FAMOUS

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.

---Naomi Shihab Nye

Mountain Dreamer Speaks

It doesn't interest me what you do for living. I want to know what you ache or, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with JOY, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. I want know if you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty even when it is not pretty everyday, and if you can source your life on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the moon.

It doesn't interest me to know where you live of how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

- Oriah, Mountain Dreamer, Indian Elder

Craigslist says it won't resume adult services advertising

By Jordan Steffen, Los Angeles Times

September 16, 2010

Craigslist has no plans to bring back the controversial adult services category that was on its classified advertising website, a company official told Congress on Wednesday.

Craigslist placed a block on the section earlier this month after law enforcement officials and human rights groups accused it of not properly monitoring the category and removing ads for prostitution and child trafficking.

William Clinton Powell, director of customer service and law enforcement relations for Craigslist, made the statement during a House Judiciary Committee hearing on minors caught up in sex trafficking.

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Adult advertisements posted on Craigslist received three times more responses than those on any other online service, Deborah Richardson, chief program officer for the Women's Funding Network, said before the committee.

In the last six months, there has been a steep increase in the number of U.S. adolescent girls advertised for commercial sex on the Internet, Richardson said. Linda Smith, a former congresswoman who now heads the nonprofit Shared Hope group that provides rehabilitation for women and children involved in sex trafficking, said, "I have not had a girl that wasn't marketed online, and most of them were on Craigslist."

At least 100,000 children in the United States are involved in commercial sex every year and the average age at which girls enter prostitution is 13, Smith said.

Connecticut Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal, who led an effort to persuade Craigslist to drop the section, said Wednesday he was pleased by the announcement it would not be resumed, but asked the company for "more effective and aggressive screening to fight prostitution ads, including swift removal of suspect ads flagged by the public."

Ernie Allen, chief executive of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said removing the category was a "positive and productive" step. But he said more must be done.

"The goal is to destroy the business model for those who sell children for sex on the Internet," Allen said.

jsteffen@tribune.com

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

Child Prostitution on Craigslist

Here is an informative video about the "adult services" section on Craigslist. According to this CNN report, Craigslist has become the fastest, easiest, and safest way to sell children for sex; so much say that "Craigslist is like the Wal-Mart of online sex trafficking."

You can read more here.

International Justice Mission

One of the organizations we support is the International Justice Mission. Here is an excerpt from their Summer 2010 Quarterly Spotlight, which gives a glimpse of what they do.

The case of Matias* is a good example of the obstacles we face in supporting the Bolivian public justice system. Matias was 10 years old in 2008 when a 30-year-old man who cut his hair and attended his church invited him to his apartment for tea and then violently sexually assaulted him.

Matias' impoverished family was desperate for justice. His father, Juan, remembers: "I didn't have any money to pay [a lawyer]. . . . But if I didn't go forward with his case, this man was going to continue" abusing children.

My team had the privilege of representing Matias in court. Preparing and getting his case to trial proved to be a tremendous - but, sadly familiar - battle. We had a clear case against his perpetrator, but faced many obstacles of a different sort.

Our first challenge was assmemblign the three "citizen judges" who play the role of a jury. In Bolivia, if a poor person manages to bring charges against the perpetrator of a crime, without an advocate, the justice process often ends here.

Here's why the process is so difficult: Court clerks must summon a dozen people so that three of them can be selected to serve as citizen judges. But these clerks receive no funding for their transportation to summon anyone, so they often can't or don't do their jobs. And many deeply impoverished Bolivians simply cannot miss a day of work to serve their duty even if they are summoned.

Over the course of 2009, the trial was scheduled, then postponed and transferred to another court over and over, as people summoned to serve as citizen judges failed to appear. With each delay, Matias and his parents grew more discouraged - but we urged them to continue with the case, and remained committed to persevere.

Finally, in January 2010, enough of the necessary people appeared - Vania, a member of our legal team, had gone to the courthouse the day before to lend the clerk her cell phone so he could make reminder calls. Three were selected to serve as citizen judges, and, after more than a year of delays, the trial could begin.

But the hurdles did not end - and the stakes grew higher. Our attempts to keep the case moving were thwarted repeatedly, as both citizen judges and the very overburdened government prosecutor - a Bolivian official our team supports in court - failed to appear for hearings.

Even with our determination, the trial stretched on into April, prolonging an already difficult process for Matias and increasing the chances that the entire process could get derailed.

Finally, as we neared the last hearing, the government prosecutor we were working with announced that she planned to reschedule - a decision that meant that the trial would not conclude before the end of the summer. We were dismayed. We prayed; we desperately tried to convince her to move forward.

Finally, with just one day to spare, the prosecutor committed to attend the hearing. After 17 months of advocacy, the trial concluded: The defendant was declared guilty and sentenced to 20 years. Matias had justice.

*The name of this IJM Client has been changed for his security.

This story is one of many that IJM helped write. Go here to learn more.

Perception of Beauty

Yesterday, if someone had asked me what percentage of photographs in magazines were photo-shopped, I probably would have said "all of them." It certainly wouldn't have surprised me to find out that was true.

But, on a day-to-day basis, when my attention isn't being drawn to the subject, I sure find it easy to forget what the digitization of culture has done to my perception of beauty.

For more information on the impact of this type of imagery on young girls, click here.

Johann Hari: So that's OK then. It's fine to abuse young girls, as long as you're a great film director

The Swiss government has admitted "national interests" may be a factor

So now we know. If you are a 44-year-old man, you can drug and anally rape a terrified 13-year-old girl as she sobs, says "No, no, no," and pleads for her asthma medication – all according to the victim's sworn testimony – and face no punishment at all. You just have to meet two criteria – (a) you have to run away and stay away for a few decades; and (b) you need to direct some good films. If you do, not only will you walk free, there will be a huge campaign to protect you from the "witch-hunt" and you will be lauded as a hero.

Roman Polanski admitted his crime before he ran away and, for years afterwards, he boasted from exile that every man wanted to do what he did. He chuckled to one interviewer in 1979: "If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see?

"But... f*****g, you see... and the young girls. Judges want to f**k young girls. Juries want to f**k young girls. Everyone wants to f**k young girls!"

But this is not enough, it seems, for the Swiss government to return him to the US to face trial. They have found a legalistic loophole that enables them to let him go – while admitting "national interests" may be a factor. This may be a reference to pressure from neighbouring France to free their citizen. As a Swiss citizen, I think I can say without being offensive, we all remember the bargains Swiss governments have made in the past to preserve their "national interests". This is in a long tradition of helping criminals and calling it Swiss hard-headedness.

The campaign to release Polanski has leeched into the open a slew of attitudes I thought were defeated a generation ago. Whoopi Goldberg said it wasn't "rape rape".

Others hinted darkly that she wasn't a virgin. So if a 13-year-old has been abused before, she's fair game for all future rapists? The French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levi, who led the campaign, said a little bit of child molestation isn't his problem when Great Art is at stake. He wrote: "Am I repulsed by what he got up to? His behaviour is not my business. I'm concerned about his movies. I like The Pianist and Rosemary's Baby."

That's worth saying again – this campaign was led by a man who thinks the drugging and raping of a child is "not my business", when compared to a film about Satan inseminating Mia Farrow.

The novelist Robert Harris, who is a friend of Polanski's, said: "It strikes me as disgusting treatment." He wasn't talking about the child-rape. He was talking about the attempt to punish the child-rape. He said Polanski was being subjected to a "lynch mob"? Where is this lynch mob? All I can see are people patiently suggesting the law should be enforced and he should be given a fair and open trial. This is the opposite of a lynching: it is sober justice.

Do these defenders of Polanski understand what they are saying? Harris has four children. If a great film director drugs and rapes them tomorrow, will he call the police, or will he say it would be "disgusting" to do so? Would he say the police and prosecutors trying to protect his children were a "lynch mob"? If the rapist ran off, would he say that after three decades on the run (boasting about his crime) he should walk free?

Now the campaign has succeeded. So congratulations to Whoopi and Bernard and Robert: an unrepentant, bragging child-rapist won't face his day in court, thanks in part to you. Have fun at the victory party. But you may want to leave your daughters at home.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-so-thats-ok-then-its-fine-to-abuse-young-girls-as-long-as-youre-a-great-film-director-2025067.html