Too Important Not to Read

Selling women in ancient Babylon

Long Pross, Trafficking Victim

Actress Maggie Grace (L) and jounalist Nicholas Kristof present Somaly Mam of Cambodia with the Human Rights Award at the Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards ceremony at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on March 19, 2009 in Washington, DC.

This week I have posted a few reads that delve into the nature of culture, women at risk and how we all can make the world safe for women.

Leading off is this post from Steve DeAngelis who blogs about the power of culture to either hinder or advance the human experience.

The Victorian Scottish historian and essayist, Thomas Carlyle, once wrote: "Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being." In past posts, I've noted that culture can either be used as a platform for progress or it becomes an anchor that keeps people mired in the past. According to a recent study, culture has played a more important role in humanity's evolution than once thought ["Human Culture, an Evolutionary Force," by Nicholas Wade, New York Times, 1 March 2010]. Wade explains:

Read the rest:
The Power of Culture

Related to culture is how women are treated in this world. For those of us living in a society that protects and values women, it is vital to read these next two posts to see how we can contribute to making the world safe for women.

Steve DeAngelis continues in this post to introduce Nichlos Kristof whom I have written about here and here.

One of the oldest objects of worship known to man is small figurine carved out of oolitic limestone that has been labeled the Venus of Willendorf. Displayed at the Natural History Museum in Vienna, the Venus of Willendorf was created sometime between 24,000-22,000 BCE. The figurine was probably carved by a man. Although it is not a particularly flattering depiction of a woman, it reminds us that men have always been in awe of the power of creation. Unfortunately, the awe that mankind has demonstrated for the process of procreation has not extended to the women who carry it out. When it comes to history, might makes right and the gentler sex has felt the brunt of that might for far too long.

Facts don't lie. Only one percent of the landowners around the globe are women. Widespread participation by women in politics is a modern development. Often in the past the only way that women could influence politics was between the sheets. The Greek comic playwright Aristophanes knew this and penned his famous play Lysistrata to demonstrate that although they were under-appreciated in the male-dominated Athenian society, women were nonetheless well-informed and capable of pursuing political agendas. The play was performed in classical Athens in 411 BC. The play is a comic tale of Lysistrata's mission to end the Peloponnesian War. Her strategy is to convince the women of Greece to withhold sexual favors from their husbands and lovers until they agree to negotiate peace. At the beginning of the play, Lysistrata says to her friend Calonice, "There are a lot of things about us women that sadden me, considering how men see us as rascals." To which Calonice replies: "As indeed we are!" Even back then, women were more appreciated for their beauty than their brains and more for their sexual prowess than their other life skills. Twenty-five hundred years later the world's women are still suffering at the hands of men.

The husband and wife team, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, remind us that women continue to be ill-treated in many places around the world ["The Women’s Crusade," New York Times, 23 August 2009].

Read the whole post:

Making the World Safe for Women



Finally comes this post from the outstanding blog and online magazine devoted to military matters Small Wars Journal who turned their attention to spotlighting an organization that is making a difference.

Innocents at Risk is a 501©(3) nonprofit founded to fight child exploitation and human trafficking. Our mission is to educate citizens about the horrific global and local problem of human trafficking and work to prevent it. In order to increase the visibility of the severity of the issue, Innocents at Risk established partnerships with the Department of State, Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education, Department of Homeland Security, ICE, Custom Border Patrol and the D.C. Task Force. We work with a vast number of non-government organizations and service providers.

Human Trafficking is 21st century slavery. It is happening throughout the world in every country and across the United States in every major city and small town. According to the Department of State, every year over 2,000,000 men, women and children are taken, trafficked and thrown into this cruel world of slavery. Traffickers use force, fraud or coercion to obtain their victims.

Read the whole post.
Very Good People Doing Great Things

If any one is serious about stopping this scourge, please visit the links under Honoring our Commitments links on the right of this blog. As Steve DeAngelis noted in the end of his post on culture, none of us will live to see the results of how the information age will influence future cultures, but properly used it can be a powerful tool for doing good and making the world safe for women.

Cambodia Revisited.

Second oldest crime, selling humans.

Long Pross

Cambodian brothel

Cambodian women on the street

On January 1, 2009 I wrote a post entitled Sex Trafficking, The World's Second Oldest Crime. Since then it has become the most visited post on this site. Many of those who find their way there are seeking the obvious and only pause to realize that it does not appeal to their prurient interests. But more importantly, quite a few stay to read about Somaly and Sina and visit the link to the Somaly Foundation and the related links about Cambodia that appear under the Honoring our Commitments sidebar.

The problem of Sex trafficking continues to been written about by Nicholas Kristof at the, Nick Kristoff blog. and in the pages of the New York Times.

Kristof has written several times about CAMBODIA and the issues that still haunt a country that became part of the collateral damage of the war in Vietnam. Both the United States and Vietnam must assume a share in the destruction that tore the fabric of this once peaceful and beautiful country. Vietnam should assume more of the blame for using it as a staging area in violation of Cambodia's neutrality and the United States almost equally for not doing more to support the government of Cambodia in it's effort to prevent what occurred in the 1970's after we entered the country in an effort to end the Vietnamese sanctuaries and destabilized the fragile government.

I am compelled to return to this subject to draw attention to the latest reports filed by Kristof about Cambodia. I do this as part of my own recognition that as a soldier in the war next door, I feel a shared responsibility to add my voice to encourage help for this nation. After reading the article linked below, take the time to watch the video linked in the article to grasp in a few minutes what thousands of words cannot describe.

Kristoff writes:

Barack Obama’s presidency marks a triumph over the legacy of slavery, so it would be particularly meaningful if he led a new abolitionist movement against 21st-century slavery — like the trafficking of girls into brothels.

Anyone who thinks it is hyperbole to describe sex trafficking as slavery should look at the maimed face of a teenage girl, Long Pross.

Glance at Pross from her left, and she looks like a normal, fun-loving girl, with a pretty face and a joyous smile. Then move around, and you see where her brothel owner gouged out her right eye.

Yes, I know it’s hard to read this. But it’s infinitely more painful for Pross to recount the humiliations she suffered, yet she summoned the strength to do so — and to appear in a video posted online with this column — because she wants people to understand how brutal sex trafficking can be.

Read more: If This Isn’t Slavery, What Is?

Kristof writes about buying two young girls in this story.

In trying to figure out how we can defeat sex trafficking, a starting point is to think like a brothel owner.

My guide to that has been Sok Khorn, an amiable middle-aged woman who is a longtime brothel owner here in the wild Cambodian town of Poipet. I met her five years ago when she sold me a teenager, Srey Mom, for $203 and then blithely wrote me a receipt confirming that the girl was now my property. At another brothel nearby, I purchased another imprisoned teenager for $150.

Astonished that in the 21st century I had bought two human beings, I took them back to their villages and worked with a local aid group to help them start small businesses. I’ve remained close to them over the years, but the results were mixed.

Read more as well as watching the linked video: OP-ED COLUMNIST; Striking The Brothels' Bottom Line

Kristof sees part of the pathway to lead young women away from a short dirty life of abuse and drugs is through education. In this post he discusses how new schools are helping to mend broken souls.

One of the frustrations in trying to teach kids to read there is that, frankly, there aren’t a lot of great books to teach with. And exciting stories that might entice young people to read often aren’t translated into Khmer, the Cambodian language. So a few years ago, Bernie convinced J.K. Rowling to donate the rights to the first book so that a low-priced Khmer version could be published, so as to hook young people into reading.

Read more: Harry Potter in Cambodia

Now the world is filled with crappy places where the worst of human spirit still flourish. I look at Cambodia and see a cast-off of the Vietnam War that went through a horrific time in it's history called, the Killing Fields. Today, Cambodia is still recovering from the loss of a whole generation of future leaders and remains landlocked in a swampy time warp, awaiting the development that has stimulated it's neighbors.

Another reason prompts me to keep writing about Cambodia. A couple of years ago I met a young person whose parents escaped Cambodia during the worst of times. They went through hardships that they still keep tucked to their breasts so as to protect their five daughters from knowing what they endured to give their children a chance at life. I do not know this woman's families history except to know that her parents came here with nothing, made a life in a strange culture and out of that, saw a daughter graduate this past year from a university with a degree in international business, The First Saturday in May.

Now that she has graduated and seeks her future, this young woman remains a prize for any organization to capture. Her heart is dedicated to caring about people so much that once when she returned from a first vacation out of the country to the Bahamas, her favorite story was about the impression of the taxi driver who had his wife and small child riding along in the cab as they deposited her and her friends to a nightspot, and her concern that they got a reasonable tip. She is moved to write down quotes and use them as a guide. "We don't accomplish anything in this world alone... and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads form one to another that creates something." Sandra Day O'Connor.

.

I have not seen this person since she went forth to seek her future, but her spirit endures and makes me proud to have encouraged her on her quest and been one small thread in the tapestry that will be her life.

So if you are reading this it is because what ever brought you here kept your attention to read about something more important that instant gratification. It is the investment in human connectivity that endures.