They aren’t for Life, they are for fetuses and themselves.

I do not often agree with Xians. But I do agree with John Pavlovitz. On many things. But this stood out this morning: The Fraudulence of ‘Pro-life, Christians’ Bullies

It is true what he says:

“If only these teenagers had stayed there in the womb: they’d be safe from the pro-life Christians.
There, they’d still be beautiful. There, they’d still be worth defending. There’ they’d still be sacred.”

The entire blog-post is so spot on I am speechless – and happy – finally a Xian who stands up to those bullies, those life-hating, war-mongering, gun-worshiping and fraudulent Xians, whose only positive concern is for those who agree with them.

Some of you know that I was once an evangelical Xian, albeit in Sweden and during the late 70’s, 80’s and early 90s, but I was just like those Evangelical Xians John speaks of. Fundamentalist, arrogant, life-hating and aggressive towards those who did not agree with me.

Given my personal experiences – which I will share about elsewhere – I think I can say with certainty that out-side a cataclysmic, personal and profound life-crisis, nothing will get through to the majority of them.

Why? Because at the core of their belief lies FEAR. However much they profess to be absolutely certain that G-d loves them, they do not really believe that. They believe that any little step, even in thought, out-side the narrow version of Xianism they are given by their pastors, will end them in hell with the rest of us.

They don’t trust G-d to be kind, gentle, forgiving, compassionate and present, much because they have split G-d in three. G-d the Father, whom they equate with a distorted understanding of the G-d of Israel – angry, hateful, vengeful and quick to anger and punishment; G-d the Son, whom they see as their Suffering Savior, constantly, desperately averting the impending doom and Wrath of G-d, and G-d the Spirit, whom they are taught is so fickle and sensitive, that just a mispoken word can rip said spirit out of their lives permanently. No wonder they have to be aggressive, fundamentalist, hateful and self-serving. They have no safety in G-d.

So all we, or rather Xians like John Pavlovitz, can do is try and catch the ones like me and give them a community that is not, 1. Fundamentalist, 2. Arrogant and 3. Self-serving.

I hope John gets through to some of them.

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Please sign the Petition

Prevent UN Child abuse
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/prevent-UN-personnel-from-abusing-children-in-war-zones

This petition has only picked up 507 signatures in three weeks, it deserves far better. So please if you have not signed – SIGN – and please forward/send to your friends and family and implore them to sign.

Here are some articles that describe the problem and out line the need for the changes this petition is asking for.

U.N. Security Council Says Sexual Violence Akin to War Crimes
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-violence20-2008jun20,0,3588547.story

The problem with the recent measures is that they do not make the UN Personnel who commit this kind of crimes accountable before an International Court – the personnel next to never face any consequences as a result of their crimes, other than being sent home.

Articles about how UN Personnel abuse and exploit women and children in war zones.

http://blogs.ushmm.org/WorldIsWitness/horror_and_hope/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1538556/UN-to-hold-inquiry-into-Sudan-child-abuse.html

http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2008/05/28/peacekeepers_accused_of_sexual_abuse_of_children/

As unbelievable as it is, this is happening, it is happening now and we really need to stop it. The only Body that can stop it is the UN, because it is their personnel who are the criminals here, and they need to step up and reform the way they deal with this sort of thing, both in the field and in the legislation.

Please sign the petition

Hugs,
Silly Old Bear/Henric

Prevent and eventually abolish child sexual abuse by UN Personnel/Peacekeepers in war-zones. – The P

Source: http://www.thepetitionsite….

Addressing the UN and ICC on the issue of Children being used and abused sexually by UN Personnel in war-zones

The Evils of Statistics

Remember this entry?:

Women Would NEVER…or?

Some of the comments on those two news items in that entry coincide with a comment made on another News Item I posted today:

Young People Have Unwanted Sex
World (tags: Children, sex, dissertation, Sweden )

Henric C
abearsdayinthenews.wordpress.com

One in seven Senior High School girls have had sexual intercourse against their will. Among boys of the same age it’s one in seventeen.

The very first comment was: “BOYS! NO MEANS NO!!!” – no shadow shall fall on the woman who said it, she later came in and apologized and said that she should have included the girls too, and not singled out the boys – so don’t think badly of her.

The point I am using her comment to make is that it is all too common that people have knee-jerk reactions to news stories about unwanted sex.

People simply assume that if we are talking about unwanted sex, we are talking about girls not wanting sex, and boys forcing them to have sex.

Sexism – pure and simple sexism.

Not that most people will admit to being sexist, so they very often try and “save themselves” by referring to a statistical body which will confirm the idea that more girls than boys are being sexually abused and that the abusers are either men or boys.

The fact is that the statistics is skewed. The statistics has an agenda.

The fact is that the male gender-role doesn’t allow for victimization and the female gender role encourages victimization.

The fact is that we really don’t know exactly how many girls or boys are being sexually abused, either by their peers or by an adult they trust.

What we know is that more females report being subjected to unwanted sexual attention than males – but we have no way of knowing if this is a true indicator of an imbalance in the victimization, or if what we can glean from the statistics are the “white numbers” and that there are “black numbers” we are unaware of.

Even an anonymous survey of 4000 Swedish Senior High School Student is a blunt and inaccurate instrument.

The young people being surveyed may very well be lying, consciously or subconsciously remembering incidents where the gray zone between wanted and unwanted is closer to the truth than they are willing to admit even to themselves.

The adult who wrote the survey may consciously or subconsciously have written the questions in a manner that will skew the statistics in the end.

Why am I saying this?

Because we are all victims of the ideas of what is proper or expected of our respective gender-role.

Boys will more often that not write off unwanted sexual attention as not really being unwanted, because boys are (still) taught to take their self-realization as males from the sexual attention they get from girls (or women).

Girls will more often than not write off wanted sexual attention as not really wanted, because girls are still taught to take their self-realization as females from the idea that they are not really sexual beings.

So they will lie.

A boy will lie about not wanting the sexual attention from a teacher because he experienced an erection when she (or he) fondled him.

A girl will lie about wanting the sexual attention from a teacher because she has a crush on him (or her).

Both genders will lie about what actually happened (positive or negative) out of fear of what parents, peers and the school might say if they knew.

So, in the end we cannot really trust any statistics – it was not for nothing that Samuel Clemens said: There three types of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics.

The best we can do is to make an effort to not apply those horrid gender-roles to our views when we hear about sexual abuse or sexual activity, and try to remember to assume that what is true for one gender is true also for the other.

Unless we do we will never experience true Gender Equality.

Of course they protest – they are the main perps

Queue a parent who’s sole point was basically, this shouldn’t be given to the under 10s (the booklet is written for the 9-11 age group). But her point was that parents should be given the right to choose about whether and how this information is distributed. Which is laudable in most families. But not in others – in some families leaving it to the parents simply won’t work because it is parents who are abusers or parents who are protecting abusers. To claim, as she implicitly does, that parents can’t be part of the problem is naive and blinkered. Lets run that again – this is a booklet on child abuse, most physical abuse is committed by parents or caregivers, neglect and emotional abuse is committed by parents or caregivers, sexual abuse can be committed by parents or caregivers. Prioritising the parent in this discussion misunderstands the intention – to inform children that their rights are not reliant on their parents allowing them access to them.

Of course the Parents are going to protest – as parents are abusers more or less by definition, from the child’s point of view. Naturally they won’t want their source of drug/fix let go or be informed of its rights.

I’d report the parent that objected to the police as a suspected sexual abuser or protector of an abuser.

SoB

The Solution?

How do we, the People, do something about the abuse and exploitation of children being committed by UN Personnel around the world?

One thing we can do is petition the UN to put some safety-guards into their recruiting process, take some legal action and give their personnel “safe sex”

Here are 7 points that I would put in a petition:

1. Make UN Personnel accountable to the International War crimes Tribunal in Hague.

2. Make Superior officers accountable for the conduct of their Troops on pain of loosing their commission and being dishonorable discharged.

3. Create a screening process that all UN Personnel going into the Field has to undergo, to determine their suitability for the work, with focus on their attitudes towards children.

4. Allow independent NGO’s such as Save the Children, The Red Cross, Doctors without Borders to conduct yearly investigations.

5. Make it mandatory for Superior officers to investigate rumors and reports from the locals of this kind of abuse, and don’t just trust their sense of honor to do this.

6. Exclude from deployment troops from countries where sex with children is part of the culture – such as Thailand, Indonesia etc.

This last point is controversial – but it addresses part of the reason why this happens.

7. Provide UN personnel with “safe sex” through the creation of UN supervised and UN controlled brothels in direct connection to UN Deployments. There’s nothing wrong with prostitution as long as we are talking about consenting adults, and those consenting adults are given health-care and decent (and controlled) pay for the services rendered.

—

Some may balk at the last one – especially those feminists that consider any kind of sex-work to be abuse of women.

However, not all prostitution is bad or demeaning to women. In fact many sex-workers will tell you that to them it’s like any other work, and they will also tell you that if there were Unions for sex-workers they would join.

Others may think that excluding people from some countries is discriminatory, and it might be, but Thailand and Indonesia are well known for a big child-prostitution sector that the government is not doing much about, so it’s safe to say that there is a culture of acceptance towards sex with children.

Yet other may feel that it’s a bad idea to make UN Personnel accountable to the War Crimes Tribunal – but if you think about it, it’s logical.

UN Peacekeepers serve the International Community, it is only fitting that should they commit crimes they should answer for those crimes in front of an International Court.

There have always been a tradition that the Superior Officers are responsible for the conduct of the troops under their command – so making the Superior Officers face real consequences if their troops misbehave, should make them a little more likely to protect civilians.

How DARE they!?

Save the Children – UK News

World (tags: Children, Save the Children UK, UN Peacekeepers, Abuse, exploitation )
Despite recent political commitments by governments and international organisations to tackle this problem, the report exposes the chronic under-reporting of such abuse, which leaves many children around the world suffering in silence.

Aid Workers Sexually Abusing Children in War Zones and Disaster Areas

World (tags: sexual, sexually, abuse, abusing, aid, workers, children, child, welfare, war, disaster, sudan, ivory coast, save the children, organization, charity )

Many aid workers are sexually abusing children they have been sent to help, a leading charity claims today. One aid worker on the Ivory Coast told Save The Children: ‘Many agencies working here feel they are beyond reproach.’

Companion Articles:

BBC NEWS | Americas | UN troops face child abuse claims

BBC NEWS | Americas | UN to discuss child abuse claims

The U.N. Sex Scandal

UN to hold inquiry into Sudan child abuse – Telegraph

I read the above and I am speechless with anger – How dare they!? How dare they put on that Blue Beret and do THAT to children?

The UN represent all that is good, decent and hope inspiring in the world, and they dare defile this with their perverted, cruel, sadistic and inhumane practices…!

Those children…That Blue Beret stands for the help those kids have a right to expect from its bearers, and they have their trust crushed by vile desires and unbridled immorality. Those children, the weakest of the weak, the smallest of the small, with the inborn right to protection and support that the Blue Beret guarantees, are being abused and exploited – in MY name, in my father’s name, in the name of the world…of all the vile things humans can do, THAT is the vilest.

My father was a UN Peacekeeper and those vile humans desecrate his memory, his good heart and his willingness to serve humanity in that Blue Beret.

This is one of those instances when I believe a good Company Punishment would be just fine.

Let the perpetrators run a gauntlet among their peers, put them in jail and throw away the key. They are not only a disgrace to every decent soldier in the world, they are a disgrace to the entire human race. Break their sabers and exile them from humanity for the remainder of their lives.

May G-d have Mercy on their souls, because they are going to need it.

The reason why people should need a license to breed

Dad gets 25 years for microwaving baby

GALVESTON, Texas – A jury on Wednesday sentenced a young father to 25 years in prison for severely burning his infant daughter when he put her in a microwave and turned it on for up to 20 seconds.

I have to disconnect my emotions to write about this. I simply hate child abuse. There is absolutely no excuse for abuse your kid in any way. I am glad this guy doesn’t live close to where I am…

Regardless of how I feel – there are solutions. All that is needed is guts and common sense. Too many people have children before they are old enough to be adult in a true sense. Unfortunately. Some people never get there. So, one solution is to create a mandatory education for prospective parents. From which they have to graduate with an A in all disciplines in order to be licensed parents. It’s sick and crazy that prospective adoptive parents have to jump through loops to be approved, but every Tom, Dick and Harry, Thomasine, Dixie and Harriet with functioning genitals can just “romp around” and have kids they have absolutely no idea, no emotional tools, social skills or common sense to care for. I would also like to put a lower age limit for pregnancies – they would have to be at least 30 years and have spent at least five of those in personal therapy and anger management treatment. BEFORE they have to graduate from Parenting School.

Those who fail should have their “tubes” tied. Period.

 

 

Blog: Does the Bible justify Child Abuse?

The cardinal passage from Scriptures being used as justification of various types of what can only be described as child abuse, is Proverbs 13:24 “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” In this ‘article’ I will show how a misunderstanding (willful or unintentional, it really doesn’t matter for the purpose of this article) of the Hebrew Scriptures has lead to a culture of violence and abuse within devout fundamentalist Christian families. This culture is represented and promoted by, among others, Pastor Michael Pearl and his wife Debi. In his book “To Train Up a Child”, Pastor Pearl gives some horrifying examples of both methods and reasons for using violence to raise children.

“Select your instrument according to the child’s size,” writes Pearl. “For the under one year old, a little, ten to twelve-inch long, willowy branch (stripped of any knots that might break the skin) about one-eighth inch diameter is sufficient. Sometimes alternatives have to be sought. A one-foot ruler, or its equivalent in a paddle, is a sufficient alternative. For the larger child, a belt or larger tree branch is effective.” When addressing the possibility that a child might object to the abuse, Pearl writes: “When she screams or flees, calmly follow through by physically subduing her. Sit on her, if you have to, and slowly explain that you will not tolerate this resistance. Explain in a normal tone (She will eventually stop screaming and listen) that you are going to give her, say, five licks for the original offense and an additional two licks for the fit. Slowly apply the five licks, counting out loud. When I say slowly, I mean with a thirty second gap between each lick and a calm explanation to the screaming child that you are not the least impressed except that you are going to spank harder and she still gets the additional two licks plus one more for her ongoing screaming. When you have finally arrived at five well- anticipated and carefully counted licks, say, “OK, your spanking is over; that is the five licks you got for hitting your brother, but now I must give you two more for trying to run away.” Give her one lick and say, “Now, that is one of the licks for running away; you have one more coming.” Give the second lick, and then calmly and slowly explain that all her licks are over now, except for the one additional lick she incurred for continuing to scream during the spanking. After you have finished, tell her that you are going to let her up now, if she stops screaming, otherwise you are going to give her one additional lick. If she stops, or at least makes a great effort to, then you have won. You may never have to go through this horrible time again. But, if she is continuing to scream in defiance, you have the option of continuing to warn and spank, or of ceasing here with a parting warning: “Next time you better not run and throw a fit; for if you do, you will only get more licks and harder ones.”

During the period of Enslavement in the US, ‘flogging’, corporeal punishment using a “rod” (cane), a “switch” (a slender, flexible shoot, rod, etc.) or a whip, was used to discipline errant slaves. Slaves were reduced into a frightened, painful sobbing heap as a result, and they were grown men and women! How much more then a child? It is natural for any human, grown or child to respond to pain and humiliation or the anticipation of pain and humiliation with cries and attempts to avoid pain and humiliation. Crying and running away from a danger, such as pain and humiliation, is a defense mechanism, innate in all living creatures. This NATURAL response to danger, is, according to Pastor Pearl, to be responded to by further pain and humiliation…!

The ideology behind this calculated, willful and sadistic abuse, is nothing but one of needing absolute control by any means possible and killing a soul in the process. It is based on the idea that children are born bad, evil, corrupt, and that this badness, evil, corruption can be beaten out of them, another misreading of Scriptures: Proverbs 22:15 “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.”, Proverbs 23:14 “If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol.” Biblos.com (http://biblos.com/) gives a very scary cross reference to Proverbs 23:14 -> 1 Corinthians 5:5 “I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” (NASB ) Alternate reading: “you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.”

The kind of sadistic abuse Pastor Pearl teaches and promotes has absolutely nothing to do with what the Author of Proverbs suggests. Abuse will not teach a child God’s Word or God’s Will, it will cruelly and sadistically cripple and eventually kill the child emotionally and spiritually. It might be that the child will stop bothering its parents unless invited, but the child will forever be scarred and far from the Image of God which the Creator intended it to be. I would suggest that rather than beating the bad out of the child, parents using Pastor Pearl’s “childrearing” methods, will be beating bad, evil, corruption and Satan into their children.

Let’s look at what Scriptures REALLY teach about child rearing and how to go about it. Proverbs 3: 11-12 states “My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.” Alternate reading: “My son, despise not the chastening of the LORD, neither spurn thou His correction; For whom the LORD loveth He correcteth, even as a father the son in whom he delighteth.”

In order to understand correctly the meaning of verses such as Proverbs 13:24; 22:15; 23:13-14; 29:15 we have to connect it to Proverbs 3:12, as God Himself provide us with an image of how to raise our children. God doesn’t abuse us with a cane, switch or whip, nor does He humiliate us. He reproves us through His Word, He correct us, not by physical violence but by reminding us verbally of what He wants of us, this is evident throughout Scriptures. Nowhere in God’s Teaching is there any direct implement of physical abuse. Why is that? Because the Hebrew Scriptures takes as self-evident the image of the shepherd and his rod as the archetype of a good and loving parent. If one studies societies which in terms of the institution of shepherding, one will see that a shepherd NEVER uses his staff/rod to strike or beat the sheep. A shepherd’s staff/rod is an instrument of GUIDANCE, to direct the sheep onto the path the shepherd wants them to move. A shepherd uses his staff/rod to catch straying sheep and to keep the flock together as it moves about. It also serves as a simple weapon to ward off wild animals.

When the Hebrew Scriptures use ‘rod’, ‘staff’, ‘discipline’, ‘correction’, it refers without exception to guidance through verbal instruction and nothing else. This becomes even more evident if we read Deuteronomy 6:7 “Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (NIV) First it says to teach the words that God commands to one’s children and then it tells us how that is to be done, “Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” This idea of the rod and staff being something that is not an instrument of hurt but of gentle guidance, is recorded in Psalm 23. Psalm 23 is perhaps the most famous of all the Psalms, and it portrays God as a Shepherd whose rod and staff is a comfort. When Scripture seemingly contradict Itself both opinions must be true, which means that God cannot be a loving Parent, whose “rod and staff” is our comfort and at the same time expect us to beat the living daylights out of our children with implements of torture. So either God is not the Loving Parent who guides us with His Word, His Rod and Staff of Comfort, or the meaning of Proverbs 13:24; 22:15; 23:13-14; 29:15 is not what Pastor Pearl teaches. You choose.

Lastly, Jesus Christ is portrayed as the Good Shepherd, and throughout the Gospels we are admonished to let the little children come to Him, because they belong to the Kingdom of God, Matthew 19:14; Mark 10:14; Luke 18:16 and by implication Mark 9:37. Children are not “let to come anywhere” through whipping them there, they are getting where they need to go through gently picking them up and guiding them with the words of love and encouragement. We are also told that whatever we do to one of His little ones we do to Him, Matthew 25:40, and that if we hurt one of His little ones, it would be better for us to be sunk in the sea with a millstone around our necks. So every time we beat a child, whatever our motivation might be, we are whipping Jesus Christ and their Angels are keeping track of every lick we administer, Matthew 18:6, 10-11; Luke 17:2; Mark 9:42.

 

LORD, Father of all children, great and small, for the sake of Your name, protect all children who are now living with abusive, sadistic parents, be they Christian or not, and keep these small innocent souls as intact and unharmed as possible. You who said “let the Children come to me”, work Your Gentle and Life-Changing miracle for those children, so that they may grow up and be whole and sound in body, mind and spirit. In Your Holy Name. Amen.

Original author, Henry Gordon, used with permission

I don’t usually post entire Blog entries, nor do I usually agree with Christians – this is an exception.

This guy I agree with COMPLETELY on this issue.

Edit: As far as I have been able to determine, the quotes in bright red in the above entry is from  Spare the quarter-inch plumbing supply line, spoil the child

SOB

Palestinian Indoctrination – Kindergarten Jihad

I picked this up from another Blogger:

 

This video is quite disturbing, however what is more sickening, is the lack of media attention. The liberal left does not want you to see this sort of thing because it undermines their position on the roots of terrorism and Israel being the evil killing machine.

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I find this extremely disturbing – for several reasons.

 

 

 

1. these kids have been trained for one thing – to be soldiers. Which is hardly what a Kindergarten is supposed to do to kids.
2. these kids are being taught to hate “the enemy” and to seek death for Allah. That is not something any child should be taught.
3. regardless of what the adults around these kids believe, imposing such believes on children is immoral, unethical and a violation those kids’ human rights.

I think it was Golda Meir who said: “There will be peace when the Palestinians love their children more than they hate us.”

 

No children should be told to hate, bear arms or seek death for a G-dhead they can barely comprehend. I don’t care if those kids are Palestinians, Israeli, Lebanese or American. To me they are children and as such they should be allowed to be kids.

 

No cause, religious or otherwise, is worth the damage done to those kids – nothing is worth killing a child’s soul for. Nothing.