12 Year Old Student Charged with Felony Sugar Possession, page 1

I have always believed that we (the state) grow the very problem we assert we are trying to fix... and now it appears some in the field are agreeing...

Long-term care 'harms children'

Placing children in long-term care is in itself "an act of abuse", according to a leading professor of paediatrics.

Speaking at a science conference in St Louis, US, Professor Dana Johnson said that even a week in an institution could be detrimental...

"Children in institutional care have deteriorations in many things that we want to see children improve in during the earliest years of their life," he said.

"Their cognitive abilities are lower, their growth is terrible and their brain development is abnormal as well."

The whole "look-a-like-drug" thing and the institutionalizations described above are classic examples of how we have moved from a common sense approach to raising our children to a paint-by-numbers approach that forgets the young and delicate minds that are the subject of these policies.

What lessons will this child learn about authority....justice...fairness...scale of consequence in relationship to one's actions???

In my view, reactions like this one are no different than the hysteria demonstrated by other cultures who routinely perpetrate unspeakable horrors upon children...

Thousands of child 'witches' turned on to the streets to starve

Naomi is 15 but looks 10. A horrible burn scar shrivels the skin across her chest and shoulder. She had a broken leg, now reset. But her face is calm; she speaks clearly. The physical scars are nothing compared with the trauma she has been through. She is one of the so-called child witches of Kinshasa, rejected by her family and community at six years old and left to survive on the streets.

Once she had four siblings and lived with her parents across the river in Brazzaville. Her father died and then her mother. She had to live with her grandfather and aunt, who did not want her. 'Grandfather become sick and my aunt accused me of being a witch. She said, "Why is everyone around sick? They are suffering because of you." Grandfather gave me special water to drink, but it made no difference.

'My aunt said I must leave. The neighbours beat me and burnt me. They said either you must admit to being a witch or we will kill you. There is no place for you here. I went to the church, but they gave me water to drink that made me sick. I said to neighbours, let me sleep somewhere, even in your toilet, but they refused. I was caught by some soldiers and they said, you are a witch - we saw you flying with birds. They said they were going to kill me, but I escaped.'

Sometimes I wonder whether humans are the biological equivalent to hamsters that eat their young.

What a pathetic situation we find ourselves in...

[edit on 18-2-2006 by loam]