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March 13, 2013
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Sunday, March 10, 2013
HALF THE SKY - LITTLE GIRLS SOLD AS SEX SLAVES, BEATEN, TORTURED. BUT WHO CARES?
In places including India, Thailand, Cambodia, Viet Nam and many other places - little girls as young two or three years old are sold as sex slaves. And the powers that be will do nothing about it - no doubt because they are also "clients" and profit from this ugly, sadistic trade in many ways. One excuse - This is our culture. And so thousands of little girls are suffering horrible abuse to this day.
And Americans travel to those countries on "pleasure tours" to enjoy raping and torturing little girls.
" Tell them that, for one minute of their pleasure,
they kill me."
A nine year old little girl dying of AIDS.
But there are victims rising up against the brothel owners who gouge out children's eyes and beat them until their blood flows. Little girls who are forced to have sex with dozens of men every day.There are brave women and men daring to steal the children back and providing shelter and love and education to give these beautiful girls a chance at life - a chance their own parents denied them for a price.
Phyllis Carter
Sex Trafficking
With millions of women and girls bound in the international sex trade, sex trafficking has earned a fitting epithet: modern-day slavery.
It's difficult to estimate just how many women and girls are impacted by sex trafficking, in part because you can't easily divide sex workers into those who are working voluntarily and involuntarily. But in their book Half the Sky, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn estimate that around 3 million women and girls (and a small number of boys) worldwide are currently enslaved in the sex trade — bought, held and forced into commercial sex work against their will. This figure may even be on the conservative side, as it doesn't account for people who were intimidated into prostitution or the millions more under 18 who can't consent to working in brothels.
The U.S. State Department's tally is lower, with estimates that between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. Eighty percent of those trafficked are women and girls, mostly for sexual exploitation. But these figures overlook the millions more victims who are trafficked annually within their own national borders.
John Stanmeyer / VII
Whichever figure you choose, the outcome is the same — far more women and girls are shipped into brothels annually now, in the early 21st century, than African slaves were shipped into slave plantations each year in the 18th century.
And the problem of sex slavery is getting worse.
Trafficking for sexual exploitation is one of the fastest-growing organized crimes, generating $27.8 billion each year. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and Indochina, which opened up markets for commercial sex, and globalization have added to the problem. So has the fear of AIDS, leading some customers to prefer younger girls, whom they think are less likely to be infected. Some men target virgins, believing the girls can cure AIDS.
As the sex trade continues to grow, it also self-perpetuates. Once girls are sold into sex slavery, they often know nothing else and are so stigmatized that they remain in the trade, even when that means selling sex voluntarily. Drugs and other addictions can also work to keep women tied to brothels.
There is no easy solution to ending the complex issue of sex trafficking, but there are small steps you can take. With enough political will, we could begin to hold governments accountable not only to pass laws but also to enforce them. Officials worldwide should be under pressure to shut down jail-like brothels, investigate criminals buying underage girls, and crack down on corruption and trafficking across borders.
Every abolition movement begins with expressing our discontent and demands.
More Resources
To learn more and watch additional videos visit Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide on PBS.
Narrated by actress and humanitarian Lucy Liu, "The Road to Traffik" reveals the shocking world of sex trafficking that Somaly Mam, a former Cambodia sex slave, is heroically waging a crusade to expose and end. The filmmakers accompany photographer Norman Jean Roy on his painful journey to document the brutal rape and suffering that thousands of children face daily in the brothels of Cambodia and Southeast Asia.
See jewelry and bags made by survivors of sex trafficking at the Made by Survivors store, whose mission is to end slavery through economic empowerment and education, giving survivors and people at the highest risk the tools they need to build safe, independent, slavery-free lives.
Top left photo : Bruno Barbey / Magnum
"There is no more infanticide in these parts. We used to think that if we kill a female baby, we would cry only for a day, but if the baby were to survive, we would cry all our lives. But now, with so many women and girls educated, working and earning well, our attitude has completely changed."
- Mockapillai, 47, a construction worker in India with one daughter and two granddaughters
- Mockapillai, 47, a construction worker in India with one daughter and two granddaughters
Saturday, March 9, 2013
VATICAN MONEY LAUNDERING SUPPORTS THE MAFIA - IS EVERYONE AFRAID TO PROTEST ?
VATICAN CITY – This is no ordinary bank: The ATMs are in Latin. Priests use a private entrance. A life-size portrait of Pope Benedict XVI hangs on the wall.
Nevertheless, the Institute for Religious Works is a bank, and it's under harsh new scrutiny in a case involving money-laundering allegations that led police to seize euro23 million ($30 million) in Vatican assets in September. Critics say the case shows that the "Vatican Bank" has never shed its penchant for secrecy and scandal.
The Vatican calls the seizure of assets a "misunderstanding" and expresses optimism it will be quickly cleared up. But court documents show that prosecutors say the Vatican Bank deliberately flouted anti-laundering laws "with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital." The documents also reveal investigators' suspicions that clergy may have acted as fronts for corrupt businessmen and Mafia.
The documents pinpoint two transactions that have not been reported: one in 2009 involving the use of a false name, and another in 2010 in which the Vatican Bank withdrew euro650,000 ($860,000) from an Italian bank account but ignored bank requests to disclose where the money was headed.
The new allegations of financial impropriety could not come at a worse time for the Vatican, already hit by revelations that it sheltered pedophile priests. The corruption probe has given new hope to Holocaust survivors who tried unsuccessfully to sue in the United States, alleging that Nazi loot was stored in the Vatican Bank.
Yet the scandal is hardly the first for the centuries-old bank. In 1986, a Vatican financial adviser died after drinking cyanide-laced coffee in prison. Another was found dangling from a rope under London's Blackfriars Bridge in 1982, his pockets stuffed with money and stones. The incidents blackened the bank's reputation, raised suspicions of ties with the Mafia, and cost the Vatican hundreds of millions of dollars in legal clashes with Italian authorities.
On Sept. 21, financial police seized assets from a Vatican Bank account at the Rome branch of Credito Artigiano SpA. Investigators said the Vatican had failed to furnish information on the origin or destination of the funds as required by Italian law.
The bulk of the money, euro20 million ($26 million), was destined for JP Morgan in Frankfurt, with the remainder going to Banca del Fucino.
Prosecutors alleged the Vatican ignored regulations that foreign banks must communicate to Italian financial authorities where their money has come from. All banks have declined to comment.
In another case, financial police in Sicily said in late October that they uncovered money laundering involving the use of a Vatican Bank account by a priest in Rome whose uncle was convicted of Mafia association.
Authorities say some euro250,000 euros, illegally obtained from the regional government of Sicily for a fish breeding company, was sent to the priest by his father as a "charitable donation," then sent back to Sicily from a Vatican Bank account using a series of home banking operations to make it difficult to trace.
The prosecutors' office stated in court papers last month that while the bank has expressed a "generic and stated will" to conform to international standards, "there is no sign that the institutions of the Catholic church are moving in that direction." It said its investigation had found "exactly the opposite."
Legal waters are murky because of the Vatican's special status as an independent state within Italy. This time, Italian investigators were able to move against the Vatican Bank because the Bank of Italy classifies it as a foreign financial institution operating in Italy. However, in one of the 1980s scandals, prosecutors could not arrest then-bank head Paul Marcinkus, an American archbishop, because Italy's highest court ruled he had immunity.
Marcinkus, who died in 2006 and always proclaimed his innocence, was the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's character Archbishop Gilday in "Godfather III."
The Vatican has pledged to comply with EU financial standards and create a watchdog authority. Gianluigi Nuzzi, author of "Vatican SpA," a 2009 book outlining the bank's shady dealings, said it's possible the Vatican is serious about coming clean, but he isn't optimistic.
"I don't trust them," he said. "After the previous big scandals, they said 'we'll change' and they didn't. It's happened too many times."
He said the structure and culture of the institution is such that powerful account-holders can exert pressure on management, and some managers are simply resistant to change.
The list of account-holders is secret, though bank officials say there are some 40,000-45,000 among religious congregations, clergy, Vatican officials and lay people with Vatican connections.
The bank chairman is Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, also chairman of Banco Santander's Italian operations, who was brought in last year to bring the Vatican Bank in line with Italian and international regulations. Gotti Tedeschi has been on a very public speaking tour extolling the benefits of a morality-based financial system.
"He went to sell the new image … not knowing that inside, the same things were still happening," Nuzzi said. "They continued to do these transfers without the names, not necessarily in bad faith, but out of habit."
It doesn't help that Gotti Tedeschi himself and the bank's No. 2 official, Paolo Cipriani, are under investigation for alleged violations of money-laundering laws. They were both questioned by Rome prosecutors on Sept. 30, although no charges have been filed.
In his testimony, Gotti Tedeschi said he knew next to nothing about the bank's day-to-day operations, noting that he had been on the job less than a year and only works at the bank two full days a week.
According to the prosecutors' interrogation transcripts obtained by AP, Gotti Tedeschi deflected most questions about the suspect transactions to Cipriani. Cipriani in turn said that when the Holy See transferred money without identifying the sender, it was the Vatican's own money, not a client's.
Gotti Tedeschi declined a request for an interview but said by e-mail that he questioned the motivations of prosecutors. In a speech in October, he described a wider plot against the church, decrying "personal attacks on the pope, the facts linked to pedophilia (that) still continue now with the issues that have seen myself involved."
As the Vatican proclaims its innocence, the courts are holding firm. An Italian court has rejected a Vatican appeal to lift the order to seize assets.
The Vatican Bank was founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage assets destined for religious or charitable works. The bank, located in the tower of Niccolo V, is not open to the public, but people who use it described the layout to the AP.
Top prelates have a special entrance manned by security guards. There are about 100 staffers, 10 bank windows, a basement vault for safe deposit boxes, and ATMs that open in Latin but can be accessed in modern languages. In another concession to modern times, the bank recently began issuing credit cards.
In the scandals two decades ago, Sicilian financier Michele Sindona was appointed by the pope to manage the Vatican's foreign investments. He also brought in Roberto Calvi, a Catholic banker in northern Italy.
Sindona's banking empire collapsed in the mid-1970s and his links to the mob were exposed, sending him to prison and his eventual death from poisoned coffee. Calvi then inherited his role.
Calvi headed the Banco Ambrosiano, which collapsed in 1982 after the disappearance of $1.3 billion in loans made to dummy companies in Latin America. The Vatican had provided letters of credit for the loans.
Calvi was found a short time later hanging from scaffolding on Blackfriars Bridge, his pockets loaded with 11 pounds of bricks and $11,700 in various currencies. After an initial ruling of suicide, murder charges were filed against five people, including a major Mafia figure, but all were acquitted after trial.
While denying wrongdoing, the Vatican Bank paid $250 million to Ambrosiano's creditors.
Both the Calvi and Sindona cases remain unsolved.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/12/money-laundering-scandal-rocks-vatican-bank/
Friday, March 8, 2013
EXPOSE OF THE VATICAN'S CORRUPTION, MURDER - IN GOD'S NAME - 1984
First published: 1984 ISBN: 978-1-84529-496-0
Murder and corruption -
New evidence of the Vatican cover-up
Over 6,000,000 copies sold worldwide.
In God's Name has been at the top of the bestseller lists all over the world. It contains some of the most explosive and dramatic revelations ever published about the internal affairs of the Vatican.
During the late evening of September 28th or the early morning of September 29th, 1978, Pope John Paul 1, Albino Luciani, known as the smiling Pope, died only thirty-three days after his election.
David Yallop began his investigations into his death at the request of certain individuals resident in Vatican City who were disturbed by a cover-up of the true circumstances surrounding the discovery of the Pope's body. It is his conviction that murder was the fate of Albino Luciani and he presents this evidence in this enthralling book.
Over three years continual and exhaustive research, David Yallop uncovered a chain of corruption that linked leading figures in financial, political, criminal and clerical circles around the world in a conspiracy of awesome proportions. To this day the central questions raised in In God's Name remain unanswered. A new updated edition containing additional evidence is now available.
http://www.yallop.com/ingodsname.aspx
Monday, March 4, 2013
CRIME - DAWN MCSWEENEY AND THE MONTREAL POLICE - EVIDENCE THAT DEMANDS A VERDICT
$5,000. REWARD
MEET DAWN MCSWEENEY -
I SAVED HER LIFE - SHE STOLE MINE
HOW TO RAISE A CRIMINAL - THE TRAGEDY OF DAWN MCSWEENEY
Circa February, 1994, I moved back to my parents' home at 4995 Prince of Wales, NDG, Montreal. I was sick with cancer, widowed, unemployed and my mother wanted me home.
Summer 1996 - Good friends paid a brief visit. As soon as they left, Dawn McSweeney, my youngest sister's daughter, told my mother - in my presence - that my friends only pretended to love me, but they really despised me.
THE THIEF, DAWN MCSWEENEY, WAS ALWAYS AFTER MONEY
The beginning of October, 1996, Dawn and her boyfriend, Alex Lavergne, suddenly moved into 4995.
October 5, 1996 - I did a new inventory of all my belongings at 4995, expecting Dawn to pilfer. I pleaded with my mother to keep Dawn out of my rooms - to no avail.
October 7, 1996 - I was suddenly attacked in the foyer of our home. I managed to call 911. The Montreal Police I hoped would come to my rescue, helped the thief instead.
The officer took me out of the house by my arm and told me I had to leave my home and never return.
I was not allowed to take anything with me except my bible, my purse, and a pair of shoes that I liked to wear in church,.
The police left me in the street in front of my home without as much as a coat - and they just drove away. There was no legal process, and I learned later that they did not make a police report.
THE RAPE OF A JEWISH FAMILY
THE DANGERS OF BEING CHRISTIAN
I paid premiums to Prudential Insurance for thirty years. On October 8 or 9, 1996 - I reported the robbery to my Prudential Insurance agent, Brian Thornily. Prudential insurance abandoned me. As soon as they heard that a police officer helped the thief, they refused to investigate. Later, Prudential's agent told me it was because the police had made their report of the robbery "too late".
ABANDONED BY PRUDENTIAL INSURANCE - PRUDENTIAL BLAMES MONTREAL POLICE - http://phylliscartersjournal.blogspot.com/2013/01/abandoned-by-prudential-insurance.html
I had pleaded with the police to investigate from the moment I called 911, and constantly thereafter, but they refused, saying everything would be returned to me if I would "just be patient". It has been 16 years and the Montreal Police still refuse to take appropriate action.
1996-97 - I got a tip that Dawn McSweeney had a friend who operated a jewellery store on Prince Arthur. I told Montreal Police detective, Sylvie Laverdiere. She told me that, since I was a Pinkerton investigator, I should do the investigation myself and report back to her. I did that, verbally and in a detailed written report.
The police at the Mariette station told me to go back home and ask my mother to return my jewellery. I went to the house and stood on the icy steps pleading with my mother to give me back my belongings. Dawn McSweeney came to the door and laughed at me as I stood on the steps weeping - and she mocked me. Then she went inside and called the police.
AS I PLEADED FOR MY BELONGINGS, DAWN MCSWEENEY MOCKED ME
The same officers who had told me to go home and ask for my belongings came to the house and told me to leave. I refused to leave without my precious belongings. The woman officer said she would have to arrest me if I didn't leave. I begged her to arrest me so the case could go to court. She promised the police would recover my belongings, so I agreed to leave.
Montreal Police detective Sylvie Laverdiere went to 4995 Prince of Wales and asked for my belongings. Detective Laverdiere told me she did not enter the house, but Dawn McSweeney handed her my Borg winter coat - and nothing else - none of my valuables.
March 17, 1997 - Dawn McSweeney returned what she did not want - my clothing, some files, and all my jewellery boxes and cases - EMPTY.
THE RETURN OF THE EMPTY JEWEL BOXES
March 17, 1997 - I brought the suitcase full of empty little jewellery boxes to the police at the Mariette station. Then they finally said they would investigate - six months after the attack and robbery.
Two police detectives, a man and a woman, came to my apartment all decked out with guns and radios and all sorts of gear. It looked as if - at long last - they would do a serious investigation.
The detectives told me they had to take some boxes and the suitcase that had contained my jewellery to the police lab to test for fingerprints. Dawn McSweeney, Debbie McSweeney and Ed McSweeney, Dawn's father, had all handled my belongings. One of them had even initialled boxes to show they had searched the contents. But, once the police detectives took the boxes and suitcase, the incriminating evidence "disappeared". The detectives told me there were "no fingerprints". They did not say the prints were smeared. They said "There were NO fingerprints" - Not even mine ? "No, none."
Passing by 4995 Prince of Wales in my car in April, 2004, I noticed that the front stoop was littered with junk mail. I dared to go to the door and rang the bell. No answer. Maybe my mother just didn't want to speak to me.
OUR AGED MOTHER IS MISSING - MONTREAL POLICE REFUSE TO INVESTIGATE
I went around to the back of the house to try to see through the window if my mother was alright. There were strange holes all around the back yard and the back door and window were covered with dead brown vines. It was like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I feared the worst. I called for an ambulance. Police came and there was no response. I asked the police at the Somerled station to investigate. They refused.
Mother "disappeared" and no one knew where she was - or how she was. But the Montreal Police refused to investigate. Our mother was kept in total isolation for about ten years by Dawn McSweeney and those she calls her "partners in crime" on her own blog.
Summer, 2007 - I was told by my brother that Paperman and Sons, funeral directors, had informed him that our mother was dead. I went to the cemetery. There I saw a stranger with my sister, Debbie. The Paperman agent told me that Debbie called the man her "husband". What happened to Ed McSweeney? Paperman's agent told me that the stranger's name was Kenneth Gregoire Prud'homme. Three Montreal Police cars attended the burial. I thanked one of the officers for being there. The whole thing was bizarre.
A day after the burial of my mother, two police officers knocked on my door. They had a court order declaring that I was insane and dangerous and they took me to the hospital for a "thirty day mental evaluation."
THE PHYLLIS CARTER DETENTION - CONDEMNED IN ABSENTIA IN FOUR MINUTES
I returned home three days later, Afterward, I learned that Kenneth Gregoire Prud'homme had requested the court order which was granted in four minutes without anyone in authority notifying me, seeing me, speaking to me, without any evidence or medical report or any witnesses - except for the stranger who had never met me or spoken to me - Kenneth Gregoire Prud'homme - and Dawn McSweeney's mother, my beloved "baby sister", Debbie.
Later, I learned that, two years prior to her death, in 2005, when my mother was about 92 years old, Kenneth Gregoire Prud'homme had made a will in my mother's name, eliminating all the children and grandchildren specifically named in my father's will - and giving our family home and my father's life's savings to Debbie McSweeney and Dawn McSweeney, and making himself the "liquidator" of my father's estate - a man who never even met my father who had died in 2000.
MOTHER DID NOT SIGN THAT WILL - SHE WAS 92 YEARS OLD AND ILL
Dawn McSweeney had six months of total, uninterrupted access to all my precious belongings, and she stole the best of everything I had worked for all my life and all the gifts I had receive all my life - every precious souvenir of my lifetime. No amount of money could ever replace what Dawn McSweeney stole with the help of the Montreal Police.
In 2008, Member of Parliament and former Quebec Police Ethics Commissioner, Marlene Jennings, stated at two public meetings in Montreal - "Mrs. Carter's rights were violated three times."
MRS. CARTER'S RIGHTS WERE VIOLATED THREE TIMES - MARLENE JENNINGS, M.P.
But the Montreal Police refuse still refuse to recover our stolen property or to arrest the thief and those she calls her "partners in crime,"
Why? Because a Montreal Police officer was involved in the crime from the moment he answered my 911 call. And because the Montreal Police refused to take action against the thief, she and her accomplices went on to rob my parents, my siblings and my siblings' children of their inheritances.
Who is responsible?
Everyone in authority who has refused to recover and return our precious belongings and take legal action against the criminals who destroyed my family.
Montreal, Quebec and Canadian politicians and police are corrupt. Who can we turn to?
Phyllis Carter
Sunday, March 3, 2013
FEAR MUZZLES KIDNAPPED SLAVES IN MAURITANIA
They told their stories to the documentary team, but once the Polisario (representing Morocco) found out, the victims retracted and denied.
Can this be anything but fear?
 Sahrawi refugee Fetim Salam Hamdi has been portrayed as a slave in a poorly translated documentary film. But Ms Hamdi insists she is a free woman and now goes to court to stop the film's screaning. The Australian documentary film "Stolen", shot in the Algeria-based refugee camps housing over 100,000 Sahrawi refugees last year, portrays the Ms Hamdi as a slave. Ms Hamdi herself claims to have been shocked as she first saw the result of the filming, alleging massive manipulation in scenes and translations. |
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