecutors, judges and public defenders’ lack of experience in identifying and confronting modern-day slavery. It is time to turn the tables on the perpetrators and show the victims that they deserve justice, and a second chance.
LAUREL BELLOWS
President, American Bar Association
Chicago, Oct. 3, 2012
Victims of Human Trafficking
Published: October 9, 2012
To the Editor:
“To Combat ‘Modern Slavery’ ” (editorial, Oct. 2) rightly stresses the need for government policies that rigorously break the demand for forced labor and help human trafficking victims.
The legal community also has a key role to play, by changing the way it looks at victims, some as young as 10.
The American Bar Association is working to ensure that law enforcement officials are trained to better identify victims so they can help instead of punish.
Two bright spots in this effort are the Illinois Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the New York Legal Aid Society, where legal and social service entities team up in their efforts.
Human traffickers prey on the vulnerabilities of their victims and count on police officers, prosecutors, judges and public defenders’ lack of experience in identifying and confronting modern-day slavery. It is time to turn the tables on the perpetrators and show the victims that they deserve justice, and a second chance.
LAUREL BELLOWS
President, American Bar Association
Chicago, Oct. 3, 2012
Meet The Nonprofit Helping the White House Stop Human Trafficking
To contact us Click HERE
Meet The Nonprofit Helping the White House Stop Human Trafficking
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/10/09/meet-the-nonprofit-helping-the-white-house-stop-human-trafficking
By ELIZABETH FLOCK
October 9, 2012 RSS Feed Print
When President Barack Obama unveiled major actions to fight human trafficking at the Clinton Global Initiative late last month, he acknowledged that the White House couldn't do it alone.
In part, that's because the new executive order announced by the president, which bans government contractors from engaging in human trafficking-related practices, was meant to encourage all American corporations to follow suit. That's where Not For Sale comes in.
The Obama administration has confirmed that the California-based nonprofit has been tapped to participate in an upcoming forum at the White House, along with Obama's Faith-Based Advisory Council, to talk to major corporations about how their electronics, apparel and food can be produced without the use of "slaves."
In his September speech, Obama said it was time to call victims of human trafficking—the illegal trade of human beings for labor or sex—"modern slavery." The International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency that handles labor issues, estimates there are nearly 21 million slaves globally today.
"We help companies source differently, we say 'here's some great Cacao providers' [that don't use human trafficking]. ... Washington is very interested in those kind of incentives," David Batstone, president and co-founder of Not For Sale, tells Whispers. "There's also a strong demographic under the age of 35 who care about how products are made, so that's a market reward for corporations."
Not For Sale says it will also work with the White House toward a possible new federal law inspired by California's Transparency In Supply Chains Act, which requires every company making $100 million in revenue or more to report where their products were made. The White House declined to comment on the possible new law, but spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told Whispers the president's remarks made clear that the administration will be "working with the Congress and private sector and others [on this issue], because a whole-of-nation approach is needed."
The Global Business Coalition Against Trafficking, a separate coalition of eight major corporations including ExxonMobil, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft, will meanwhile work to eliminate potential human trafficking links within their businesses.
Other companies will be targeted by Not For Sale's Free2work rankings, which assign over 600 brands grades from A to F based on what the nonprofit sees as child and forced labor in their supply chain. Zales Jewelry, for example, was awarded a D- by Not For Sale, while Ghiradelli Chocolate received a C-, and Adidas sports equipment a B+.
Meet The Nonprofit Helping the White House Stop Human Trafficking
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/10/09/meet-the-nonprofit-helping-the-white-house-stop-human-trafficking
By ELIZABETH FLOCK
October 9, 2012 RSS Feed Print
When President Barack Obama unveiled major actions to fight human trafficking at the Clinton Global Initiative late last month, he acknowledged that the White House couldn't do it alone.
In part, that's because the new executive order announced by the president, which bans government contractors from engaging in human trafficking-related practices, was meant to encourage all American corporations to follow suit. That's where Not For Sale comes in.
The Obama administration has confirmed that the California-based nonprofit has been tapped to participate in an upcoming forum at the White House, along with Obama's Faith-Based Advisory Council, to talk to major corporations about how their electronics, apparel and food can be produced without the use of "slaves."
In his September speech, Obama said it was time to call victims of human trafficking—the illegal trade of human beings for labor or sex—"modern slavery." The International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency that handles labor issues, estimates there are nearly 21 million slaves globally today.
"We help companies source differently, we say 'here's some great Cacao providers' [that don't use human trafficking]. ... Washington is very interested in those kind of incentives," David Batstone, president and co-founder of Not For Sale, tells Whispers. "There's also a strong demographic under the age of 35 who care about how products are made, so that's a market reward for corporations."
Not For Sale says it will also work with the White House toward a possible new federal law inspired by California's Transparency In Supply Chains Act, which requires every company making $100 million in revenue or more to report where their products were made. The White House declined to comment on the possible new law, but spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told Whispers the president's remarks made clear that the administration will be "working with the Congress and private sector and others [on this issue], because a whole-of-nation approach is needed."
The Global Business Coalition Against Trafficking, a separate coalition of eight major corporations including ExxonMobil, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft, will meanwhile work to eliminate potential human trafficking links within their businesses.
Other companies will be targeted by Not For Sale's Free2work rankings, which assign over 600 brands grades from A to F based on what the nonprofit sees as child and forced labor in their supply chain. Zales Jewelry, for example, was awarded a D- by Not For Sale, while Ghiradelli Chocolate received a C-, and Adidas sports equipment a B+.
For Malala
To contact us Click HERE
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Her ‘Crime’ Was Loving Schools
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 10, 2012 19 Commenthttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/opinion/kristof-her-crime-was-loving-schools.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121011s
Twice the Taliban threw warning letters into the home of Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old Pakistan girl who is one of the world’s most persuasive advocates for girls’ education. They told her to stop her advocacy — or else.
She refused to back down, stepped up her campaign and even started a fund to help impoverished Pakistani girls get an education. So, on Tuesday, masked gunmen approached her school bus and asked for her by name. Then they shot her in the head and neck.
“Let this be a lesson,” a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said afterward. He added that if she survives, the Taliban would again try to kill her.
Surgeons have removed a bullet from Malala, and she remains unconscious in critical condition in a hospital in Peshawar. A close family friend, Fazal Moula Zahid, told me that doctors are hopeful that there has been no brain damage and that she will ultimately return to school.
“After recovery, she will continue to get an education,” Fazal said. “She will never, never drop out of school. She will go to the last.”
“Please thank all your people who are supporting us and who stand with us in this war,” he added. “You energize us.”
The day before Malala was shot, far away in Indonesia, another 14-year-old girl seeking an education suffered from a different kind of misogyny. Sex traffickers had reached out to this girl through Facebook, then detained her and raped her for a week. They released her after her disappearance made the local news.
When her private junior high school got wind of what happened, it told her she had “tarnished the school’s image,” according to an account from Indonesia’s National Commission for Protection of Child Rights. The school publicly expelled her — in front of hundreds of classmates — for having been raped.
These events coincide with the first international Day of the Girl on Thursday, and they remind us that the global struggle for gender equality is the paramount moral struggle of this century, equivalent to the campaigns against slavery in the 19th century and against totalitarianism in the 20th century.
Here in the United States, it’s easy to dismiss such incidents as distant barbarities, but we have a blind spot for our own injustices — like sex trafficking. Across America, teenage girls are trafficked by pimps on Web sites like Backpage.com, and then far too often they are treated by police as criminals rather than victims. These girls aren’t just expelled from school; they’re arrested.
Jerry Sandusky’s sex abuse of boys provoked outrage. But similar abuse is routine for trafficked girls across America, and local authorities often shrug with indifference in the same way some people at Penn State evidently did.
We also don’t appreciate the way incidents like the attack on Tuesday in Pakistan represent a broad argument about whether girls deserve human rights and equality of education. Malala was a leader of the camp that said “yes.” After earlier aspiring to be a doctor, more recently she said she wanted to be a politician — modeled on President Obama, one of her heroes — to advance the cause of girls’ education.
Pakistan is a country that has historically suffered from timid and ineffectual leadership, unwilling to stand up to militants. Instead, true leadership emerged from a courageous 14-year-old girl.
On the other side are the Taliban, who understand the stakes perfectly. They shot Malala because girls’ education threatens everything that they stand for. The greatest risk for violent extremists in Pakistan isn’t American drones. It’s educated girls.
“This is not just Malala’s war,” a 19-year-old female student in Peshawar told me. “It is a war between two ideologies, between the light of education and darkness.”
She said she was happy to be quoted by name. But after what happened to Malala, I don’t dare put her at risk.
For those wanting to honor Malala’s courage, there are excellent organizations building schools in Pakistan, such as Developments in Literacy (dil.org) and The Citizens Foundation (tcfusa.org). I’ve seen their schools and how they transform girls — and communities.
One of my greatest frustrations when I travel to Pakistan is that I routinely spot extremist madrassas, or schools, financed by medieval misogynists from Saudi Arabia or elsewhere. They provide meals, free tuition and sometimes scholarships to lure boys — because their donors understand perfectly that education shapes countries.
In contrast, American aid is mainly about supporting the Pakistani Army. We have tripled aid to Pakistani education to $170 million annually, and that’s terrific. But that’s less than one-tenth of our security aid to Pakistan.
In Malala’s most recent e-mail to a Times colleague, Adam Ellick, she wrote: “I want an access to the world of knowledge.” The Taliban clearly understands the transformative power of girls’ education.
Do we?
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Her ‘Crime’ Was Loving Schools
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: October 10, 2012 19 Commenthttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/11/opinion/kristof-her-crime-was-loving-schools.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121011s
Twice the Taliban threw warning letters into the home of Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old Pakistan girl who is one of the world’s most persuasive advocates for girls’ education. They told her to stop her advocacy — or else.
She refused to back down, stepped up her campaign and even started a fund to help impoverished Pakistani girls get an education. So, on Tuesday, masked gunmen approached her school bus and asked for her by name. Then they shot her in the head and neck.
“Let this be a lesson,” a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Ehsanullah Ehsan, said afterward. He added that if she survives, the Taliban would again try to kill her.
Surgeons have removed a bullet from Malala, and she remains unconscious in critical condition in a hospital in Peshawar. A close family friend, Fazal Moula Zahid, told me that doctors are hopeful that there has been no brain damage and that she will ultimately return to school.
“After recovery, she will continue to get an education,” Fazal said. “She will never, never drop out of school. She will go to the last.”
“Please thank all your people who are supporting us and who stand with us in this war,” he added. “You energize us.”
The day before Malala was shot, far away in Indonesia, another 14-year-old girl seeking an education suffered from a different kind of misogyny. Sex traffickers had reached out to this girl through Facebook, then detained her and raped her for a week. They released her after her disappearance made the local news.
When her private junior high school got wind of what happened, it told her she had “tarnished the school’s image,” according to an account from Indonesia’s National Commission for Protection of Child Rights. The school publicly expelled her — in front of hundreds of classmates — for having been raped.
These events coincide with the first international Day of the Girl on Thursday, and they remind us that the global struggle for gender equality is the paramount moral struggle of this century, equivalent to the campaigns against slavery in the 19th century and against totalitarianism in the 20th century.
Here in the United States, it’s easy to dismiss such incidents as distant barbarities, but we have a blind spot for our own injustices — like sex trafficking. Across America, teenage girls are trafficked by pimps on Web sites like Backpage.com, and then far too often they are treated by police as criminals rather than victims. These girls aren’t just expelled from school; they’re arrested.
Jerry Sandusky’s sex abuse of boys provoked outrage. But similar abuse is routine for trafficked girls across America, and local authorities often shrug with indifference in the same way some people at Penn State evidently did.
We also don’t appreciate the way incidents like the attack on Tuesday in Pakistan represent a broad argument about whether girls deserve human rights and equality of education. Malala was a leader of the camp that said “yes.” After earlier aspiring to be a doctor, more recently she said she wanted to be a politician — modeled on President Obama, one of her heroes — to advance the cause of girls’ education.
Pakistan is a country that has historically suffered from timid and ineffectual leadership, unwilling to stand up to militants. Instead, true leadership emerged from a courageous 14-year-old girl.
On the other side are the Taliban, who understand the stakes perfectly. They shot Malala because girls’ education threatens everything that they stand for. The greatest risk for violent extremists in Pakistan isn’t American drones. It’s educated girls.
“This is not just Malala’s war,” a 19-year-old female student in Peshawar told me. “It is a war between two ideologies, between the light of education and darkness.”
She said she was happy to be quoted by name. But after what happened to Malala, I don’t dare put her at risk.
For those wanting to honor Malala’s courage, there are excellent organizations building schools in Pakistan, such as Developments in Literacy (dil.org) and The Citizens Foundation (tcfusa.org). I’ve seen their schools and how they transform girls — and communities.
One of my greatest frustrations when I travel to Pakistan is that I routinely spot extremist madrassas, or schools, financed by medieval misogynists from Saudi Arabia or elsewhere. They provide meals, free tuition and sometimes scholarships to lure boys — because their donors understand perfectly that education shapes countries.
In contrast, American aid is mainly about supporting the Pakistani Army. We have tripled aid to Pakistani education to $170 million annually, and that’s terrific. But that’s less than one-tenth of our security aid to Pakistan.
In Malala’s most recent e-mail to a Times colleague, Adam Ellick, she wrote: “I want an access to the world of knowledge.” The Taliban clearly understands the transformative power of girls’ education.
Do we?
12 Ekim 2012 Cuma
God Rules All History
To contact us Click HERE
by Doug Nichols.
When so discouraged recently, and praying over thesituation of the USA with so many of our political leaders uttering and livingin lies, my wife Margaret shared with me whatshe had just written in her personal devotions that morning, “God rules all history(His-story) – the coming and goings of kings and rulers, the rise and fall ofempires and nations, the beginning and ending, and usefulness of organizationsand missions.”
“…as I haveplanned; so shall it be; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand … this isthe purpose that is purposed concerning the whole earth and this is the handthat is stretched out over all nations. For the Lord of Hosts has purposed andwho will annul it? His hand is stretchout, who will turn it back?” Isaiah 14: 24, 26, 27 (esv).
“Our God rules in the individual lives of people onearth. In my life … Psalm 57:2 (esv), ‘Icry out to God most, to God who fulfills His purpose for me.’”
Whether individuals acknowledge God or not, He iscontrolling each or their lives – for righteousness, good, or for judgment. Proverbs19:21 (esv), “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose ofthe Lord that will stand!’
by Doug Nichols.
When so discouraged recently, and praying over thesituation of the USA with so many of our political leaders uttering and livingin lies, my wife Margaret shared with me whatshe had just written in her personal devotions that morning, “God rules all history(His-story) – the coming and goings of kings and rulers, the rise and fall ofempires and nations, the beginning and ending, and usefulness of organizationsand missions.”
“…as I haveplanned; so shall it be; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand … this isthe purpose that is purposed concerning the whole earth and this is the handthat is stretched out over all nations. For the Lord of Hosts has purposed andwho will annul it? His hand is stretchout, who will turn it back?” Isaiah 14: 24, 26, 27 (esv).
“Our God rules in the individual lives of people onearth. In my life … Psalm 57:2 (esv), ‘Icry out to God most, to God who fulfills His purpose for me.’”
Whether individuals acknowledge God or not, He iscontrolling each or their lives – for righteousness, good, or for judgment. Proverbs19:21 (esv), “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose ofthe Lord that will stand!’
Answering is Simply Common Courtesy
To contact us Click HERE
Have you noticed the rudeness of people these days? You say “Hello” to people and they don‘t evenacknowledge; they just kind of grunt andmove on.
I am a missionary working with needy pastors worldwide andone of our ministries is receiving permission to print evangelical theologybooks to help pastors and Christian workers in their study, preaching andteaching the Word of God. When I writemany publishers and authors to ask and obtain permission to reprint their books,I probably received an answer only 10% of the time. We write pastors throughout the UnitedStates, UK, Canada, and other countries asking if their church would sponsor apastors conference for needy pastors in the Philippines, India, or Africa andsend them to be main speaker. Again,most never answer.
However, I recently received a very gracious letter (not anemail) from Pastor Charles Swindoll of Insight for Living and pastor of achurch in Texas. He very graciouslyexplained why he could not travel to the Philippines at this time and after afew other remarks, he apologized. Hesent a very encouraging letter.
The question is , “Why can’t others do the same and be likeSwindoll practicing the gracious art of Christ-like communication to the gloryof God?”
Have you noticed the rudeness of people these days? You say “Hello” to people and they don‘t evenacknowledge; they just kind of grunt andmove on.
I am a missionary working with needy pastors worldwide andone of our ministries is receiving permission to print evangelical theologybooks to help pastors and Christian workers in their study, preaching andteaching the Word of God. When I writemany publishers and authors to ask and obtain permission to reprint their books,I probably received an answer only 10% of the time. We write pastors throughout the UnitedStates, UK, Canada, and other countries asking if their church would sponsor apastors conference for needy pastors in the Philippines, India, or Africa andsend them to be main speaker. Again,most never answer.
However, I recently received a very gracious letter (not anemail) from Pastor Charles Swindoll of Insight for Living and pastor of achurch in Texas. He very graciouslyexplained why he could not travel to the Philippines at this time and after afew other remarks, he apologized. Hesent a very encouraging letter.
The question is , “Why can’t others do the same and be likeSwindoll practicing the gracious art of Christ-like communication to the gloryof God?”
“Throw the bums out!”
To contact us Click HERE
Harry Reid, head of the US Senate, has not allowed thesenate to pass a budget for several years. As this is not legal, the questionis, “What is he hiding?” and “Why does he not do his job?”
In the 1930’s and 40’s, Will Rogers, an entertainer fromOklahoma and cowboy, was known for many of his saying about those in WashingtonD.C. One famous saying of his was, “If they are doing a good job, then throwthe bums out!”
Harry Reid, head of the US Senate, has not allowed thesenate to pass a budget for several years. As this is not legal, the questionis, “What is he hiding?” and “Why does he not do his job?”
In the 1930’s and 40’s, Will Rogers, an entertainer fromOklahoma and cowboy, was known for many of his saying about those in WashingtonD.C. One famous saying of his was, “If they are doing a good job, then throwthe bums out!”
Is our land (UK, Europe, Canada, and USA) covered with the blood of the unborn?
To contact us Click HERE
Daily (hourly) thousands of unborn babies are killed,aborted legally, but not morally.
The psalmist in describing the sins of his people wrote, “They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons,and shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and their daughters, Whom theysacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with the blood” (Psalm 106:37-38,nasb).
Is our land covered with blood?
Daily (hourly) thousands of unborn babies are killed,aborted legally, but not morally.
The psalmist in describing the sins of his people wrote, “They even sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons,and shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and their daughters, Whom theysacrificed to the idols of Canaan; and the land was polluted with the blood” (Psalm 106:37-38,nasb).
Is our land covered with blood?
Kaydol:
Yorumlar (Atom)