NO TO CHILD PORNOGRAPHY

Today(November 20th) is World Youth Day and also the 2009 Blogcampaign Against Child Pornography.



Manitoba was the first Canadian province to make it mandatory for all citizens to report child pornography. Under the legislation which was passed earlier this year, any Manitoban that sees something they suspect could be child pornography must report it to Cybertip.ca

Cybertip.ca is a tip-line which is operated by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (CCCP), a charitable organisation, headquartered in Winnipeg, which is devoted to the personal safety of all children around the world.

The CCCP have just released a report which details some alarming statistics derived from its investigation of over 15,000 child pornography sites over a seven-year period.

The report, Child Sexual Abuse Images: An Analysis of Websites, states:

• 35% of all images that were analyzed depicting serious sexual assaults against a child.

• Children under 8 years old were most likely to be abused through sexual assaults in the images.

• Of the webpages analyzed, 78% had at least one abuse image of a child less than 8 years of age with many showing infants or toddlers being assaulted.

• 83% of the images depicting girls.

• There is a marketing component to many websites hosting child sex abuse images. Over 50% of websites were accepting at least one form of credit card payment, and using language seen on adult pornography websites in an attempt to normalize the viewing of such images.

• The reality is that illegal content is widely and publicly available and moves in an effort to avoid being shut down. In a 48 hour period, Cybertip.ca observed one website cycle through 212 IP addresses, located in 16 different countries.

Says Lianna McDonald, Executive Director of the CCCP in a press release published on the website: "What makes this particularly concerning is the very young age of the children in the images. These children are most likely being accessed and sexually abused by someone they know. Not only is it devastating for a child to be abused, but to have the abuse recorded and distributed on the Internet adds another layer of trauma. This is a call to action to all Canadians to learn to recognize the signs of abuse, and to report their suspicions of abuse. We need to disrupt and hopefully stop child sexual abuse and prevent it from being memorialized and traded on the Internet."

The aim of the 2009 Blogcampaign Against Child Pornography, according to the You Tube promotional video is to “plant on Internet servers severe criticism to this human and social shame. This way we’ll make it so these dirty websearches of the words CHILD + PORNOGRAPHY be a blow in these pervert’s conscience.”

I am not proud of the fact that it is necessary for bloggers like myself around the world to be shouting “No to child pornography” today, but I am hopeful that collectively we can make a difference and protect the innocence that is our future.

All children deserve our love and respect and these terms, deliberately reproduced here to drive traffic to sites like this and away from the sites those using them are seeking, show neither.

“angels” “lolitas” “boylover” “preteens” “girllover” “childlover” “pedoboy” “boyboy” “fetishboy” “feet boy”

Perhaps those who are looking for these words should also be looking for help.


Copyright2009, Angela Lovell.

Copenhagen: Climate Constipation?

I hope Stephen Harper and Barack Obama are buying carbon offsets for their flights to Copenhagen in December. Because that seems to be about the only impact on climate change they are going to have by attending the global climate conference.

World leaders have been eager to make sure nobody gets their hopes up for any kind of binding international agreement on climate change policies to arise from the Copenhagen meeting, which is rapidly shaping up to be another monumental release of hot air generated from a 192-strong, international team of buck-passers.

If last week’s Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit meeting is anything to go by, where the participants spent most of their time finger pointing and bickering on how not to cooperate economically, we may as well load up on the sunscreen and prepare to fry.

Climate change is not a local issue; it’s not about national sovereignty or self-interest. It’s a global issue that is going to take a global solution. That, unfortunately, means international co-operation on a scale never before seen and, quite frankly, I wonder if will ever be seen.

So, whilst the US, which is jamming the log firmly into the climate change channel, wastes as much time as it can playing internal political games with issues like health care reform, the rest of the world is expected to wait patiently, like an enthusiastic puppy restrained by a retractable leash that it can yank at any moment.

And I am not unduly blaming the US, although without the involvement of the largest global emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG) any agreement reached would be considerably toothless. Mr. Harper seemed to display an unseemly relish in reiterating that no deal is imminent in Copenhagen. That could be a bit harsh, though. He was probably just anxious to try out his new bucket and spade in the Alberta oil sands.

I have been carefully studying a new report by the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU); Solving the climate dilemma: The budget approach. I feel it lays the groundwork for exactly the kind of international cooperative approach to climate change that is going to be needed. Download it from the website.

The sad part is the report, above all else, emphasises the urgency with which this kind of global agreement must be reached and implemented, an urgency that is not being respected by our world leaders, who are showing a lack of respect, by association, for each individual on this planet.

I am going to quote just one paragraph from the report, which I think says it all, and which I hope Mr. Obama, Mr. Harper et al have read:

The evidence of current research illustrates that the
turning point towards sustainability can no longer be
postponed. WBGU’s analysis explicitly shows that
over 100 countries immediately need to introduce
a process of transformation that swiftly stabilises
emissions levels, then significantly reduces them and
finally achieves complete decarbonization of all relevant
socio-economic processes by the middle of the
21st century. There are only 65 nations whose emissions
paths currently seem to be within the climatefriendly
range, and all of them are poor developing
countries. This illustrates the extreme time pressure
the climate negotiations are currently under and
stresses that a radical global transformation process
is necessary in order to achieve a low-carbon world
economy. The negotiations are currently still in a
deadlock because short-term national interests are
blocking a prompt and effective global climate protection
agreement which would be compatible with
the 2 °C guard rail.


Perhaps, the way things are looking, the best thing that President Obama and Prime Minister Harper could do to help reduce GHG emissions right now is to stay home in December.

Copyright2009, Angela Lovell.
Photo by courtesy of:
US DOE/National Renewable Energy Laboratory