The Children's Holocaust - Part One

There is a worldwide holocaust being perpetrated against children. They are dying and suffering all kinds of abuse and violence and betrayal and neglect and exclusion. I have been led to wonder why adults feel and believe themselves justified in perpetrating this outrageous continuum of harm, exclusion and vilification that children experience.

Not long ago women and children were summarily grouped together and characterized as “not needing Rights” by a member of the Royal Commission that helped shape The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It was Châtelaine Magazine's celebrated editor Doris Anderson who stood up against this bigoted opinion. Thereby Equal Rights for women was included in this Charter. At this point much of the violence, abuse and disenfranchisement that was suffered by women in general has been significantly reduced. Women have Rights, though theirs, like everyone's are certainly infringed upon from time to time.

Children DO NOT have Rights. That is to say that they do not enjoy the fullness of Equal Rights as defined in the Charter and judicial interpretations of its contents. Also the Criminal Code of Canada strips children of Equal Rights, protection and opportunity in Section 43 [in locus parentis]. And this Section bestows the children's Rights upon “responsible” adults – parents, teachers, and others who are busy protecting their own share of the social pie.

Again and again “responsible” adults tell me that they are comfortable being in control and empowered while children are murdered, exploited, abused, insulted, mistreated, rejected...and blamed. I now see why it's called a “criminal” code. The intent and consequences of this Statute are criminal and we are the guilty ones.

We gather children in neighbourhood concentration camps – schools. And many do not emerge alive after eight or twelve years in these camps. The camp director, staff and prisoner supervisors make sure the children know they have neither Rights nor recourse. They are helpless, powerless and optionless.

As a child I saw these claims as lies and spent as little time in these places as possible, leaving finally, once and for all, at age fifteen. I found options, choices, safety, respect, meaning and much more outside of the machine. The Ministry of Education and Government of Ontario consider all of this Just. So does the Government of Canada. But...The Canadian Senate Human Rights Committee does not consider it Just or fair or constitutional.

Sadly the entire social analytical apparatus [the media, academia, et cetera], along with the government, institutions, families and others remain convinced that children neither need nor deserve Equal Rights. This belief is poison for the Human Spirit and destructive to a society. Our journalists sleep while children suffer exclusion, harm, exploitation of many kinds, humiliation and death. This in turn causes deep impacts upon GNP and the economy in general.

I want others to see the widespread, vicious, unjust murderous picture of what children face in Canada and worldwide that I see. To me it has the appearance of a holocaust, with countless millions dying every single year. I want my fellow citizens to see the financial, political, social, legal, ethical, moral and other consequences of this injustice. And I want them all to change...quickly...before this injustice proves to be a welcome mat to those who want what we possess – land, freedom, sovereignty, businesses. Everything is in jeopardy and few see why.

I have demonstrated elsewhere that many of these “responsible” adults are not worthy or deserving of the public trust. In fact democratic principles, values and history make explicit the idea that one should never surrender one's Rights to anyone under any condition or circumstance. To do so is to break faith with our fellow citizens and those who strove and sacrificed to win and maintain our Freedom. To do so is to become a slave, according to Abraham Lincoln.

These “responsible” others are really only damaged and alienated children of previous generations. They were thwarted, humiliated and excluded by a system that saw teachers, preachers, lawyers, doctors and so forth as 'above' others, and above reproach. This obsolete and class-ridden idea has been lain aside and then laid to rest by The Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

If women had not been included in the definition of “Human” in Human Rights, Canada would have undergone a social and economic crisis. Now we are experiencing such a crisis as a result of the exclusion of children from the Social Contract.

Canadians must awaken to the injustice in this and to the threat that such injustice poses for those who perpetrate it. It's exactly like Apartheid in South Africa. But in this case the excluded ones with no Rights and Freedoms are children. Adults are in denial. Besides this we urgently need the help of our children to confront the Gathering Storm, just as children were called upon to help in the World Wars.

From Kitchener to the Congo, from Bangkok to Peking, Quito, New York, to London, Paris, Berlin, Baghdad, Cairo, Inuvik, Rio de Janeiro, Palestine, Moscow, Cleveland, Vancouver and in every town and village and region. In all places children suffer a spectrum of horrors and indignities from war to violence, prostitution, starvation and disease, slavery and torture, to internment in our poor excuses for schools, and in our police services, courts and jails.

They disappear, suffer beatings, bullying and abuse from “responsible” adults, have little or no say in their own affairs and destiny, can have their character slandered, their possessions confiscated, their opinions quashed. They receive little or no respect from society, and much abuse. Then their predictable reactions to all of this are put down to lame categories like adolescent or teenager. They are Human and are reacting in a human way to widespread and prolonged injustice. Do the Math!

This Holocaust is of such magnitude and proportion as to overshadow the Nazi Holocaust in each and every year it continues. Yet no one counts the victims. No one traces the causes to see the roots. No one tallies the insults, infractions, assaults, offenses, consequences and lame defenses that attempt to ignore and justify this horrific set of images that fill my mind from media sources every day.

Brothers and Sisters we must cease from making war upon our children, mostly via our social and governmental institutions. They need and deserve our love, nurture and protection. The holocaust must stop or we will all bear the guilt and consequences. If we do not alter our thinking and behaviour soon, we will suffer from the fallout.

Help our children and thereby help the nation and the global community. Support Equal Rights for children in Canada and an end to the silent and endless holocaust children endure everywhere.

Think global. Act local. - The Whole Earth Catalog

John Williams - Director – The Canadian Children's Rights Initiative

December 19, 2007.1500 h
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Children's Rights - The Hungry Beast

“Love people and use things, rather than the opposite.”

The global economy is using our children to starve and punish children everywhere. [see Legal Exploitation list]

Children are regarded as merchandise in the heartless corporate world and as fuel to drive the economic engines of an interlocked economic system. I suggest that we should honestly ask ourselves if we want to continue to sacrifice children for goods, services and wealth.

How long will we cooperate with this financial and economic protocol?

Let me add that there are other ways to look at children, beyond the perception that they are a commodity to be exploited, a natural resource to create a luxurious lifestyle for an already over-endowed elite.

We can, we should and we must view them as people. In my faith children are the model by which we find God and to which we must aspire. They are, individually and altogether, more sacred to us than all of the cattle of India are to the people of that place.

We are simultaneously robbing them of hope. For hope is the future to which we aspire and for which we reach, knowing that things can and will improve. We are carving up and consuming all of the earth’s resources in one generation.

These resources should be viewed as the basis for life in every generation for endless generations to come. We are stealing their legacy and turning it into garbage of various kinds. And we are doing it at a head-swirling, dizzying rate.

We should love and care for and value our children as a sacred gift, rather than seeing them as a means to gain. And we should preserve the Earth that is God’s legacy to them.

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Children's Rights - The Legal Economic Exploitation of Children

Who benefits?

[Each of these is a complex interlocking network.]

- government, bureaucracy and public employees

- internet providers, services, et cetera, including software developers/computer and technology industries

- teachers and staff and all employees of all schools & educational organizations

- movie and television and radio industry

- law enforcement

- scholars of many kinds and experts, consultants, et cetera

- the courts

- lawyers

- religious organizations of all kinds

- toy companies, distributors and sellers

- digital toy industry

- drug companies

- food companies

- music industry

- beverage companies

- clothing manufacturers

- amusement companies of all kinds

- transportation companies

- fast food businesses

- candy and confections manufacturers and distributors

- doctors, nurses, medical researchers and professionals of all kinds

- many commercial businesses: convenience/dollar stores/ children’s

- hospitals and their staff and employees

- stock market

- rehab facilities, boot camps and behaviour modification programs of all kinds

- counseling industry

- automotive industry

- pharmacists

- funeral directors and businesses

- cemeteries

- parents

- entertainment industry

- advertising industry

- Christmas industry

- Easter industry

- sports industries

- recreation industries

- cosmetic industries

- religious industries, organizations and cults

- book and magazine publishers, sellers and distributors

Who pays?

Children and their families at both ends of the food chain pay – as manufacturers and as consumers.

This is a HUGE burden for children to bear. They are slave labourers at one end of the manufacturing schema and they are slave consumers at the other. They have no rights nor dignity nor humanity in the eyes of others. They are cogs in a corporate wheel rather than the objects of parental and societal love and protection. Ultimately the entire economy is buoyed up by and built upon the exploitation of children worldwide.

In Canada boys are especially alienated and abused. Large numbers of them are incarcerated, murdered, killed in “accidents” that include auto, labour, play, sports, illness and injury, violence of many kinds, including widespread suicides and drugs/alcohol related troubles. There is no place for them but in jails and cemeteries and hospitals…or the military. This is small-minded and fails to estimate their true character and potential.

"At this point many of the beneficiaries of this exploitation are far far away and do not care about us or our children…in China, India, and USA." - The Global Economy.

We should be caring about them, rather than exploiting them for economic gain.

The Impossible - Leadership 3

The human family is faced with a set of challenges that appears to be impossible to overcome. If we simply combine the growing global environmental crisis and the growth of weapons capability and availability, and the widespread warfare and violence, then it appears that we are doomed. If we add up the genocide, disease and starvation, then the picture becomes more bleak. Add to this human greed and lust for power and our inability to resolve ancient conflicts, and we arrive at The Impossible.

Now personally I am not very interested in what is possible or easy or within reach. It is only The Impossible that interests me. I dwell with, in, and for the impossible. That being the case, I’m sure it is no surprise that our complex, present and growing Crisis has my rapt attention.

I can tell you one important thing about the impossible. It’s possible. I have spent most of my life proving that.

We need leaders who can, will, and do inspire, enable and guide us to and through The Impossible. Look for this kind of leader. Accept nothing less and no substitute.

How To Survive - Leadership 2

Do we want to survive, succeed and prosper? Do we wish to remain an independent nation with our sovereignty, liberties and culture intact? If your answer is “Yes!” then the situation in which we find ourselves requires a great exertion on the part of the Canadian people.

If we are to cherish and nurture The Canadian Dream, then we must quickly organize ourselves, embrace our collective reality, and exert ourselves as one. Anything less could lead to our destruction as a political entity and the loss of hope for all of the peoples and nations of the world.

In order to accomplish this unified exertion Canada needs leadership of a particular kind. We need to find those leaders who believe in us and inspire us to do the impossible. For the impossible is what we must do if we intend to maintain our unique democracy and survive the looming global crisis.

What Is Needed - Leadership 1

A growing number of people in this country are talking about our need for appropriate Leadership. But I haven’t heard much useful talk about what leadership is. People know they need “something” but there seems to be little clarity about what it is. So I’m going to talk about it and write about it in hopes that the leaders that we need can be found, and the solutions implemented in a timely fashion.

We can see many examples of leadership in our society, in the world, and in history. Some leaders have become legends, often for good reason. There has been a succession of great leaders on the world’s stage. Wellington is credited with having saved England and Europe by defeating Bonaparte’s French army at Waterloo, with German aid. Churchill defeated Hitler’s German army with Allied and French aid. Lincoln freed the African-American slaves and Wilberforce ended slavery in the British Empire.

Great leaders are forged in the fire of personal experience and historical crises. As we are facing a crisis of unprecedented magnitude, we need leaders and leadership that can deal with this reality.