The American Library Association fights for unimpeded access to information, it says. But it will put its own spin on information that doesn't support its agenda, and that can impede access to truth. Here is an example, made strikingly clear by the simultaneous timing of news releases from the ALA and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation on December 10. Both releases dealt with the Foundation's just-completed study of Internet filtering technology.
The Foundation reported the study's key findings were as follows: Internet filters most frequently used by schools and libraries block 87% of porn sites while incorrectly blocking only 1.4% of useful health information sites when the filters are set at their least restrictive levels. If set at their most restrictive levels, the filters block 91% of porn sites, a marginal improvement, but the incorrect blocking of useful health information sites soars to 24%. And so the headline on the Foundation's news release was this:
Internet Filters Can Successfully Block Most Pornography While Allowing Health Information, Depending on How Schools and Libraries Configure Them
Stuck with these findings, the American Library Association managed somehow to come up with a release that carried this headline:
New study confirms Internet filters fail to block much pornography, Deny important health information to public: American Library Association
Education is the only way for children to safely navigate the Web
You might have thought blocking 87% of porn sites is a lot. The Kaiser Family Foundation thinks 87% is "most." But we have the American Library Association's word on it: 87% is not "much" and 1.4% is. How's that for truth?
Why does any of this matter? The Children's Internet Protection Act requires filters on all computers in schools receiving federal funds. The American Library Association is opposed to filters in libraries. A federal court decision last spring overturned the CIPA filter requirement for libraries. That decision is to be reviewed by the Supreme Court in the Court's current session.
The New York Times reported November 21 that the use of alcohol, drugs and sex at university recruiting parties for high school athletes has led to criminal investigations of rape and other charges at the universities involved. All the schools are well known for their football and basketball programs. Much of the misbehavior was arranged by upper classmen acting as hosts for the parties. University administrators promised to tighten the recruiting party rules.
In Columbus, Ohio, 13,000 copies of a new Ohio State University telephone directory came off the presses in November carrying, among other features, a full-page advertisement recruiting strippers for a "gentleman's club." The Associated Press reported November 14 that a University official called stripping for tuition "totally inconsistent with the education mission of the university," and said the ad would not have been in the directory had it been reviewed more carefully. Steps are being taken to ensure it doesn't happen again. University officials ripped the ad out of 10,700 of the directories, but 2,300 others had been distributed earlier. The "gentleman's club" called this an act of "censorship." Of course they would. Question: Why "Gentleman's club?" The suggestion of upright gentility is an absurd affectation that would be laughable if these "clubs" weren't essentially sad and destructive places.
In Bloomington, Indiana, an "adult" movie company from California, Shane Enterprises, got onto the Indiana University campus in October and shot a porn movie that witnesses said involved sex between actresses and 20 or more students in one of the dorms. The working title was brazen and appropriate: "Campus Invasion." The film company claimed they had gotten permission from the students. University officials made the key point that they had not been consulted or informed in advance. Police were investigating. Shane Enterprises reportedly did pretty much the same thing last year at the University of Arizona, where four fraternities were suspended for their involvement.
At the University of Arizona, The Daily Wildcat online carried a story November 14 promoting something called "The Sex Worker Arts Festival," which opened that day in Tucson. The reporter gushed about "a four-day bash with prostitutes, hustlers, sex slaves, dommes, tranny boys and girls, filmmakers and artists to arouse, titillate and provoke us... So, pull over and roll down your window to learn about America's sex culture from the pros."
One of the "pros" was Juliana Piccillo, the "director" of the "festival," and producer of a film titled "I Was a Teenage Prostitute." The reporter wrote this of Ms. Piccillo: "As a former sex worker, she realizes the importance of encouraging sexual freedom, and began the festival in Tucson to prove it."
The "festival" included lectures on "spiritual sexuality" and "sexual slavery" as well as a "sacred prostitute workshop" that included live demonstrations, and a "real sex magic workshop."
Ms. Piccillo was quoted as explaining that a "workshop" on the bizarre and extreme sexual practice of "fisting" was "about safety and technical ways of doing it." Assuming - perhaps rightly - that her readers were interested, the Daily Wildcat reporter wrote of "an enthusiasm to know more [and] to discuss what has been hushed for too long."
She urged her readers, "Break free from those oppressive chains, but still use your handcuffs. This weekend, you can carry your sexuality around like a whip, assert confidence and demand respect. Get a lap dance or enjoy a striptease, all in the name of education. SWAF will perform various sexual favors so you can foreplay your way to freedom. Come to SWAF and get some, because this goes beyond a society saran-wrapped in sexual tension."
The reporter, and her editors, and perhaps many of her readers, seem incapable of putting the "Sex Worker Arts Festival" into a broader context, which includes the global trafficking in persons that feeds a growing demand for women and children in the brothels, strip joints and pornography "studios" of the world.
The United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention says, "Trafficking in human beings is now the fastest-growing business of organized crime. According to recent estimates, more than 700,000 people are trafficked every year for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced labor. They are transported across borders and sold into modern-day slavery." An estimated 50,000 women and children are trafficked into the United States each year.
You have to think, or hope at least, that the Daily Wildcat reporter would be appalled if only she knew what she was talking about.
There's money to be made in prostitution, but not much by the prostitutes. The real money-makers are thugs, pimps, organized criminals and corrupt officials where prostitution is illegal, and tax-collecting states and countries where it is legal. Yet, amazingly, some politicians and academics talk of prostitution as an "empowering career choice" for women who choose it "voluntarily," and argue that it should be legalized. Prostitutes are "sex workers" you see (as in the "Sex Worker Arts Festival" in Arizona) and they're not trafficked; they "migrate" in response to "a demand for their labor." Such talk is music to the ears of the money-makers, whose incomes are enhanced by the higher volumes of trafficked women and children that result from "normalizing" prostitution.
The case for legalization rests on an idea that doesn't work as advertised. During a talk show broadcast by Voice of America on November 29, Lisa Thompson of the Salvation Army described what happens. She noted that prostitution was legalized in The Netherlands in 2000, and said, "that has had some very disastrous consequences which I think were unanticipated by those who were advocates for legalization. The idea that is postulated is that somehow, by legalization, you can reduce the harm that women encounter in prostitution. That somehow, by regulating it, by having health check-ups, that somehow or other this will ease the harm of the experience, that there will be less violence against women and so forth. But in fact, all it's done is created different tiers of prostitution and you [still] have those who are being trafficked. They are there illegally. They're not going to be working legally and they're going to be facing some of the worst types of abuse imaginable in the sex industry." Some 30,000 women work in the brothels and escort services of The Netherlands, and there aren't enough locally recruited "legals" to meet demand, so trafficked "illegals" from foreign countries are pressed into service.
The idea that prostitution is an "empowering" choice for women suffered considerably in the remarks delivered by University of Rhode Island Professor Donna M. Hughes (link to PDF version) at a federally funded conference on trafficking, held in Hawaii in mid-November. She said, "There is no dignity in prostitution. Acts of prostitution are acts of misogyny, not respect or affection, and have nothing to do with love or intimacy. They are acts that are based on objectification and projection of racist, ethnic and sexist stereotypes onto the woman or child. Women don't emerge from prostitution into positions of power, respect or admiration. They are confined to powerlessness as individuals and to an underclass as a group."
The Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reported December 6 that "revenues from pornographic [Internet] sites go towards financing extremist and terrorist groups," according to police officials in Moscow. The story did not identify specific terrorist organizations and did not specify the amounts involved, other than to say it "formed a considerable part of the black financial market and was used to finance criminal activity."
Police investigators told Newsday that Sinderella's, a strip club and porn movie rental place in Brentwood on Long Island, "had been run legitimately until last year" - leaving one to wonder what they mean by "legitimate" - but that members of the Luchese organized crime family "pushed their way" in and began skimming about $5,000 a week from the business.
In a story published November 14, Newsday reported that "as many as 20 alleged members" of the Luchese gang were arrested on charges that included coercion, usury, gambling, and "enterprise corruption, the state equivalent of a federal racketeering charge." It's possible, apparently, to corrupt even a strip joint and porn movie rental business. How low can you go?
According to Newsday, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota called the case "The most significant investigation of organized crime by this office in at least 20 years." Newsday noted that, "It was the Lucheses who controlled garbage carting on Long Island into the 1980s, until federal prosecutors wrested away control."
For the Lucheses, the Sinderella case is like getting shut out of garbage a second time.
The New York-based research organization Public Agenda reported finding in a telephone survey in October that parents with children aged 5 to 17 believe "they can never let their guard down in the face of popular culture, drugs and crime." The study showed that "nearly half the parents surveyed said they worried more about protecting their children from negative social influences than about paying the bills or having enough time together." Step one. Recognize the problem.
In a November release, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps said, "too many indecency complaints from consumers and too many truly indecent broadcasts are falling through the cracks." Copps explained that in the last year the FCC acted on only "a tiny number" of the hundreds of indecency complaints it received. "If our definition of indecency leads to that result, then our current definition of indecency just isn't getting the job done. Our definition must better protect our kids against indecent material," he stated.