He Really is Quite Savage

Who said this?

[W]hy was there an asthma epidemic amongst minority children? Because I'll tell you why: The children got extra welfare if they were disabled, and they got extra help in school. It was a money racket. Everyone went in and was told [fake cough], "When the nurse looks at you, you go [fake cough], "I don't know, the dust got me." See, everyone had asthma from the minority community.

The same guy who said autism is a

fraud, a racket. ... I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.'

I'd say I'm shocked, but sadly, I'm not.

From Media Matters

See for yourself:

Bigotry: it's not just for adults anymore

New! "God Hates Fags" T-shirts, now in toddler sizes.

You know what they say: if you want 'em to grow up without a shred of care or compassion for fellow human beings - start 'em early. If you want 'em to become hate-filled, rage-filled, closed-minded, we suggest you work on 'em while they're still malleable. Start with these tees, so the message burns itself into their soft, innocent hearts. Ah, the next generation of little Pat Buchanans:

These kids are going to need some serious deprogramming later in life.

Statistically speaking, some of the kids whose parents dress them in these shirts are going to be gay themselves.

Reminds me of the fact that many (some even say most) victims of homophobic violence (bullying, gay-bashing, etc) are not even gay - but are usually those who others mistakenly think are gay. This is just one reason (you know, aside from the morality aspect) that even straight folk should be concerned about homophobia. Gay bashing is about more than just punishing homosexuality; it is also a method of enforcing social conformity. Boys are punished by their peers for stretching the strictures of masculinist behaviour. Of course, those who do the enforcing don't come up with the idea on their own, but pick it up from heterosexist society, communities, churches, and parents - especially those parents who buy their kids "God Hates Fags" t-shirts.

In case you weren't aware, godhatesfags.com is a website run by Fred Phelps, leader of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. They're the ones who have anti-gay protests around the U.S., including at some points showing up at the funerals of gay men, and have moved on to a general "God hates America" theme, due to all our depravity. He makes Jeremiah Wright (Obama's pastor) look like a teddy bear–at least he was just saying God ought to damn America.

From the fantastic site: Sociological Images

Watch the War Child trailer, the story of Emmanuel Jal, a Child Soldier turned Hip Hop Artist

Much attention at the 58th Berlin Festival has been on 'War Child', a documentary by first-time director Christian Karim Chrobog. It relates the stunning story of singer Emmanuel Jal who, in the space of a decade, made a remarkable transition from child soldier in Sudan to international hip-hop musician.

Jal, now 28, was seven when his mother was killed. Soldiers raped his sister, and he was hauled off for military training by Sudanese Liberation Army forces in the late 1980s, and given an AK47 taller than himself.

Trapped in the midst of a civil war, he survived front-line action before escaping after five "lost" years with 300 other boys. They endured a three-month trek before reaching safety.
[...]
Today, Jal is famous throughout Africa as a rapper, and for his work with the UN, Amnesty International and Oxfam in campaigning against employment of child soldiers and the illegal trade of arms. His first song Gua, which means "power" in Arabic, streaked to the top of the charts in Kenya. <IPS>

Here's the War Child Trailer:

Jal is fantastically talented. If you're a fan of hip-hop or African music, definitely listen to some of his tracks, try on his YouTube channel (I love this). A couple of songs are also streaming at Warchildmovie.com. Warning: the music starts automatically (and loudly).

Children of Gaza rally for peace and an end to the siege

Yesterday, as reported by the Popular Committee against sieges (PCAS), there was a rally for besieged children in the Gaza Strip. Apparently hundreds of children participated. The kids formed a human chain in the largest street in Gaza city for almost two hours.

El Khoudary (Chair of PCAS) said about this rally:

occupation is killing innocent Palestinian children day by day in all ways. Children are here today to tell the world we are being killed and you are completely silent. Children must be protected in all times and this is a guaranteed right by all humanitarian charters... On behalf of oppressed besieged Gazans, PCAS calls upon the free world to lift the tight illegitimate siege. This siege threatens lives of all Gaza residents. It's flagrant and obvious violation for all humanitarian charters and conventions.

PCAS reports:

The 7-year-old Hend started to cry when we tried to spoke to her, "All I need is to see my father back in Gaza, he is trapped in Egypt and not able to get into Gaza as crossings are closed."

This was a press release, and just like any press release should not be taken at face value - for instance, numbers may have been exaggerated, important details omitted. A responsible media would take this press release and fact check, perhaps interviewing participants, and then report it. But who wants to bet we read absolutely nothing of this nonviolent Palestinian protest in our mainstream media?

Nonviolent activism in the Middle East gets almost no coverage at all, even when there are huge peaceful popular marches, demonstrations, and strikes. These sorts of protests are simply invisible because they fall outside the prejudiced view of Arabs and Muslims as somehow violent by nature. The lack of reporting on these activities to Western media consumers, while often gruesomely reporting on violent ones, then only helps to reinforces those same prejudices.

Previous related posts: Huge Peaceful Demonstrations in Najaf: Press & White House Dismissive, and Non-Violent Resistance in Iraq, and Non-Violent resistance in Israel and the Occupied territories.

Abuse in the Teen Rehab Industry

In 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office was asked to investigate the allegations of child abuse and neglect at residential "treatment centres" (also commonly known as "boot camps," "wilderness programs," or "behavior modification facilities"), including the deaths of 10 children. As mentioned before, these horrible places abuse kids on the parents' dollar.

The report (PDF) just came out. From USA today:

The congressional investigative agency selected 10 deaths to examine in depth and found reckless practices, inadequate training and misleading marketing. It also found what Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa., called "horrific" examples of abuse.

Other common problems included:

• Ineffective management
• Untrained staff
• Inadequate nourishment
• Reckless or negligent operating practices
• Inadequate equipment

The agency is examining how such facilities are regulated and is expected to make recommendations next year.

Back to School in Iraq

This article Back to School, Back to Horror offers a good opportunity to compare some lifestyle differences between the invaders vs. the invadees, occupiers vs. occupied.

While American kids are getting settled in their new classes, probably after going on a shopping spree, Iraqi kids are also going back to school.

With the security situation grimmer than ever all over the country, just stepping out of one’s house means a serious threat to life.

"God knows how we could send our kids to school this year," Um Mohammed, a mother of five in Baghdad told IPS. "Our financial situation is the worst ever and the prices are way too expensive for the majority of Iraqis to afford. I might have to keep some of them at home and send only two."

The 40-year-old woman shed tears when she started to talk about the family’s financial now compared to what it was before the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

"My God, don’t those Americans have any conscience? We were not rich before, but life was easy and we used to celebrate the school season, watching our kids trying their uniform on and looking at the colourful pictures of their new books," she said.

Now, the state of American public education is somewhere between adequate and dismal (depending on which school district you look at), something for which there is no excuse in the richest country in the world. Iraqis face infinitely more challenges:

"The educational system in Iraq is destroyed and we are suffering all kinds of difficulties," said Hassan, a school headmaster in Baghdad who spoke on condition that his last name and the name of his school would not be used. "There will be a shortage of desks, blackboards, water, electricity and all educational supplies – as well as a critical shortage in the number of teachers this year."

Teachers, like other Iraqis, have fled the country because of threats from sectarian death squads. Some were evicted from their areas and moved to others inside Iraq for sectarian reasons.

According to Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education, as of February 2006, nearly 180 professors were killed and at least 3,250 have fled Iraq to the neighbouring countries. The situation has deteriorated severely since then.

Many children in the USA have little more to worry about than studying and socializing, with puberty and various crushes thrown into the mix for older kids. This is enough for any kid to deal with, and many American kids have other concerns on top of these: learning disabilities, bullying, child abuse, incest, family violence, gang violence, poverty, racial or ethnic discrimination, social exclusion, self-esteem issues, eating disorders, pressure to succeed... it goes on. Is it any wonder that kids have a lot on their mind and often experience mental health issues like depression, anxiety, or hyperactivity?

Now imagine life as a school-age child in Iraq.

According to an Oxfam International report released in July, "92 percent of children had learning impediments that are largely attributable to the current climate of fear."

The report added, "Schools are regularly closed as teachers and pupils are too fearful to attend. Over 800,000 children may now be out of school, according to a recent estimate by Save the Children UK -- up from 600,000 in 2004."

Photo from War News Radio

More on Children in Iraq

Other recent interesting posts on back-to-school: Surveillance, Control and the First Day of School and School, Take Four...

And speaking of school, instead of blogging, I should really be reading right now (Revolutionary Terrorism: The FLN in Algeria, 1954-1962)... time to get back to it.

Jesus Camp: Review

I finally saw Jesus Camp last night. (Yes, I know I'm late to the party.) While some of it was absolutely unsurprising, some of it did indeed send chills down my spine. There were certainly shades of my own summer indoctrination camp[PDF - thanks R.D.] but it went much farther. I recognize some of the brainwashing tactics, as they were used on us at bible camp, in particular the shame and the peer pressure to convert and repent (extra points for squeezing out some tears). While we didn't speak in tongues and writhe on the ground, the main difference was the political element featured at Jesus Camp. One of the families did a sort of pledge of allegiance to Jesus, the USA, and oddly enough, the Israeli flag.

One of the weirdest scenes was when a giant cardboard dummy (heh) of President George Bush was brought to the front of the chapel and all the kids had to pray over him. One of the scariest was the whole abortion thing. They gave the little kids tiny fetuses to hold in their soft little hands (of course they looked like wee toy babies, and nothing like a real fetus at 7 weeks - if the kids saw what a real one looks like they would probably have nightmares). They put "Life" tape over the kids mouths - there was even a scene in front of the white house. Many of these kids were far too young to understand sex, pregnancy, or any of that, so surely they had no idea what abortion actually is. In their minds abortion is baby murder, plain and simple, and it must be stopped.


In order to justify what they are doing, the camp director and some parents say they were training their little army of God as a response to how Muslims train their kids into an Islamic army.

It's no wonder, with that kind of intense training and discipling, that those young people are ready to kill themselves for the cause of Islam. I wanna see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I wanna see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have... excuse me, but we have the truth!

The kids who were interviewed spoke about being warriors and not being afraid to die for God. I think they meant it metaphorically, but I'm not really sure.

The camp did an excellent job at reaching the kids' tender little minds - using stories and props that really reach the kids, making them feel special ("You are the most important generation", "God wrote the book of your life"), even letting them smash things with a hammer (coffee mugs labeled "government") - and if there's one things kids love, it's smashing things!

The children are not raised to be freethinking individuals, but vessels of God to be used. The frames in which they can think are extremely tight, and there is no respect for science or critical thought. Many of the kids are homeschooled: global warming isn't a big deal, science doesn't prove anything, evolution is a belief...

Overall, it was an excellent movie, with no commentary from the directors at all. The interviews let the camp director, parents, and kids speak for themselves.

Worth watching: the deleted scenes.

Most embarassing guest appearance: Pastor Ted Haggard.

Funniest line of the movie: "We pray over these powerpoint presentations".

Cross-posted at Leftist Movie Reviews

Just for fun, here's one of the songs we sang at camp. I'm really not making this up:
Give me gas in my Ford*
Keep me truckin for the lo-ord
Give me gas in my Ford I pray - Hallelujah!
Give me gas in my Ford
Keep me truckin for the lord
Keep me truckin til the break of day
* That's right, get 'em hooked on the right brand names early. Every one knows Jesus would drive a Ford. Foreign cars are the devil's work.

Women & Children are 14 Times More Likely to Die During a Disaster, yet Gender Perspective Missing in Climate Change Discussions

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 2 (IPS) - When the United Nations concluded a two-day debate Wednesday on the potential devastation from climate change, it covered a lot of territory: deforestation, desertification, greenhouse gases, renewable energy sources, biofuels and sustainable development.

But one thing the debate lacked, June Zeitlin executive director of the New York-based Women's Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO) told IPS, was a gender perspective.

"Women and children are 14 times more likely to die than men are during a disaster," she said.

In the 2004 Asian Tsunami, 70 to 80 percent of overall deaths were women. And in the 1991 cyclone disasters that killed 140,000 in Bangladesh, 90 percent of victims were women.

"Similarly in industrialised countries, more women than men died during the 2003 European heat wave," Zeitlin told a panel discussion Tuesday, in advance of a first-ever thematic General Assembly debate devoted exclusively to climate change.

She also said that following the August 2005 Hurricane Katrina in the United States, African-American women who were the poorest population in some of the affected states of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi faced the greatest obstacles to survival.

She argued that women make up the majority of the world's poor, and in particular the world's rural poor, and are largely responsible for securing food, water and energy for cooking and heating.

"These statistics beg the question: Why? And what can we learn from this to fashion more effective solutions to the climate change crisis," Zeitlin said.
[...]
Zeitlin of the Women's Environment and Development Organisation said women have always been leaders in community revitalisation and natural resource management.

"Yet women are so often barred from the public sphere and thus absent from local, national and international decision-making related to natural disasters and adaptation."

There are plenty of examples where women's participation has been critical to community survival.

In Honduras, she said, La Masica was the only community to register no deaths in the wake of Hurricane Mitch in Central America in 1998 due to an early warning system operated by women in the community. (Full article at IPS News)

Women and children bear the highest degree of effect from disasters caused by climate change. Not coincidentally, they also have the least ability to effect decision-making power in the greater public sphere.

Proposal: in a true democracy a person would have input into a decision in the proportion to which that decision affects her or him. In the case of pregnancy and abortion, women, not men, should have veto power. Those who live in a neighbourhood should have power over what kind of development that neighbourhood will undergo, more so than the developer whose only interest in the neigbourhood is to build, make money, and skedaddle. People who are dying because of pollution in their town should have say in where factories can be located and how industry conducts itself in their town.
It's pretty simple, really.

Indigenous Peoples Fighting Ongoing Colonization and Genocide: Australia

Indigenous peoples all over the world are fighting valiant battles to protect what's left of their land, peoples, and cultures in the face of ongoing colonialism. While there are some small victories, the vast juggernaut of globalized corporate Capitalism simply steamrolls on. Helping this along is the paternalism of well-meaning liberals.

It is from the "white man's burden" that some of the most lasting harm has come. Apartheid in South Africa grew out of the same reserve system we have in Canada. Self-government for the natives in semi-autonomous communities - sounds almost progressive doesn't it? Well, we all know how that ended up.

Similarly, misguided but mostly benevolant people, who wanted to improve the lot of young native children through education, created Residential Schools - known as The Stolen Generation) in Australia. This was genocide dressed up as education, with devastating consequences. What happens when nearly an entire people is subject to state-sponsored physical, sexual, verbal, spiritual, and other forms of abuse - for generations? Anyone familiar with the effects of child abuse knows that it can persist through generations in complex ways.

Australia has done little to heal the damage, despite evidence of chronic social problems in Indigenous Australians communities. Instead of promoting healing, the Howard government introduced a a policy banning porn and alcohol for Aboriginals, ostensibly to protect children from abuse(even though the abuse is committed by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people). Howard's actions are reactionary, but he speaks the language of care, which unfortunately is often accepted by kind and decent people.

How does eliminating pornography teach a child to love her blood, her cells, her roots?
How does a ban on alcohol erase the desire to no longer be aboriginal?
How does controlling welfare payments teach aboriginal mothers to trust themselves and their love again? <BFP>

Not only are the Howard government's policies cruel and racist, but they are also not likely to be effective because they are targeting the consequences instead of the causes. Alcohol and pornography do not cause abuse. Rather, those with a history of abuse are far more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs and to have difficulty achieving healthy sexuality, among other terrible outcomes. Even I know better than to conflate correlation with causation.

But perhaps the Howard government does not care if it will be effective. Perhaps this has to do with gaining increasing control over Aboriginal communities and lands (possibly for more nuclear waste dumps or mining): "Australia’s national Government was using its powers to seize control of the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal settlements... The proposals mean scrapping the entry-permit system under which Aboriginal people have controlled access to northern Australia’s 660,000 square kilometres of Aboriginal lands - an area about of the size of Afghanistan - in recent decades." <Times Online> The Howard government is using well-intentioned Australians to promote his atrocious policies. But such paternalism, however pure the intentions, is still racist.

Most Australians don't like to be termed as racist.

The word is supposed to be for South Africans two decades ago, or for Americans before the civil rights era, or even for our earlier colonial ancestors, about two hundred years ago.

But what other reason could there be for the fact Aboriginal people have the same mortality rate of sheep?

And what other word could be used to justify the fact that being an Aboriginal Australia is more dangerous in terms of annual excess mortality than that people in US-occupied Iraq? <National Indigenous Times via Shmohawk's Shmorg>

Baby Husband

One often hears about girls being married off at a young age, but here's a situation in which a woman was married to a three-year old boy.

The case of a woman whose "husband" is a six-year-old child highlights the problems of childhood betrothals in Afghanistan. Gulghoti is a beautiful young woman of 25. Her dark eyes soften, then fill with tears as she looks at Hekmat, a quiet, skinny six-year-old who lives with her.

"I have brought him up since he was three," she said, her voice breaking. "I even used to feed him." The boy is not her child, her brother, or even her stepson. He is her husband. "My life is just one big problem," she said. "Please tell other people not to do this."

Six years ago, Gulghoti, who lives in southern Helmand province, married a young man to whom she had been betrothed since they were both children. Once the parents had agreed on the match and the terms, the deal was almost impossible to break, even after her fiancé was seriously injured in an accident. Her father died when she was young, and her widowed mother did not have the means to resist pressure to honour the contract. Gulghoti duly married her disabled fiance when she was 19, but he died after a year, leaving her a widow.

According to custom in this predominantly Pashtun region, once a woman marries, she remains more or less the property of her husband's family. If she is widowed, she will commonly be married off to a relative of her deceased husband.

"I had to obey these rules, and marry my husband’s younger brother," said Gulghoti. This happened despite the fact that Hekmat was only three at the time. "They forced me to marry this baby," she said. "By the time he reaches adolescence, I will be an old woman."

Hekmat does not understand that the woman who bathes him, looks after him, and prepares his meals is actually his wife. He calls her "khala" - "auntie". He is small and shy, and shrinks away from strangers. He does not attend school – no one in his family is literate.

In Afghanistan, parents sometimes betroth their children almost as soon as they are born. There are cases of 10-day-old children being engaged or even married to each other, despite legal and religious prohibitions against underage marriages. In most deals, a significant amount of money changes hands. The groom's family provides a bride-price, along with gifts of clothing, jewellery, sometimes livestock. The transaction makes it difficult to renege on the contract later on.

The custom is dying out in certain parts of the country, but there are still many instances where people such as Gulghoti and Hekmat are caught in a situation they cannot control. "I will never be happy," said Gulghoti. "I will never be a real wife."

The young woman lives in her husband's home, as is customary, and trembles with fear that he father-in-law might hear that she has spoken to a reporter. "But please give my message to others," she begged. "Tell parents not to arrange marriages for their children when they are babies. It only leads to this kind of catastrophe." [RJ - Paragraph breaks added for easier reading]

Marriage of Inconvenience from Sanjar

This upsets me so much I can't even think of a title for this post

From Sick joke or sick reality?:

"Parental Alienation Syndrome has been used nationwide by batterers as a courtroom tactic to silence abused children by attempting to discredit their disclosures of abuse. This theory is not recognized as valid by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, or the American Medical Association. Parental Alienation Syndrome is not accepted as a psychiatric diagnosis, and has been rejected by the mainstream psychological community. Parental Alienation Syndrome is junk science; there is no valid research or empirical data to support this unproven theory."

PAS is all about punishing mothers, while abused children are denied their safety and the validation of their own experiences.

In Florida, Indiana, Connecticut, Kentucky, Nebraska, Iowa, Maine, and Nevada, there is now reportedly a whole day officially dedicated to raising "awareness" about [Richard] Gardner's theory called Parental Alienation Syndrome, in which the very reports of abuse by a child against a father are themselves evidence that the child is being brainwashed by the mother (and if the child is angry at the father, or doesn't want to visit, that's even more evidence) and the only "cure" for this syndrome is to force the child to live with the abuser and deny ANY contact with the protective mother, who has no history of abuse.

C'mon, you're thinking, what judge would buy this crock? Doesn't it matter if the abuse really happened? Apparently not.

So why is PAS being allowed into the courts?

This month, the NOW Foundation joined other leading organizations working on family law and family violence in a complaint filed against the United States with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The complaint charges that U.S. courts are failing to protect the life, liberties, security, and other human rights of abused mothers and children by frequently awarding child custody to abusers and child molesters. PAS is one predominant strategy being used by lawyers to place children in such danger. A recent Newsweek article noted the finding of a Harvard study that in custody cases involving documented spousal abuse, 54% granted custody to the batterer, and parental alienation was used as an argument in nearly every single one.

Don't Miss: Courageous Kids (powerful) - kids who had to live with an abusive parent are speaking out about their experiences.
Also: A Letter to Richard Gardener (funny)

The War Takes it's Toll

"We were coming from school and we saw a man in the street. Blood and pieces of his brain were all over the place and he was crying." "He was still alive for a while after they shot him."


The war takes its toll on Adel's younger brother.

This was an especially poignant episode of Hometown Baghdad .

See also Children and the Traumas of War

Fighting Against Occupation Will Not be Tolerated (Unless you're on our Side)

Let's do a little mental experiment.

Let's say the USA was invaded by Cuba for harboring known terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Many American civilians were killed.

Along with US army, private security contractors, militias, and regular armed citizens join in the popular resistance against the occupiers. Now lets say one of those killed a member of the invading Cuban army. Would that person deserve to be taken to a secretive prison, charged with murder, and potentially receive the death penalty?

What if this American was a teenager: 14 or 15 years old?

15 year old Omar Khadr (actually a Canadian Citizen) was arrested in 2002 because he threw a grenade which caused injury leading to death. He has been in Guantanamo since.

Now, nearly 5 years later he is being formally charged with murder. Originally the process was ruled illegal by the US Supreme Court, and the charges were thrown out, but the law was conveniently changed by Congress.

The message being sent? This is what happens when you resist the great military imperialist juggernaut that is the USA. Resistance is futile. It will not be tolerated.

The truth? The invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is the crime. Resisting is not.

Oh yeah, and why do we understand that child soldiers in Africa are victims, who are traumatized and need treatment, while Middle Eastern children are not given the same consideration? Oh silly me. I know why: because of who they kill. If a child soldier kills one us they are evil. If they only kill other Africans we get that it isn't their fault. Read A Child in War: Detaining Omar Khadr Violates Our Moral and Legal Principles

UPDATE MAY 2, 2007
Read this excellent post, and the scary comments that follow

Tastes Like Child Slavery

The secret ingredient in that creamy, delicious chocolate bar? The toil and sweat of children in West Africa, forced to work long hours for no pay and little food. Doesn't taste so sweet anymore, does it? Like chocolate, child slavery comes in many colours. But usually brown. Its victims are poor, desperate kids - the most marginalized of society.

A Dutch journalist, Teun (Tony) van de Keuken, hoped to bring awareness to this issue by having himself arrested for eating chocolate two years ago:

Teun van de Keuken, 35, is seeking a jail sentence to raise consumer awareness and force the cocoa and chocolate industry to take tougher measures to stamp out child labor.

"If I am found guilty of this crime, any chocolate consumer can be prosecuted after that. I hope that people would stop buying chocolate and thus hurt the sales of big corporations and make them do something about the problem," van de Keuken said.[...]

"We profit from these people and they get almost nothing in return. As consumers we are also responsible for these atrocities," van de Keuken told Reuters.

Listen to an interview on CBC with van de Keuken explaining everything he's done to try to force Nestle and other companies to stop buying chocolate produced with child labour, including launching his own line of chocolate, creating a movie, trying to get his issue on Oprah, and more. Read this for more information on child slavery in the chocolate industry, and on van de Keuken's work.

Blood Chocolate. Blood Diamonds. Blood Oil. Blood Gold. Are you seeing a pattern? I'll give you a hint: the problem isn't chocolate. It's this whole rotten global corporatism that ensures businesses are rewarded (hooray, stock increase, let's go play golf!) for squeezing as much as they can out of those who actually make the stuff they sell.

UPDATE April 20: Italy is leading the way:

Last year, the Italian government issued a new regulation stating that public authorities should take account of sustainable development when they are issuing calls for tender.

Because schools are required to sell fair trade products in their canteens, it is estimated that this will lead to weekly sales of fair trade bananas and packets of biscuits of almost 300,000 each in 2007-12.

The Perpetrator as Victim, Too

This is a note from a young, thoughtful man who has a lot of significance to say. To understand the minds of our youth, it is important to listen to them. So read this:

I'm dead tired of them demonizing the shooters. People fail to see the shooter himself as a victim as well. A victim of exclusion, bullying, beatings, ridicule and being ignored. The most frustrating thing is that I can relate to these shooters. I feel like every time they criticise them they indirectly criticise me. Another very frustrating thing is that they dodge the issue of ignorance. If I go to someone for help, and they criticise, ignore or admonish me, will I bother? I got lucky there were no firearms readily available and just got forced to quit school. I wonder if only two students who had it coming ended up on the news, what would people say? Poor guys, boo-hoo, nice guys, what a shame. How about a couple witnesses saying that they pushed him too far, they had it coming. It's no different than silencing the protests to the war on Iraq. They only keep one side of the story. Then you hear the typical opinion of a prof. of psychology. My mom and dad still maintain that it was my fault that I "quit" school. I've still got that beef with them. They didn't help much. But Mr. [xxx] (principal of [xxxx]) is still in my black books. I still want him dead, I just don't want to do it myself. I need to speak out about the FACT that the SHOOTER was VICTIMISED without being told how insensitive and mean and evil I am. I want to save lives. I want bullies to get expelled on the first offence and sent to juvie for assault and harassment like any other criminal. Once you can't get away with something, people don't do it as much. Then comes the problems of popular kids sticking up for popular kids, getting bullies off the hook or other kids (maybe 12 of them) saying YOU'RE a bully and getting YOU expelled. How come a kid can break another kid's arm and watch him scream with a smile on his face, before some other kid gets a teacher. If you can resolve the REAL problem (bullies, ignorance etc.) you won't usually have to deal with the RESULT (the shootings) as often. I want to do something about this. Any ideas?

Written by Emerson MacIntosh.

How is it that a 24 year old understands this, but our politicians and pundits can't seem to wrap their heads around it?

It's extremely hard to grow up in this hyper-individualized super-paced and highly complex world. The widening poverty/wealth gap, isolation, bullying, pressure to conform, child abuse, pressure to succeed, and a culture of violence have their effects on the children who will one day be the adults running the world.

If we insist on fearing and pathologizing the emotions and behaviour that are an inevitable result of the society we live in, we only alienate these kids even more. Is it any wonder that depression, eating disorders, partner violence, binge drinking, and drug abuse are common among kids and young adults?

One example: anger. Our society doesn't demonstrate healthy ways of dealing with anger, a normal natural emotion. Kids learn either that anger is bad and shouldn't be felt, or they learn that anger is best expressed through violence (at least if they watch TV - and I'm not even talking about Rambo, watching a White House press conference is enough to give that message).

Also on the Virginia Tech massacre

Before Rosie was a Riveter

Rosie, 7, is a regular oyster shucker at Varn & Platt Canning Co. in Bluffton, South Carolina. It is her second year at it. She is illiterate and works all day. Shucks only a few pots a day. February, 1913. From Shorpy, the 100-Year-Old Photo Blog. Via Mental Floss.

Children and the Traumas of War

Three Stories about Iraqi Children:

On an Iraqi morning Khaled, 11 years old, went, as he used to do everyday, to the nearby school in central Baghdad. What was unusual this time was by the end of the first lesson blasts rattled the school snatching the children's innocence from their faces.

It was horrible. Windows shields smashed hitting the children's soft bodies. Khaled, like others, hide himself under desks that could not withstand the falling ceiling and its fan. Exercise books, pencils, blackboard and the pupils' dreams were all buried under the falling ceiling. All went to the sky except for Khaled and his colleague who lost an arm. The tragedy is still preoccupies this little Iraqi child, though the incident occurred sometime ago. He is not the only to suffer from similar experiences, as scores of kids his age share with him the same experience. Many are still paying, along with their families, the endless war bill. The rest of the story

There are millions of stories like Khaled's, in Iraq and other war-torn countries. Children are killed and forced to kill. They are orphaned. They are raped. They lose their homes, schools, and any sense of stability. They are hungry, sick, and frightened. And often, very traumatized. Without rehabilitation and healing, they can sometimes grow up to perpetuate the violence, because they don't know anything else.

Iraqi boys in a refugee camp in Baghdad play with toy guns.
Photograph: Namir Noor-Eldeen/Reuters

Abdul-Muhammad and his five younger brothers, aged between six and 12, should have been at school. But their mother, Sayeeda, like thousands of parents in Iraq's perilous capital city, now keeps her boys at home. Three weeks ago, armed men had intercepted their teacher's car at the school gates, then hauled him out and slit his throat. Just like in their game.

"That day they came home and they were changed because of the things they'd seen," said Sayeeda as she ladled rice into the boys' bowls. "The youngest two have been wetting their beds and having nightmares, while Abdul-Muhammad has started bullying and ordering everyone to play his fighting games. I know things are not normal with them. My fear is one day they will get hold of real guns. But in these times, where is the help?" The rest of the story

These children are paying the price of wars they did not start - some adults somewhere sitting safely in their offices, war rooms, and white houses made the decisions that cause innocent children to suffer. When you ask children, they overwhelmingly say they want peace.

Just 8 years old, Noor fell victim to an all-too-common crime in Baghdad. Kidnapped from school, she was held for ransom – beaten, blindfolded, and locked in an empty room – for four days.

Her father raced to come up with the money, fearing she would be yet another casualty in the city's plague of abductions. A driver by occupation, he sold the family's car to give his tormenters what they wanted: $8,000 for his daughter's life.

Noor and her family fled Baghdad. But three years later she was still haunted by her memories. They joined some 1 million Iraqis now living in Syria – among them an untold number of children struggling to cope with the emotional wounds of war.

For Noor, and many other Iraqi children like her, there appeared to be no place to turn until a Syrian psychiatrist, risking his job at a state institution, defied authorities and decided to help. The rest of the story

Meanwhile, even American kids are suffering because of war: As Iraq war cost climbs, 9 million U.S. kids lack medical coverage. There's enough money to ensure all Iraqi kids are dead, displaced, or scared, but apparently not enough to keep American kids healthy - really, click this link to put the cost of war into perspective - it's truly disgusting.

Janusz Korczak on Parenting: Inspiring!

I heard this on NPR (listen here) and was touched by this brave and loving man's story.

Janusz Korczak was a Jew born in 1878 in Warsaw. He went on to become a physician and one of Poland's most famous writers — not only of parenting guides, but of children's books, too.

A new book, Loving Every Child, compiles Korczak's writings, some of which were originally published in the 1920s.

Korczak was also the director of two orphanages. After the Nazis took control of Poland in September 1939, he received offers of refuge but refused to leave his young charges, who were forced into a Jewish ghetto. And when those 200 or so children were rounded up for deportation to the Treblinka concentration camp, Korczak famously accompanied them in a dignified march to the train station. Most of them, including Korczak, perished in Treblinka.

Sad, and beautiful story. I love, though, the descriptions of his orphanages... He asked the children what they would like in a home, and proceeded to create just that. He recommends acceptance and love for children as they are, rather than so much concern for who they will someday be. Advice that was well before its time.

More on Janusz Korczak.

The Reality of People in Gaza: Could You Live Like This?

Via Window into Palestine:

One thing this video shows particularly well is the psychological implications for Palestinian children.

Aside from the violence, and the restrictions on movement, the sanctions on the Palestinians are also extremely oppressive. They get sick from dirty water and there's no medicine to make them better. Rates of malnutrition are increasing. People in Gaza can't even fish anymore, which means about a third of their meager dietary protein is now gone. It is truly a humanitarian crisis.

Street Children in Jalalabad: Photo by Afghan Lord

Photo by Afghan Lord

See more photos on Flickr or read his blog. Thanks to Global Voices.