Tag Archives: children

On hideous wealth, las Vegas rain drains and the inevitability of guillotines

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While their government spends trillions of dollars killing brown people for their oil, opium and other resources the people of America are drifting towards the biggest economic collapse this world has ever seen. (The link shows a very underestimated vision of the real cost such as the millions of dead, hurt, misplaced Iraqi’s and Afghanis and the hundreds of thousands of dying, sick and  psychologically damaged US and other countries troops due to DU and having to live through the horrors of war but it does a nice job of showing some realities anyway)

What does that mean? It means people having to eat rats to survive and while rats actually don’t taste to bad (Musk rats which were a danger to Dutch dikes were served as a delicacy in a restaurant believe it or not.) eating wild rats to survive in the richest country in the world, I hope you’ll agree, is a sign of extreme poverty. If you think that will never happen, think again because it already does.

1.5 children are homeless in the shining house on the hill and 50 million people live under the poverty line and struggle to survive everyday without health care, daily food and work.

Poor people in las Vegas are living in underground rain drains to have a roof over their heads and are at risk of drowning whenever it rains and all over the US tent camps are springing up in forest areas.

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Bush memos parallel claim 9/11 mastermind’s children were tortured with insects

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I can honestly say that I am not anti American in the normal lefty sort of way. I know many honest to god great American people and I know that most American people like us just want to live a decent life. But when a government, any government thinks it’s OK to torture children it becomes a matter of principle.

Bush Administration memos released by the White House on Thursday provide new insight into claims that American agents used insects to torture the young children of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

In the memos, released Thursday, the Bush Administration White House Office of Legal Counsel offered its endorsement of CIA torture methods that involved placing an insect in a cramped, confined box with detainees. Jay S. Bybee, then-director of the OLC, wrote that insects could be used to capitalise on detainees’ fears.

The memo was dated Aug. 1, 2002. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s children were captured and held in Pakistan the following month, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

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Ranks of homeless kids climb

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For most Kiwi’s a recession means just a little moderation for awhile and for most the pending doom is not a reality at all and when you tell them about it their eyes glaze over and they go on with what they were doing and ignore the signs of what will turn out to be the mother of all depressions.

To bring it home I thought I would try to picture the current crisis in what it would mean if it happened over here as it must do in the very near future.

A rapport just appeared which concluded that as long ago as 2005-2006 one in every fifty children in the US was homeless. That was before the sub-prime crisis unfolded and before as many as 23.000 people everyday are loosing their jobs.

What that means in numbers is the following. 1 in every 50 children is homeless and that amounted to 1.5 million children. That means that there are some 75 million children in the US. The population of hte US stands at 300 million so 75 million is roughly 1 quarter of the population.

In New Zealand the population amounts to a little over 4.3 million. That means that if our population is build roughly the same as the US then there are approximatly 1, o75 million children. devided by 50 that would mean that there would be 21.500 children homeless, in shelters, living with family, in cars, motels or tents or otherwise uprooted from a save and nurturing environment. Just think how devastating that would be.

Just imagine what it would mean to the 46% of those children below the age of 6, the 1 in 7 of those children suffering from milt to moderate physical ailments such as astma.

And that was three years ago. Today 23.000 human beings loose their jobs daily. 31.8 million people live on foodstamps and some 20.000 families a month are evicted from their homes.

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In and out of classrooms, sleeping in shelters, shielded by parents, homeless children can seem invisible to society at large.

A national study released Monday finds that one in 50 children in America is homeless. They’re sharing housing because of economic hardship, living in motels, cars, abandoned buildings, parks, camping grounds or shelters, or waiting for foster care placement.

“That is something that I don’t think most people intuitively believe to be true,” said Ellen Bassuk, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and president of the National Center on Family Homelessness.

The national center last did such a report 10 years ago, and numbers of children without a permanent place to sleep are growing.

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Hospital ward at Kandahar Airfield is filled with Afghan children

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I’ve noticed my comments are getting increasingly cynical but than I think there are more and more reasons to become cynical these days.

The Laws National wants to pass through under Urgency are nothing less then a kick in the shin for NZ’s working class and the fact that after 7 years of war even more troops are going to be send in without anybody even wondering any more why we went there in the first place and then this.

It makes me want to scream in frustration with the Kiwi complacency and ignorance. Are we proud to be part of the genocide that is the war in Afghanistan? Happy to see children like Marzyca loose legs and limbs so that we may steal their resources?

When will you finally wake up New Zealand; we are in bed with the bads guys.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – In a land of IEDs, landmines and suicide bombers civilian casualties are commonplace in Afghanistan and are often mentioned in passing in news reports or for that matter not mentioned at all.

But the sight of a 10-year-old Afghan girl, with a brilliant smile and long flowing hair lying in the bed at Kandahar Airfield’s Role 3 hospital drives home the reality of war.

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Marzyca, who like many Afghans goes only by one name, was lying quietly beside a huge teddy bear. She lost her left leg from shrapnel wounds Nov. 23 in her home village of Bazar-e Panjwaii – still a hotbed of Taliban activity and an area where Canadian troops continue to battle the group.

“I’m fine. I’m still in pain in my leg,” she said softly through an interpreter.

Like many Afghans, improvised explosive devices and crushing injuries like Marzyca are a part of life. She didn’t flinch when retelling how she had ended up in hospital, cared for mostly by a team of doctors and nurses from Canada.

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“I was coming from my uncle’s shop where I work. On the way there was an IED, the Taliban put it someplace beside the road so there was an explosion,” she said.

“I was just walking. Their (the Taliban’s) plan – their target – was the ANP (Afghan National Police). We were walking on the road, there was a (Ford) Ranger – a police pickup – and then there was an explosion.”

It injured Marzyca and her cousin who had already been released after sustaining minor injuries. The Taliban had fired a rocket propelled grenade at the police vehicle and missed, hitting the road nearby.

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Afghan children raped with 'impunity,' U.N. official says

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Oh yeah we sure liberated them and we have really helped them rebuild their country.

(CNN) — The young Afghan girl sits in the center of the room, weeping. Using her hand and her blue scarf to hide her face, she recounts how she was brutally raped by five gunmen.
The 12-year-old girl, gang-raped in Afghanistan, weeps as her family demands justice.

The 12-year-old girl, gang-raped in Afghanistan, weeps as her family demands justice.

The girl’s tragic case is one of many in war-torn Afghanistan, activists say.

The 12-year-old girl’s family members say they’ll take their own lives unless justice is served.

“We will all commit suicide; this is not living,” cries the mother of the girl, whose gang-rape occurred in Northern Afghanistan.

The girl’s adolescent voice pleads for help from Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan.

The girl’s elderly and immobilized father trembles and can only raise a quivering hand as he sobs. He is rendered helpless in a country where a man’s dignity and honor is protecting his family.

Her little brother sits in the back, far too young to understand the situation but still traumatized by the devastated cries around him. He wipes away his tears.

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Congratulations New Zealanders, the US army is now torturing children in you name.

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While the “we have to do our bit” New Zealand population remains oblivious of the horrors perpetrated in their name due to the total blackout of reality by the corporate owned mass media, the US announced the building of a new 40 acre prison complex in Afghanistan and it emerged that the US that the US has over 27.000 “illegal combatants” stashed away in Black hole prisons around the world. It also emerged that many of these prisoners are being brought to Iraq and even Abu Graib. Nothing of this appeared anywhere in the mainstream press.

Also this week the FBI rapport was published about the abuses in Guantanamo and. It appears that the FBI started to compile a war crime data base against soldiers in 2002 when the first rapports about prisoner abuse started to come out but they were told to stop and had to close down their investigation.

This documentary chronicles the journey of 4 young British Muslims who where captured in Afghanistan and spend years in Guantanamo, without legal council, without contact with their families,tortured and kept in solitary confinement.

After seeing this: you might want to know what really goes on in our name:

Over the last 24 hours, news about U.S. torture has been leaking out:

The U.S. has also tortured prisoners to death in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

Not bad enough for you?

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Now police are told they can use Taser guns on children

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Way to go in the UK. Taser children why don’t you.

By JASON LEWIS – More by this author » Last updated at 15:27pm on 2nd September 2007

Police have been given the go-ahead to use Taser stun guns against children.

The relaxing of restrictions on the use of the weapons comes despite warnings that they could trigger a heart attack in youngsters.

Until now, Tasers – which emit a 50,000-volt electric shock – have been used only by specialist officers as a “non lethal” alternative to firearms.

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Stun gun: Tasers give off a 50,000 volt blast

However, they can now be used against all potentially violent offenders even if they are unarmed.

It is the decision not to ban their use against minors that is likely to raise serious concerns.

Home Office Police Minister Tony McNulty said medical assessments had confirmed the risk of death or serious injury from Tasers was “low”.

But he failed to mention Government advisers had also warned of a potential risk to children.

The Defence Scientific Advisory Council medical committee told the Home Office that not enough was known about the health risks of using the weapons against children

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