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yes, requiring things like proper electricity/water in our homes is a HORRIBLE thing.
O requiring wearing seat belts and having air bags. Horrible.
OR, requiring that ppl who are put under quarantine because they have any number of highly infectious diseases to remain in their homes, again, is a horrible thing.

I am guessing that you are not old enough to have witnessed any of these diseases. The last case of small pox in America was before I was born in 59.
However, I have known ppl with Polio. Likewise, I HAVE seen ppl die of Mumps, Hepatitis (I was not told what strain; she was a 12 y.o. friend of mine), and have seen adults with Chicken pox along with hep A. I've had several cousins/friends die of HiV, but little can be done there. This posting has a nice table that shows the number of lives saved yearly, as well as how many on current diseases
Requiring vaccines with only medical exceptions like Mississippi does, has not harmed anybody, though a group claims that 50 babies have died over 20 years. If they are correct, that would mean 2.5 babies / year, vs other states where even today, 10-50 die YEARLY in states that allow parents to opt out.

Is there a charity that goes to at-risk places like these mining villages and towns then pays the family to put their children into school?

Something Like:

• Unicef
• We Villages

But where I can directly 'employ' a child to go to school and get a report on how well they are doing, a transparency report on what portion of my money is making to the child vs overhead?

If there isn't I think there should be. Can you offer a family more money, food and opportunity to put their child into a small village school than the local miners or child laborers?

If so then you can effectively buy happiness for these kids. Or at least a shot at a childhood while raising the pay of miners who's "tiny slave labor" market now has to compete with the charity.

I think there's a missed marketing opportunity here for Apple. All they are doing is pulling their money away from a toxic situation like child labor which hurts their reputation with people who buy luxury electronics in various shades of grey and white. They could be touting how some of your money for your iThing is being spent on teaching children who would have instead slaved away to build your toy.

Things are rarely black-and-white, though most people seem to see it that way. It's dangerous when our leaders loose color vision, but it is easy to understand why. Just follow the green.

Ahh yes, it always ends up in a conspiracy theory... despite the measles vaccine not actually making any money, especially not next to vitamin supplements and erection pills.

And that conspiracy theory is what points out the rest of your post as complete and total bollocks. You have no niece, just soundbites from an anti-vaxxer site.

I have a nephew, I'm glad my sister has made sure he has had the full suite of vaccines required for him. Why? because I've actually seen people disfigured from Polio because they weren't lucky enough to be born in a first world country like me. Vihn's parents didn't get the luxury of refusing a vaccine whilst being protected from debilitating illnesses by the rest who are not so selfish. Nope, Vihn got Polio because 30 years ago in Vietnam, vaccines were rare things, yes only 30 years ago.

Polio cases dropped from 350,000 in 1988 to just 74 in 2015. Vaccines alone did this.

If we stopped vaccinations for measles alone, the cases would increase by 60% worldwide... We'd be looking at more like 90% in developed nations as that 60% figure includes developing nations without extensive vaccination programs (mainly due to local problems like wars and oppressive governments, its getting access to people that's the problem). So I'll give your the benefit of the doubt, consider what your daughter went through and then look out side and tell me, say aloud to yourself... I think 9 more children should have to go through what my niece did. 9 more parents should have to suffer like my siblings did.

But you wont, because it would mean questioning your beliefs. I'll just leave this here:

http://www.unicef.org/pon96/hevaccin.htm

Not sure if chickens are the right thing to deliver, but Bolivia certainly does not know how to feed their population properly: https://www.wfp.org/stories/10... or http://www.unicef.org/bolivia/... I am always baffled, when pride is willing to kill people.

Here are some references from reputable sources. The US State Department estimates about 21 million human trafficking victims, of which about 20% are forced into the sex trade.

https://blogs.state.gov/storie...
http://www.unicef.org/protecti...
https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campa...

Here are some references. The US State Department estimates about 21 million human trafficking victims, of which about 20% are forced into the sex trade.

https://blogs.state.gov/storie...
http://www.unicef.org/protecti...
https://www.dhs.gov/blue-campa...

Children, too, have a right to privacy, also with regard to their parents. Even if you don't care at all about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (which the US, as the only UN member state in the world, has not ratified), it is important to their development and well-being.

...that stuff is truly barbaric.

Absolutely. And for Orcas, this seems obvious to me. Animals generally should live longer in captivity than in the wild, because they're protected from predation, have a high quality diet, medical care, etc. Orcas in captivity are living half their wild life expectancy. That makes it obvious how disgusting it is.

If you think keeping zoo animals is good generally, even in that context the situation with orcas is barbaric.

I have a lot of difficulty with that short of thinking :

"The way we treat those orca are barbaric"
"Those bullfighting are barbaric"
"They live half their life expectancy"

Boo fucking hoo.

Hey big scoop, the beef of your burger are about 1½ year old (about 10% of their 15-20 years life expectancy) and we killed about 50 million of them last year. And if I had to choose between the life of a cattle (or most other animal we consume for that matter) : http://www.aussieabattoirs.com...

All living organism (plant excluded) must kill another living organism to survive, deal with it.

"But the beef of my burger was killed for food which is a essential need so it's good. Those animal are used for amusement/fur/fat and this is evil"

Bullshit!
We're not obligated to eat meat when they are other form of food available. We eat meat because we love it and thus is a form of amusement.

From my point of view, a cattle will "amuse" a few thousand person's mouth with his meat. On the other hand, the orca from TFA amuse a few million person each fucking years. So, again from my point of view, using orca is a over 1000x time more "morally right" that using cattle for meat.

I'm freaking pissed of those "animal right" mouvement. If you got time to be sorry for those orca, you should slap your face and use that energy to save a few of the 30 000 children that die each fucking day of preventable cause instead : http://www.unicef.org/mdg/chil...

With a child mortality rate (under five years old) in India of 52 (compare UK: 5, US: 7) and a literacy rate of 90% (or 74%, depending on source; compare UK/US: 99%) I wonder if the money should not rather be spend on healthcare and education (and health education). Even though space travel and lunar landing seems more fun.

Sources: Unicef Unesco Wikipedia

You're literally making things up.

Rather then address every point i'll just stick with pointing out Mexicans have excellent vaccination rates
http://www.unicef.org/infobyco...
As do most other Latin Americans.

Please dont muddy the waters with an unrelated and highly partisan issue.

Do the benefits outweigh the costs in this?

The answer is an emphatic yes. How quickly we've forgotten the abject misery, suffering, and loss of the pre-vaccine world. There are still people alive today who've been crippled and nearly died because they weren't vaccinated against now preventable diseases like pertussis (whooping cough), polio, smallpox, etc. Millions used to die every year and nobody was safe from them, not even the rich and powerful. They've only this year managed to eradicate polio from India: http://www.unicef.org/india/he... Vaccines are safer than a multitude of over-the-counter pharma products.

BTW, if you're thinking of visiting frail and infirm family and friends this winter, make sure you get vaccinated against flu. Flu still kills around 1 Million people every year. How would you like to have their premature deaths on your conscience?

This is what modern westerners fail to understand. Without childhood immunizations we would be facing hundreds of thousands of childhood deaths each year in the US and Europe from preventable diseases. Our immunization programs have been so successful that modern parents don't know what it was like to loose siblings and classmates to measles or to see friends and relatives crippled by polio and have to be placed in an iron lung.

Yes, vaccines have problems. No, companies should not be sheltered from prosecution for producing dangerous medicines, but lets put everything in perspective. I'll gladly trade a few illnesses or deaths caused by vaccines for the mountain of dead caused by diseases.

http://www.unicef.org/immuniza...

I feel guilty driving a newer model Honda Civic knowing that if I bought something cheaper I could maybe feed someone less fortunate.

Oh bullshit, if you were going to feed somebody, you would just do it. The price of a Honda isn't going to keep you from send $5.00 to the soap-kitchen or UNICEF.

Tuberculosis tends to spread in crowded conditions and where treatment is not readily available - but treatment is different than vaccination. Mexico does routinely vaccinate against TB (with BCG vaccine, which sorta works); the US doesn't. Latent tuberculosis, for what it's worth, is about equally prevalent in migrant populations from Eastern Europe in my part of the world (Pacific Northwest United States), who tend to be legal immigrants. See http://ethnomed.org/clinical/t... for pretty graphs.

Tuberculosis tends to spread in crowded conditions and where treatment is not readily available - but treatment is different than vaccination. Mexico does routinely vaccinate against TB (with BCG vaccine, which sorta works); the US doesn't. Latent tuberculosis, for what it's worth, is about equally prevalent in migrant populations from Eastern Europe in my part of the world (Pacific Northwest United States), who tend to be legal immigrants. See http://ethnomed.org/clinical/t... for pretty graphs.

So, I wouldn't look so strongly at Mexico, as I would at San Diego, which is the backyard of Dr Bob Sears and his Vaccine Book. He promulgates a non-evidence-based Alternative Schedule that more or less gives privileged white parents permission to be suspicious of the pro-science crowd. (See http://pediatrics.aappublicati... for cogent commentary on the same.)

With a panel of about 2000 patients, I've got more or less 0 vaccine refusers among my Mexican and Central American population, which correlates well with the Unicef data cited above.

That his reports on math skills around the world only includes the 58% of children that attend secondary school in the first place, right?

I wonder how the US fares when you consider all the children in a given country, not just those that can afford to attend school... The idea is to educate all the children, not just really educate the (comparatively) rich kids.

Speaking of sanity check, more people have cell phones than access to clean toilets. That, indeed, is crazy.

The trouble with it is, as soon as you touch it to see if it works or not, you've already spent more than the computer is worth. If you spend more than a few minutes with it, its like dumping new gold plated rims and a new suspension on a car that is now worth exactly the cost of used rims and a used suspension.

Your cost of labor is far higher than that of a poor person in Nairobi. For example the average US worker earns more in a week than these unfortunate people spend on living expenses in a year: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/A... http://www.unicef.org/kenya/ov...

Poor people don't want your garbage, whether it works or not. Poor people aren't stupid or uneducated; they're merely not rich or middle class.

I think you really don't know poor. Western world poor is rich compared to Nairobi poor. There are plenty of _fat_ poor people with TVs in the USA. Yes they are indeed poor and suffering in the USA but you haven't seen poor if you think poor people elsewhere don't want your garbage.

In some really poor countries there actually isn't that much garbage in the first place! There is nothing to throw away - food is all eaten or kept for later, bottles and bags are reused.

In other places garbage is shipped in from rich countries and they process it (for gold, copper etc). Such work is hazardous, but instead of dying by "next week" they have a chance of dying a fair bit later.

And here's the same tired old argument that we see when a third world country plans a satellite launch. Oh noes ... they don't have enough toilets ... and while they are sorting that, they should just sit around for the next couple of hundred years doing nothing else!

The UN does have specific hunger and poverty eradication goals and organizations that look into those issues. See these:
http://www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml

That doesn't mean the UN shouldn't have unrelated committees/arms investigating other issues and see if something can be done to address those.

You might be overlooking the existence of victim protection laws similar to this guideline:

GUIDELINES ON THE PROTECTION OF CHILD VICTIMS OF TRAFFICKING

2.6 Right to Confidentiality
All necessary measures shall be taken to protect the privacy and identity of child victims to ensure the safety and security of the victim and his or her family. The name, address and all other information that could lead to the identification of the child victim or his or her family members shall not be revealed to the public or media. Exceptions may be made in circumstances such as to facilitate the tracing of family members or otherwise secure the well-being and protection of the child, with the informed consent of the child. Information about a child victim that could endanger the child or the child’s family members shall not be disclosed in any case.20

Note what is in the fine article:

The bulk of the Vatican's penal code is based on the 1889 Italian code. Many of the new provisions were necessary to bring the city state's legal system up to date after the Holy See signed international treaties, such as the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

the clearest fact is that the person who said "the bible is a bunch of bullshit, its [sic] just a fact." clearly has not read the bible.. theres tons of useful stuff in there.

just one example of the insight offered in the bible which has nothing to do with faith can be seen in the book of Deuteronomy.

Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement. deut23:12-13 (niv)

Now, this might seem silly/simple/obvious at first.. but if you look at the problems that still exist today, it is anything but a bunch of bullshit.

Over 90 per cent of deaths from diarrhoeal diseases due to unsafe water and sanitation in the developing world occur in children below 5 years old.

About 4,500 children die each day from unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation facilities. Countless others suffer from poor health, diminished productivity and missed opportunities for education.

http://www.unicef.org/wash/index_31600.html

Diarrhea, mainly caused by poor sanitary conditions, claims the lives of 1.8 million people annually, 1.6 million of them children under five years old, he said, citing World Bank figures.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/10/04/2003381667

So here we have nearly 2 million people dying a year due to no toilets and sanitation facilities... they openly defecate without burying it.. the flies carry waste around..

One of the best ways to stop the flies from landing on the human waste and contaminating everything? ..burying it.

If people were able to follow this simple bible scripture, one that has nothing to do with God, or Jesus.. we may be able to save hundreds of thousands of lives.

Helping hundreds of thousands of children avoid a horrible death by following a simple scripture, a bunch of bullshit? really?

I fail to see how the world food programme, the construction of refugee camps, malaria and AIDS prevention, child protection and education are bad for anyone, let alone "the rest of us."

Unless, of course, you mean that you're unwilling to pay taxes to support such efforts. In which case you'd seem like a selfish bastard but I'd reluctantly agree that human decency should be optional. I would go on to point out that most of the UN's humanitarian programs are financed by voluntary contributions from member states.

The under five mortality rate (deaths per 1,000 live births) in Mexico (2010) was 17. In the US ... eight.
http://www.unicef.org/media/files/Child_Mortality_Report_2011_Final.pdf

Comparing quality of care between countries is difficult but I know where I'd prefer to start a family.

I dunno... try this: America is among the 20% of world nations that refuse to limit the use of mines and perhaps this: U.S. laid/dropped about a 1,000,000 mines during the first gulf war alone.

I'd call manufacturing mines that look like toys and dropping them enmasses on innocent children is tantamount to targeting children and their families. Moreover, the U.S., Soviet Union and China have typically been the worlds largest manufacturers of these particular weapons. Sure children die. Hell, we're born dying. It just seems a little trite to ignore the fact that we are supposedly interesting in human rights in our borders and wipe our collective behinds on the rest of the world. It make the holier than thou freedom and democracy conversation sound a bit more than a little hollow.

We have enemies. We need to defend ourselves. It just seems to me the measure of a civilization is the way in which it deals with its enemies. We are not the same folks who helped rebuild Japan and Germany. Who we are today is something sadder and far less ethical.

China does have somewhat of an advantage in having one written language to cover the country, although that tends to be rendered moot by the fact that the people being attracted to the factories aren't likely to be literate in the first place.

It may attract them but I'd be curious to see the actual literacy rate stats for those accepted as factory workers.

The adult literacy rate in China is 94%. Granted the raw number of illiterate is still high (80M), but then look at India which has a 63% literacy rate, i.e. over 443M illiterate (about 130M more illiterate than the entire population of the USA).

Notice that that isn't even suggested in the summary.

Bill says the anti-vaccine bollocks is a lie that has claimed thousands of lives.
Bill also says that vaccinations (in general, not just measles) could cut down child deaths from 9 million to half.

According to UNICEF Bill's numbers are accurate, though measles is one of the leading causes of child deaths, it is by no means the biggest.

Anecdotes are useless. The diseases you mention are all killers, over half a million kids die every year from measles alone. Your infectious spawn should be kept out of public schools.

They will probably be home schooled, and be graced with all the ignorances and prejudices of their parents without any dissenting viewpoints.

Anecdotes are useless. The diseases you mention are all killers, over half a million kids die every year from measles alone. Your infectious spawn should be kept out of public schools.

80% of the world lives on less that $10 a day, 50% live on less than $2.50 a day
2.5 Billion people don't have access to good sanitation, and nearly a billion use unsafe drinking water. But let's make sure they have good IP laws, yes? Something about 'eating cake' comes to mind while reading this article.

My double-standard sense is tingling.

The Geneva convention was set to clearly divide militaries from civilians. If there is a double-standard in there, is it that States agreed to follow these rules but not the rebels.

You can't be serious. There hasn't been a functioning government in Afghanistan for years. Who exactly did you expect to sign? The literacy rate in Afghanistan is 28%. How many of them do you think have even heard of Geneva?

If you are wearing a military uniform, using an aircraft with military marking, and target enemy militaries, you are doing war. If you disguise yourself as a civilian, you are a spy or a terrorist, and outside of the convention.

And that is very convenient for you to say, speaking from a position of strength. How did you expect the weak to fight back? Face to face? Would you do that against a vastly superior foe? Your position, or course, is just another example of a double standard. If we are ever going to end this ongoing cycle of war, we are going to have to come to grips with how we are viewed from around the world. Victory in this War on Terror requires winning hearts and minds, and that cannot happen if there is no sense of even-handedness or justice, regardless of what the Convention says. I in no way condone terrorism, but a lasting peace is going to require a much broader view of the problem than you are advocating.

Although completely unfair, your Afghani rebel is free to openly charge to Vegas in his non-existent plane, wearing his non-existent uniform to kill the remote pilot.

My Afghani rebel? Go fuck yourself.

But he cannot cowardly hide behind a disguise to kill. Maybe unfair to non-States, but those are the rules.

And what would you call piloting a flying killing machine by remote control from thousands of miles away? Heroic?

On the other hand, in countries where professional medical care is more advanced and/or more available to the general public, the mortality rates are much, much lower. According to this article, the mortality rate for acute (!) cases in the U.S. was about 0.25% - 0.28%. Between 1993-1999, there was only one reported death. Given that the complications of a measles infection can generally be handled when adequate medical care is available, and that autism is (as far as we know) "final", the decision isn't quite as clear-cut as you present it.

That still doesn't paint the full picture, because if there was no MMR vaccination, medical care would be overwhelmed, these diseases are ridiculously infectious, access to drugs and treatment would become much more costly (or else would be paid for at the expense of treatments for other illnesses) and as a result the mortality rate would increase, or unrelated health care would suffer.

Even starting with the premise that the vaccine does have a 0.1% chance of causing autism, measles has a mortality rate much higher than that, especially in undeveloped countries.

I was doubting your claim of a "much higher" mortality rate for measles, but after a quick web search it appears you're right - if we're talking about worldwide mortality. One UNICEF article states that "measles infects 25 to 30 million children each year and kills over 345,000", which is about 1.15%, an order of magnitude higher than the 0.1% chance for autism you stated (from which source, btw?). On the other hand, in countries where professional medical care is more advanced and/or more available to the general public, the mortality rates are much, much lower. According to this article, the mortality rate for acute (!) cases in the U.S. was about 0.25% - 0.28%. Between 1993-1999, there was only one reported death. Given that the complications of a measles infection can generally be handled when adequate medical care is available, and that autism is (as far as we know) "final", the decision isn't quite as clear-cut as you present it.

That's assuming that your 0.1% figure is accurate. FWIW, I'm not in any way opposed to the MMR vaccination, and I'm not buying the autism scare either. Where I live, this vaccine is administered to children systematically, and hardly anybody ever opts out.

CJ

Even starting with the premise that the vaccine does have a 0.1% chance of causing autism, measles has a mortality rate much higher than that, especially in undeveloped countries.

I was doubting your claim of a "much higher" mortality rate for measles, but after a quick web search it appears you're right - if we're talking about worldwide mortality. One UNICEF article states that "measles infects 25 to 30 million children each year and kills over 345,000", which is about 1.15%, an order of magnitude higher than the 0.1% chance for autism you stated (from which source, btw?). On the other hand, in countries where professional medical care is more advanced and/or more available to the general public, the mortality rates are much, much lower. According to this article, the mortality rate for acute (!) cases in the U.S. was about 0.25% - 0.28%. Between 1993-1999, there was only one reported death. Given that the complications of a measles infection can generally be handled when adequate medical care is available, and that autism is (as far as we know) "final", the decision isn't quite as clear-cut as you present it.

That's assuming that your 0.1% figure is accurate. FWIW, I'm not in any way opposed to the MMR vaccination, and I'm not buying the autism scare either. Where I live, this vaccine is administered to children systematically, and hardly anybody ever opts out.

CJ

When your country passes a law letting two people of the same sex get married, then maybe I'll help you get your head out of your ass when you talk about rights. And while you're at it, sign the fucking UNCRC. "The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the most widely and rapidly ratified human rights treaty in history. Only two countries, Somalia and the United States, have not ratified this celebrated agreement. Somalia is currently unable to proceed to ratification as it has no recognized government."

Americans preaching about rights is like Jimmy Swaggart preaching about being faithful.

How is this better than the physical book?

Because Haiti's literacy rate is somewhere around 50% to 65%. A bulky device everyone can use is better than a nice compact book that between 1/2 and 1/3rd can't use.

According to the UNICEF, about 600 million kids live on less than US $1 a day. According to another source, 15 million kids in the USA are below the poverty line. Those kids are having it pretty bad right now, some of them are even dying of hunger every day. Fortunately neither you nor me are in that position, but some poor kids these days have it very tough.

I agree with you that many kids have become prima donnas and they don't really know what is having a hard time. I think that many kids are blaming any of their shortcomings on their parents or on social pressure or on tons of other stuff instead of manning up and taking responsability. But I wouldn't say that didn't happen during my generation and I wouldn't say that today's stresses aren't comparable to yesterday's. You know what they say: nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

You are correct, my statement had nothing to do with his other than to be a bit of a troll and point out that his analogy was poor at best.

but as long as we're off topic, please note the following pages on land mine statistics-
http://www.newint.org/issue294/facts.html
http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=1945&tid=110
http://www.unicef.org/sowc96pk/hidekill.htm

a couple of key facts:
2,000 people are involved in landmine accidents every month - one victim every 20 minutes. Around 800 of these will die, the rest will be maimed.
One deminer is killed and two are injured for every 5,000 mines cleared.

you can say i'm ignoring what you're saying about well planned and well maintained minefields, but you decided to ignore "shitty" armies in your calculations, and I feel that 24,000 casualties a year at least warrents some consideration.

We totally shouldn't have government regulation. Except for the fact that pure capitalism tends to exploit children, exploit workers or both.

I'm all for free trade and as little government intervention as possible, too. But capitalism is all about short term gain regardless of the impact on the people or the environment. It's human nature that's got us screwed.

It's the main reason the ideas of The Long Now Foundation are so interesting.

But in South Africa (which is one of the countries this cable goes to) the figure was 60% Urban population in 2007. Source: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/southafrica_statistics.html

Where would your government be without childporn? If it didn't exist, the government would surely invent it

But it does exist - as part of the sex trade in children - and it is not an invention of the government:

UNICEF - Convention of the Rights of the Child - Optional Protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography

Ratified 2002. By New Zealand in 2000.

To provide some perspective: the "Optional Protocol" also forbids the use of children in combat: In plain English, the Convention bars the enslavement and exploitation of children by both private individuals and the state.

First sentence in article cited by parent post:

After analysis of almost 40 years of medical research on circumcision, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued new recommendations today (March 1) stating that the benefits are not significant enough for the AAP to recommend circumcision as a routine procedure.

Article does not support parent post claim that there are any measurable benefits to circumcising infants. It says the opposite: no statistical difference in the health of circumcised and entire men has been found in forty years.

From the fifth paragraph of article:

For the first time in AAP circumcision policy history, the new recommendations also indicate that if parents decide to circumcise their infant, it is essential that pain relief be provided.

So at least in the last 10 years the process is being made a little less barbaric than it was in the last millenium. Gee I guess that's an improvement, huh?

On a closely related note, something that really bugs me about these discussions is the incredibly severe sexist language that is always used. Female genital mutilation is, according to UNICEF,

...a fundamental violation of the rights of girls. It is discriminatory and violates the rights to equal opportunities, health, freedom from violence, injury, abuse, torture and cruel or inhuman and degrading treatment, protection from harmful traditional practices, and to make decisions concerning reproduction. These rights are protected in international law.

And its counterpart for boys is properly called male genital mutilation. But instead the euphemism "circumcision" is consistently used. Until discussion of mutilation of all children is put on a gender neutral basis, these conversations are reinforcing sexual stereotypes, and the inherent sexism will continue to dominate the discourse, and interfere with the emergence of any rationally based consensus.

Call circumcision what it is: male genital mutilation. Then after correctly identifying the topic with the use of this phrase which is based on gender neutral UNICEF terminology, see where the discussion goes.

I'd like to see actual statistics about how much child porn is produced in a year. And I'm not talking about pictures of kids taking a bath. Nudity isn't illegal. It's the explicit sex acts involving children that are what compose "child porn". Where are the real statistics on that?!

Here: http://www.unicef.org/magic/media/documents/beyond_all_tolerance.pdf

A quote:

The little research being done (principally at University College Cork in Ireland
within the COPINE project supervised by Professor Max Taylor) shows that the
number of children drawn into the traffic is consistently increasing. In 1998/99, a
study was made of how much child pornographic material was being distributed
within News Groups. Over one year, more than 50,000 child pornographic pictures
were collected. A couple of thousand children were exposed, and for every
week there was a new child, previously unseen. Parts of the study were repeated
in 2002/2003 and it was noted that the weekly frequency of new children had doubled.

I'd like to see actual statistics about how much child porn is produced in a year. And I'm not talking about pictures of kids taking a bath. Nudity isn't illegal. It's the explicit sex acts involving children that are what compose "child porn". Where are the real statistics on that?!

Here: http://www.unicef.org/magic/media/documents/beyond_all_tolerance.pdf

So, what you're saying is controlling access to food and medical care can be considered a weapon.

Like in Somalia, where UNICEF is prevented from providing aid to some of the "conflict affected areas".

So, does the murders he committed justify the thousands upon thousands of people we killed to 'LIBERATE' them?

Yeah, if you're going to go by body counts:

http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm

http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/legacyofterror.html

http://www.unicef.org/sowc04/files/Table1.pdf

I am wondering if the cost spent on deployment, not of the plates (that could passed on to the consumer) but the scanners to the law enforcement, wouldn't be better spent on something like addressing the spread of HIV in their population.

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/malaysia_2412. html from the link "HIV/AIDS prevalence is increasing. Reported HIV cases are doubling every three years."

Want to listen to better music and still help the people of Sudan? Check out the Genocide in Sudan compilation. All proceeds go to UNICEF and The UN Refugee Agency. Or you could donate directly to UNICEF, the UN Refugee Agency, or the UN world food programme