President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, during his speech at the opening ceremony for World Congress III against Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents, in Riocentro, asked to stop hypocrisy. “Parents should be aware that giving sex education at home is as important as giving food and shelter”, stated he. The President also emphasized the importance of dealing with this issue in the curriculum of schools. “We have to stop the hypocrisy that prevents sexual exploitation from being properly dealt with and fought against.”

Here is an important link to the work of this international conference.

And here as well.

All that remains to be said is that there are only two nations which have yet to ratify the first unanimous human rights treaty in history, The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Those two countries? Somalia... and the U.S.

Why?

AUTUMN POOL by Bill Regan

Today I want to feature the painting and photography of Bill Regan, whose photo-collage was on the cover of my first poetry collection, Without Paradise. Here's Regan:

On Painting:

My work divides into two subject areas—my passion for the natural landscape and my deep ambivalence about what the human presence brings to it.

A nature subject chooses me. As I look at a wooded area or a stream, I am caught by a tree’s unusual form or the way the brook spills around and between a cluster of stones. The parts of the whole grip me. Taken together they produce a vast scene, but their power lies in the details, which register in our minds first and then are assembled into a whole. I like to stay with the pieces because, for me, they hold nature’s secrets.

More here.