How do yo think, is it true about pharma?
Geoff is sitting on a small, hard bed in a Cambodian brothel, his heart thumping fast.

He is 49 years old, a retired Australian diplomat with a wife and two grown-up children.

After a long, tense wait, a grinning teenaged boy opens the door and pushes in two young girls.

One says she is seven years old. The other is nine.

The younger one seems as nervous as Geoff, breathing heavily, as the boy explains exactly what she will do for $60.

Geoff sits back on the bed, a deliberately casual move, but it enables the top button on his shirt to point directly towards the girls’ faces.

Hidden within that button is a tiny video camera and microphone.

‘Drugged’

Authorities are warning about the dangers of child sex tourism

Geoff, not his real name, is an undercover investigator wading through the depravity of Cambodia’s paedophile industry.

He works for an international organisation dedicated to fighting injustice.

“The adrenalin is always pumping,” he says, “no matter how many times you do it.”

More often that not, the girls are drugged.

One of them described it to Geoff as feeling “like you’re not really there.” Some get an injection before each client.

Geoff works mainly in the capital, Phnom Penh, walking along grimy, jostling streets.

In the city centre there are plenty of brothels popular with so-called sex tourists.

Many of the girls in them are obviously under 18, the age of consent here, but their clients either do not realise, or do not care.

But out in the suburbs are places like Svay Pak.

For years this narrow clutter of bars and coffee shops has hidden what many believe was the world’s top destination for paedophiles.

Geoff is well prepared.

He has his hidden camera, a can of pepper spray, a tracking device, and at least four assistants at close hand, ready to spring him if things turn ugly.

Many brothels are run by ruthless Vietnamese gangs.

Some are owned or protected by senior Cambodian police officers.

“The risks are real,” says Geoff. “My wife was concerned to start with, but she’s very supportive now.”

Undercover

Inside the brothel, Geoff is often trapped behind up to three sets of locked doors.

Only then are the children brought out and offered to him.

He talks, films, then uses one of half a dozen standard excuses to leave. “I’m just going to go and get a friend, and we’ll be back soon.”

Sometimes the foreign tourists are only arrested when they get back to their own countries and confronted with Geoff’s footage

Once he walked in on an elderly European man, raping an eight-year-old girl. “For like two seconds,” he says, “I just couldn’t move.

“I remember seeing his clothes hanging on a peg. I guess it’s lucky we’re not allowed to be armed. I could have…” his voice trails off.

Instead, Geoff stuck to his undercover role, and closed the door.

Outside, a few minutes later, he alerted the police, but the man slipped out through a back door.

Local involvement

It can be frustrating, Geoff admits, but there is the compensation of knowing that as a direct result of his work, seven foreign paedophiles have been arrested in the past year-and-a-half.

And today Svay Pak is pretty much closed down, although Geoff knows that the children and their handlers will simply have moved on somewhere else.

Sometimes the foreign tourists are only arrested when they get back to their own countries and are confronted with Geoff’s footage.

But the vast majority of cases involve Cambodians.

Moral dilemma

In February, Geoff gave evidence at a local trial in Phnom Penh. He co-operates closely, but secretly, with the Cambodian police.

The judge questioned three girls, aged 13 and 14, who had been rescued from a brothel.

They told their story, then asked the judge if they could stay and hear their abuser sentenced.

He got 15 years. “Not long enough,” the girls told Geoff.

Most diplomats have privately accused the foreign group of doing more harm than good

As you can imagine, Geoff’s work is rarely straightforward. There is corruption in the police force and there are other complications and ethical dilemmas about his job.

Say he asks a pimp to provide him with lots of girls or boys, is Geoff helping to rescue victims or could he be encouraging the brothel to go out and search for new children to corrupt?

Local involvement

A few months ago, another foreign group working to protect children from the sex industry organised a raid on a brothel.

It turned out the place was owned by a particularly powerful policeman.

A huge scandal followed and now everyone is jittery.

Most diplomats have privately accused the foreign group of doing more harm than good.

And Geoff complains that it now takes him many days, instead of hours, to get the police to authorise new raids.

But still he is busy.

When I called him yesterday he sounded elated. He had just finished another raid.

Three girls rescued, the youngest aged eleven. Two Vietnamese adults now in jail.

Geoff comes across as the solid, unflappable type. At weekends he plays rugby.

“After each operation,” he says, “I need to take a couple of deep breaths. But there is no psychological damage, at least nothing now.

“Someone has to do this job. I guess it might as well be me.”

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 11 June, 2005 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.

Read source of it on the http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4078304.stm site
used car in houston texas

Read another articles about free palm tungsten e software.
Will women outperform men entirely within 20 years? It’s the scenario played out in this week’s BBC Two drama documentary If… women ruled the world?

Baroness Greenfield explains why men could be surplus to requirements.

The future could be female for many reasons: perhaps the most obvious is that we will shift increasingly from manufacturing industries, requiring muscle power, to work with our brains in front of the screen.

Women, therefore, will no longer be disadvantaged because they are unable to tote the barge and shift the bale. More importantly, flexible working from home will not be so difficult to combine with looking after children.

If… women ruled the world Wednesday, 31 March 2004, at 2100 BST on BBC Two

On the other hand, the conflict, that we know all too well, of work versus child-bearing and rearing, might also be helped by technologies enabling us, for example, to freeze and thaw our eggs.

Imagine, therefore, harvesting your eggs at the age of 18 or so when they are in optimum condition, knowing that you could then choose at what stage in your life you might want to reproduce.

You could therefore plan a career and appropriate breaks safe in the knowledge that perhaps with IVF and even a surrogate womb you could, nonetheless, still be a parent.

Genetic donors

In fact, the genetic technologies could well do far more in terms of our concept of birth.

Separating reproduction from sex does not disenfranchise men entirely Baroness Susan Greenfield

Some might think that men will no longer be needed; indeed, it could be possible in the longer future to extract genetic material from any cell in the body and combine it in an evacuated egg so that any one of any sexual orientation of any age could become parents.

This scenario has raised the strange prospect of at least possibly six parents: genetic donors, the donor of the egg, the donor of the womb and, indeed the people who brought the child up.

On the other hand, separating reproduction from sex does not disenfranchise men entirely: we are a very long way from the Orgasmatron of Barbarella fame. Indeed, it is hard to see how cyber simulation could substitute for a fulfilling, loving and physical relationship.

Then again, it could well be that the new technologies render us more autistic: less inclined and able to communicate, and therefore happier in front of a screen rather than talking to, let alone loving, our fellow man.

We could face a scenario where the old divisions between masculinity and femininity do, indeed, cease to have any use or need.

By this time, human beings, as we know them, will have changed so dramatically that we could no longer assume we would be in a “It’s Raining Men” type-world, in which women were just naturally dominant, and males the subordinate group.

More probably, it is not so much that men could be extinct, as opposed to our family lives changing dramatically.

Just as the barrier between work and leisure is eroded, so will be the barrier between retirement and work, a job for life, as well as the generational child/parent/grandparent storyline that we are used to.

The programme was broadcast in the UK on BBC Two on Wednesday, 31 March, 2004 at 2100 BST.

Read http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/if/3524338.stm
And some information of google bbc news.

See related site about Serial sex attacker warning

One of the Internet’s main governing bodies, Icann, has just finished its latest public meeting in Puerto Rico.

After a week of debates on subjects like Accountability and Transparency Management, and workshops on Domain Tasting, delegates, representatives and interested observers are all heading home, wondering whether anything useful has been achieved. Icann, founded in 1988 by the US Government to take over responsibility for key aspects of the internet’s technical architecture like domain names and IP addresses, has had a troubled history. Many question its legitimacy, since it derives its authority from the US rather than the worldwide network community. Others question its commitment to openness and dialogue, especially in relation to the UN-run Internet Governance Forum. And others wonder if Icann is really up to the job, pointing to its cumbersome bureaucracy, exemplified by the disastrous way it handled the proposal to create a new top level domain, .xxx, for sex sites. After years of discussion the creation of this new domain, intended as a way of identifying pornographic websites to make them both easier to find and easier to avoid, was postponed because of objections from US politicians and then abandoned in March 2007.

The core architecture of the net should be as open as possible, both in terms of the technology and in terms of any restrictions on freedom of expression

Whatever criticisms there may be, Icann is currently the lead authority on most of the technical aspects of the internet, so trying to engage with it and make it more effective is the only real option for those concerned with the net’s future. It is therefore reassuring that much of the discussion in San Juan was related to transparency and accountability, looking at how the organisation can be improved.

Immediate problem
Long-term improvements will be welcomed, but there is a more immediate problem for net users. Icann is currently making some decisions that will have a massive impact on the net over the next few years, and we need to make sure that it takes into account the wider feelings of the whole community instead of responding solely to pressure from established interest groups. These decisions concern the future of domain names, and in particular on the creation and management of the generic top-level domains, or gTLDs. There are fifteen of these at the moment, including .com, .net and .info, but the process of adding new ones is made complex, bureaucratic and - as we have seen with .xxx - subject to political interference. A recent report from an Icann working group called for new domain names to be carefully regulated, and that names should be censored according to “legal norms relating to morality and public order”, ruling out rude, abusive or culturally sensitive words.

Well-argued
The idea that Icann should be a global censor for the network worries cyber rights activist Wendy Seltzer, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School who used to work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In a series of well-argued and entertaining postings on her blog she has argued persuasively that we need more openness, more experimentation and more risk-taking with gTLDs as part of the policy-making process. She believes that ICANN should set technical standards but stay away from acting as a moral guardian of the network. Seltzer believes that any control over what is acceptable or not should be imposed at local level, by countries or even institutions.

Proposals for a .xxx domain name were rejected by Icann

If Saudi Arabia objects to the .allah domain or the Vatican city dislikes .jesus then they will be free to block them, but we should not limit the capabilities of the network just because of these sectional interests. As she puts it, “rather than supporting a race to the bottom to adopt restrictions on the lines of the most restrictive government views of permissible expression (no human rights, sexuality, or “hate”), we must leave it to the governments to apply those restrictions at the edges too, in their own jurisdictions if they insist, but not at the center on all”. This seems the only possible position to take. Regulating the internet is technically feasible, as the governments of China, the US and the UK have all demonstrated in their different ways, but this can be handled locally. The core architecture should be as open as possible, both in terms of the technology and in terms of any restrictions on freedom of expression. The United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights, adopted nearly 60 years ago, established what were considered fundamental freedoms, giving national governments the power to restrict them “solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society”. We should expect the same from Icann. The rules governing the internet should be universal and support freedom from the start, rather than giving every interest group, lobbying organisation and corrupt government a veto. If we give in over domain names we will find it impossible to argue effectively over new developments in networking as they emerge. We can’t know what great things are going to be invented in the coming years, and locking them into a politically controlled framework can only limit their potential. Regulating the network to confirm with community standards and local laws is one thing, but limiting what it can do just in case it upsets someone is short-sighted, dangerous and indefensible. And while I may not like what you are saying, I’ll fight for your right to give it a domain name.

Bill Thompson is an independent journalist and regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Digital Planet.

Read source of it on the News - Time to let a thousand domains bloom?
See related site about free on line dating services.

Polyester A-line navy blue skirts, woggles, itchy air hostess-style hats, sewn-on badges for homemaking, first aid, making fires, knots and doing semaphore - my memories of the girl guides circa 1984.

But, it seems, life for a 21st-century member of the UK’s largest youth organisation for girls is now a very different experience.

Young women have ditched the woggles and navy skirts for T-shirts, rugby shirts, hoodies and jeans.

And while they can still learn how to make fires and administer first aid, they also get badges for knowledge of healthy lifestyles, world issues, circus skills, films and mastering the computer.

Flat-pack skills

Homemaking - one of the more backward-looking badges from my guiding days - has vanished, something a politically minded friend of mine will be pleased to hear after her 80s protest against it due to being a self-declared young “feminist”.

In 1910 badges were earned for milking cows and lace making

But, with a survey this week revealing that young women now want to learn about safe sex, assembling flat-pack furniture, managing money and writing a CV, it seems the guiding movement in the UK may well be forced to change yet further.

Denise King, chief executive of Girlguiding UK, says it has been essential for the movement to “constantly evolve” during its 97-year history to keep pace with the changing needs of members.

“But while the detail of what we offer our members has changed, our traditional values have stayed constant,” she says.

“We have always aimed to help girls and young women gain the confidence, skills and experiences necessary to broaden their horizons and reach for new goals.”

Modern guide uniforms are more casual

And the movement has changed a great deal since it was set up in 1910 after a group of girls turned up the previous year at a Scouting rally at Crystal Palace demanding to join in with the boys.

At that time, young women were given awards for milking cows, making lace, carpentry and sending telegraphs.

And in 1957 badges included Homemaker (lay and light a fire, make beds, make a jam or pickle), Commonwealth (keep a scrapbook about a colony), Hostess and even Rabbit Keeper.

Changing roles

But 50 years later, young women are now able to learn how to plan parties, use computers and live independently as well as cycle and travel the world.

Another type of merit even allows young guides to participate in beauty-related activities such as having face masks, massages and manicures.

The Commonwealth badge of 1957 and the party planner of today

“Guiding has evolved over time, just as the roles of women in society have,” Ms King says. “The badges have changed over time, in line with our members’ needs and interests.”

And this has been the secret of its continuing success, she insists.

According to the movement, more than half of women in Britain have been involved in guiding at some point during their lives, with celebrity members including presenters Cat Deeley, Lorraine Kelly and Carole Vorderman, cook Delia Smith and model Kate Moss.

There are currently 10 million members worldwide, of which 500,000 are in the UK. And there is even a waiting list of 50,000.

“Most importantly, guiding is fun,” Ms King says, explaining its popularity. “We give girls and young women an opportunity to gain new experiences, learn new skills, and make friends in a safe, girl-only environment.”

Adult members

And while guiding - including brownies and the older guides - mainly include girls between the ages of seven and 14, some stay on into adulthood.

Emma Joyce, 23, from Chiswick, west London, is still a member after joining as a seven-year-old and believes the movement and its badges are still relevant to young girls.

Guides looked very different in 1910

“As with any organisation, to keep people interested it has to evolve and change with society,” she says.

“I think the movement modernised recently and started to take girls seriously and give them a voice. The badges have changed too, for example we now have computing and communication.

“It is all about working in the community, meeting new people - it is a great social thing as well as being active.”

So although the itchy hats and the homemaking have gone, the institution of girl guiding looks set to stay.

Originaly from Source