Tuesday 31 December 2013

Happy New Year 2014

Well 2013 was a bit of a washout... Very little of what I planned to get done was achieved.  So here's hoping that 2014 brings better luck and better chances to fulfill dreams and ambitions.



The power to change resides in us all. We just have to want it strongly enough! Now I must start to listen to my own advice a lot more.


I want to thank those of you that follow my writings and to wish you ALL a very happy and successful 2014! Together we can make the change, in ourselves and hopefully in others.




Saturday 21 December 2013

Whose Christmas is it anyway?

Whose Christmas is it anyway?
 
image: [ Pagans celebrate the winter solstice, on December 21 ]
Pagans celebrate the winter solstice, on December 21

Apparently, the season of good cheer did not start out as exclusively a Christian festival. According to Pagans, the early Christian church hijacked December 25 to celebrate the birth of Jesus because they saw that everyone was already having a good time and decided to take advantage of it.

Historical debate has been raging for a long time over the exact date of the birth of Jesus Christ, with estimates ranging from sometime in September to much later in February.
But the most important date in the festive season for Pagans is the winter solstice which always takes place around December 21. Called Yule, it is one of the traditional Celtic fire festivals and marks the return of the light after the longest night of the year.

The Pagan Federation, an umbrella group for Pagan organisations, describes Paganism as a spiritual nature-venerating belief system rooted in the ancient nature religions of the world.

The term of Pagan covers Wiccans, better known as witches, followers of the Northern Tradition who base their beliefs on Norse and old northern European beliefs, and also Druidism.

Christians and the more secular Christmas revellers may be relieved to learn that Pagans in Britain do not tend to cavort around holly bushes stark naked, or "skyclad", to celebrate their version of Christmas.

Eat, drink and be merry

[ image: Pagans light candles to welcome back the light]
Pagans light candles to welcome back the light
Seasonal rites vary among different sorts of Pagans from full-scale services with special robes, chalices and the lighting of candles to a little light meditation.
Many Pagans say that Christmas was superimposed over their great year-end festivals which were very popular in the Graeco-Roman world.

Firstly, the customs of giving presents, eating too much and generally having fun comes from the Roman festival Saturnalia which used to be celebrated around December 17.

Saturn was the Roman God of agriculture and plenty, and gift giving symbolised the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor during the season of greatest hardship. Big feasts were generally laid on by the rich to feed their poorer neighbours.



The next big ancient festival was the solstice feast of Mithras, the Roman God of light on December 25. This was the one adopted by Christians sometime around the 4th century as the birthday of Jesus. Traditionally, this festival marked the renewal of hope.

For modern Pagans, the solstice is the most important time. It is often called Yule, after the Scandinavian tradition, or Mother-Night from the Anglo-Saxon tradition. On this, the longest night of the year, they celebrate the return of light and an end to darkness.

The third celebration is New Year's Eve, originally dedicated to the two-faced Roman god Janus, who looked both forward and back. At this festival there were torchlit processions, lots of songs, present giving, fortune telling and people would decorate their houses with all sorts of greenery to symbolise new life.

Much of the ancient new year celebrations, such as gathering greenery in the form of a fir tree or holly, have now moved back to start at what is the beginning of the modern Christmas season.  

via BBC 

Whatever you believe.... Be nice to one another.




A Christmas Story by Christopher Guild VIA @johndwm #childabuse


I was asked to re tweet this by my friend John. The story moved me so deeply I decided, with his consent, to re blog it here.  



Today my friend Chris is facing a year and a half jail sentence for failing to report for his addiction reduction programme. He was informed by his lawyer that the neither his complete termination of heroin use and large-scale reduction of alcohol levels will be considered as grounds for allowing him to continue the programme. The fact that his failure to report for four appointments was caused by verifiable threats of violence from an other party should he appear there would not be taken into consideration.
Despite this Chris is revolved to use prison positively as an opportunity to build up his education and to write while he is there. And what a writer! I present to you “Black December” – A Christmas story.
“First Christmas. Do you remember yours? I don’t remember the first one but the first one I remember wasn’t fun.
I was five years old. Five. I ran down the stairs – all excited, like I should have been. Mum was a single parent at the time. She struggled on to make everything nice.
I don’t remember much of the presents.
But I do remember my green hat with a black rim and a matching scarf.
I liked it.
Then a knock at the door; it was Grandad. He came in and gave me a hug along with a present.
It was a chocolate Christmas tree with white chocolate going diagonally downwards to have the tinsel effect. It was in a plastic container. It was my first bit of chocolate.
I ran through the kitchen and grabbed a knife and burst the plastic and started eating it. Mum came through and asked me nicely to go back to the living room.
Grandad had to go to my Aunty Sandra’s and then he left…
Then it started.
My mum slapped me as hard as she could and screamed – “You little bastard, you never said thank you!” She grabbed me by the throat with her nails. I started to bleed. The beating continued. I was begging the woman to stop.
She told me if I didn’t stop crying she would keep going, but the pain was too much. Talk about a “catch 22″.
My nose was bleeding and I had a big piece of skin torn off my neck.
After the woman saying things like “I wish I never opened my fuckin’ legs” and “You should have been flushed down the pan” – The beating stopped.
I cried for a while in my room.
Then she shouted me to get ready to go to Aunty Sandra’s.
I had to say to everyone that the green scarf was my favourite present to cover the big scratch on my neck. So I sat at the dinner table eating my Christmas dinner with a scarf on.
I hate Christmas.
It reminds me of the colour black.
I’ll never forget that green scarf.
Black December.
A green hat with a black rim and matching scarf…

FIND THE ORIGINAL HERE  

Tuesday 26 November 2013

80,000 British children facing homelessness this Christmas @Shelter



80,000 children facing homelessness this Christmas

 

A Shelter investigation reveals ‘shocking’ conditions experienced by homeless families, as government figures show that 80,000 children in Britain will be homeless this Christmas.
For many this means emergency housing in B&Bs, where children face particularly difficult conditions.
Almost half of the families interviewed reported children witnessing disturbing incidents, including open drug use and threats of violence. One child was directly threatened by a man in her B&B after an argument over a shared bathroom. The majority of families interviewed said they felt unsafe in their emergency accommodation.
Joann and her seven-year-old son recently lost their home, and are living in a B&B in Hounslow. They’re facing the prospect of Christmas without a home of their own.
Joann says: ‘It’s so hard to give him a balanced diet as it’s impossible to make proper meals here, let alone a Christmas dinner. He’s getting really pale and is so tired all the time. He gets so scared but it’s difficult when I’m scared myself. This is no place for a child to live. We’re desperately hoping we won’t be here for Christmas.’
With homelessness rising, and more and more stories like Joann’s appearing, Shelter’s advice services are bracing themselves for a surge in demand.
Every December, Shelter’s helpline receives thousands of calls, with advisers on duty every single day throughout the Christmas period to help families at risk of losing their homes. The charity is launching an emergency appeal for donations to help its already-stretched services meet the heightened demand.
Shelter’s chief executive, Campbell Robb, called the findings ‘shocking’, and said that such things should not be happening in twenty-first century Britain:
‘No child should be homeless, let alone 80,000. But tragically, with more people struggling to make ends meet and homelessness on the rise, we’re bracing ourselves for an increase in demand from families who desperately need our help.
‘Our advisers will be working with families facing homelessness every day this Christmas to help them find a safe place to live and get back on their feet – but we urgently need more support this year to be there for these children.’
SHELTER WALES
SHELTER ENGLAND
SHELTER SCOTLAND 

Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) & Academic Pedophile Advocates

By Judith A. Reisman, Ph.D.
© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com

In 1977 I first clashed with a group of people I call "Academic Pedophile Advocates" at the British Psychological Association's "Conference on Love and Attraction" at Swansea University in Wales. Ostensibly an "academic" conference, the meeting attracted outraged press coverage when the leader of the Pedophile Information Exchange (PIE), Tom O'Carroll, announced he had been invited to lecture on positive adult-child sex.

At that conference, an old colleague of Dr. Alfred Kinsey, (author of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male) whispered confidentially to me that Kinsey was a pedophile. While I was shocked at the time, later research confirmed that Kinsey had spawned today's Academic Pedophile Advocates. By 1987 many such academicians came out as pedophiles in their pseudo scholarly, publication, The Journal of Paedophilia while professors in major universities worked covertly to gain unlimited sexual access to their children, and ours.

Radio host Dr. Laura Schlessinger recently exposed such pedophile advocacy in the powerful American Psychological Association's Psychological Bulletin.

A Temple University psychology professor, a University of Pennsylvania education teacher and a psychology professor at the University of Michigan claim they investigated 59 "studies" on child sexual abuse of college students. Imagine! Sex with children could be fun said the APA authors, so "willing" child sex abuse should be OK. Dr. Laura concluded that the APA, representing 155,000 members, had "gone soft" on child molesters. "I'm scared this study could be used to normalize pedophilia, to change the legal system ... like it did homosexuality."

True, but the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), noted that "the American Psychiatric Association already set the stage ... [in] the latest diagnostic manual (DSMIV), a person no longer has a psychological disorder simply because he molests children." Thus the APA created psychologically normal" paedophiles.

The NARTH article concludes, "If psychology indeed recognizes consensual pedophilia as harmless, then civil law and social norms will be under pressure to follow the lead of social science as indeed they did on the issue of homosexuality."

Farberman, the APA publicist denied that publication in the Psychological Bulletin implies APA endorsement. "We are a scientific organization. ... We try to create a lot of dialogue." But when Dr. Laura worried the APA was signaling an "attempt to normalize pedophilia," the APA spokeswoman found that dialogue "ridiculous," citing a paltry 2.8 journal articles per year for nine years as APA's commitment "to protect children and ... families."

Is the recent APA Academic Pedophile Advocacy article, one of the 26 they printed "to protect ... children and ... families"? Perhaps. Listen: Farberman says "child sexual abuse is harmful." She does not say "child-adult sex" is harmful. The oxymoron, "consensual" adult-child sex has been promoted in psychology and sexology circles since Kinsey. No surprise that this "study" finds the "negative potential" of sexual abuse is "overstated."

These authors claim up to 37 percent of abused boys and 11 percent of abused girls whom they interviewed, reported their abuse as "positive." Pornographers can put money in the bank citing those "data."

The APA is a reprise of Kinsey's fraudulent "study," which took 50 years to begin to expose. Kinsey used child rapists in 1948 who "proved" their victims enjoyed being raped. When children fainted and had convulsions during molestation, Kinsey (a sado-masochist) reported their torture as "pleasure" and "orgasm." He claimed the "hysterical ... emotional reactions of the parents, police officers, and others" to molestation, created child trauma. The APA authors agree. Absent moralism, say the APA authors, children would be untroubled by sexual molestation.

Despite the desire for "dialogue" neither of the APAs ever confessed Kinsey's fraud or the sexual psychopathology of the Kinsey team. Indeed, both APAs train students in Kinsey's "consensual sex" model. Like Kinsey's, this phony "study" will also appear in courtrooms, classrooms and bedrooms. Spitting in the face of massive data to the contrary, APA's Academic Pedophile Advocates claim child sexual abuse is less harmful than physical abuse, neglect and verbal abuse! The goal? "Classifying a behavior as abuse simply because it is generally viewed as immoral or defined as illegal is problematic."

Said Schlessinger to her listeners. "I've read this so many times, I'm sick." "Psychology has become a god to the general public. ... If pedophilia is not a mental disorder, what is it?"

Academic Pedophile Advocates are bringing a "pedophile abduction rights" bill to a theater near you. For example, in 1994 Oregon Senate Bill 586 proposed that anyone who "established emotional ties with child may file ... for custody, guardianship, visitation" if they had "a relationship ... within the six months ... through interaction, companionship, interplay and mutuality." Stay tuned. Anyone smell an APA rat?

Dr. Reisman is the president of the Institute for Media Education, Crestwood, Kentucky. Her latest book is "Kinsey, Crimes & Consequences".

Original Content HERE 

Paedophile Information Exchange

PIE was set up as a special interest group within the Scottish Minorities Group by founder member Michael Hanson, who became the group's first Chairman.
Since the majority of enquiries were from England, PIE relocated to London in 1975 where 23-year old Keith Hose became its new Chairperson.[1] Hose had connections with the South London group of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). GLF thinking questioned the family as the basis of an economic, social and sexual system and certain sections of GLF favoured the abolition of the age of consent; their youth group had staged a march in support of this demand (however, it should be noted that the age of consent for homosexuals was 21 at the time, in comparison to 16 for heterosexuals).
Paedophile Action for Liberation had developed as a breakaway group from South London Gay Liberation Front. It was the subject of an article in the Sunday People, which dedicated its front page and centre-spread to the story. The result was intimidation and loss of employment for some of those who were exposed. It later merged with PIE.[1]
This exposé on PAL had a chilling effect on PIE members' willingness for activism. In the PIE Chairperson's Annual Report for 1975-6, Keith Hose wrote that 'The only way for PIE to survive, was to seek out as much publicity for the organization as possible.... If we got bad publicity we would not run into a corner but stand and fight. We felt that the only way to get more paedophiles joining PIE... was to seek out and try to get all kinds of publications to print our organization's name and address and to make paedophilia a real public issue.'
A campaign to attract media attention was not effective at that time, but Hose's attendance at the 1975 annual conference of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) in Sheffield, where he made a speech on paedophilia, was covered at length in The Guardian.
In the same year Hose also attended a conference organized by Mind, the national mental health organization, where it was suggested that PIE should submit evidence to the Home Office Criminal Law Revision Committee on the age of consent. PIE submitted a 17-page document in which it proposed that there should be no age of consent, and that the criminal law should concern itself only with sexual activities to which consent is not given, or which continue after prohibition by a civil court.
PIE was set up to campaign for an acceptance and understanding of paedophilia by producing controversial documents. But its formally defined aims also included giving advice and counsel to paedophiles who wanted it, and providing a means for paedophiles to contact one another.
To this end it held regular meetings in London but also had a 'Contact Page', which was a bulletin in which members placed advertisements, giving their membership number, general location, and brief details of their sexual and other interests. Replies were handled by PIE, as with a box number system, so that correspondents were unidentifiable until they chose to exchange their own details. Since the purpose of this contact page was to enable paedophiles to contact one another, advertisements implying that contact with children was sought and advertisements for erotica were turned down. The Contact Page ultimately resulted in a prosecution for a 'conspiracy to corrupt public morals'.
PIE produced regular magazines that were distributed to members. The original Newsletter was superseded in 1976 by Understanding Paedophilia, which was intended to be sold in radical bookshops and be distributed free to PIE members. It was mainly the concern of Warren Middleton, who attempted to make the magazine a serious journal that included extracts from sensitive paedophilic literature and articles from psychologists with the aim of establishing respectability for paedophilia.[1]
When Middleton ceased active work with PIE, Understanding Paedophilia was replaced by the magazine Magpie, which was more of a compromise between the proselytising of the earlier publication and a forum for members. It contained news, book and film reviews, articles, non-nude photographs of children, humour about paedophilia, letters and other contributions by members.
In 1977 PIE produced another regular publication called Childhood Rights. When the editor ('David') retired, this content was assimilated into Magpie.[1]
In 1976 both PIE and PAL had been asked to help the Albany Trust to produce a booklet on paedophilia which was to have been published by the Trust. This collaboration was 'uncovered' by Mary Whitehouse, who alleged that public funds were being used indirectly to subsidize 'paedophile groups'. The Albany Trust was partly supported by government grants. The Trustees decided not to publish the booklet, saying that it wasn't sufficiently 'objective'. A year later a question relating to the incident was brought up in Parliament by Sir Bernard Braine but, despite a statement by Home Office Minister Brynmor John that there was no evidence of public money going to PIE, the issue was drawn out into 1978 in the letters pages of The Guardian and The Times.

Affiliation to the NCCL[edit]

By 1978 PIE and Paedophile Action for Liberation had become affiliated to the National Council for Civil Liberties, now known as Liberty, with members attending meetings. The organisation campaigned against newspapers' treatment of the Paedophile activist groups. Whilst affiliated with NCCL, PIE also campaigned to reduce the age of consent and oppose the proposed banning of child pornography. In 1976, in a submission to the Criminal Law Revision Committee, the NCCL asserted that “childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage” and that the Protection of Children Bill would lead to “damaging and absurd prosecutions”. Whilst PIE was affiliated with it, the organisation argued for incest to be decriminalised and argued that sexually explicit photographs of children should be legal unless it could be proven that the subject had suffered harm or that the an inference to that effect or to the effect that harm might have been caused could reasonably be drawn from the images themselves, with Harriet Harman (later deputy leader of the Labour Party) arguing that it would “increase censorship”.[3] NCCL had excluded PIE by 1983.[4]

Legal action against members[edit]

In the summer of 1978, the homes of several PIE committee members were raided by the police as part of a full-scale inquiry into PIE's activities; as a result of this inquiry, a substantial report was submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the prosecution of PIE activists followed.
In particular, five activists were charged with printing contact advertisements in Magpie which were calculated to promote indecent acts between adults and children.
Others were offered lesser charges of sending indecent material through the mail if they testified against the five. These charges related to letters that the accused exchanged detailing various sexual fantasies. It eventually became clear that one person had corresponded with most of the accused but had not been tried. After the trial, it emerged that there had been a cover-up: Mr "Henderson" had worked for MI6 and been a high commissioner in Canada. Mr "Henderson" was later revealed via Private Eye to be Sir Peter Hayman. In 1981, Geoffrey Dickens MP asked the Attorney-General "if he will prosecute Sir Peter Hayman under the Post Office Acts for sending and receiving pornographic material through the Royal Mail". The Attorney-General, Michael Havers replied, "I am in agreement with the Director of Public Prosecutions' (Sir Thomas Chalmers Hetherington QC) advice not to prosecute Sir Peter Hayman and the other persons with whom he had carried on an obscene correspondence."[5] Dickens asked, "How did such a potential blackmail risk come to hold highliy sensitive posts at the MOD and NATO?" He also asked the Leader of the House (of Commons) to investigate the security implications of diaries found in the diplomat's London flat which contained accounts of sexual exploits"[6] There was much debate and condemnation in the World's press of these events.[7]
Steven Adrian Smith was Chairperson of PIE from 1979 to 1985. He was one of the PIE executive committee members charged in connection with the contact advertisements; he fled to Holland before the trial.
In 1981 the former PIE Chairperson, Tom O'Carroll, was convicted on the conspiracy charge and sentenced to two years in prison. O'Carroll had been working on Paedophilia: The Radical Case in the period between the initial police raid and the trial. While the charges did not relate in any way to the publication of the book, the fact that he had written it was listed by the judge as a factor in determining the length of his sentence.
In 1984 The Times reported that two former executive committee members of PIE had been convicted on child pornography charges but acquitted on charges of incitement to commit unlawful sexual acts with children and that the group's leader had fled the country while on bail. It was announced that the group was closing down in the PIE Bulletin as of July 1984.
One-time treasurer of PIE Charles Napier is alleged to have sexually assaulted boys whilst a gym master at Copthorne School.[8] He became an English Language Trainer at the British Council and was convicted of sexual assault against minors in London in 1995[9] and investigated as an alleged member of a paedophile network operating in British schools in 1996.[10] He set up his own school in Turkey and resumed English Language Training with the British Council after serving his sentence.[11]

Surveys[edit]

In 1978–9, the Paedophile Information Exchange surveyed its members and found that they were most attracted to girls aged 8–11 and boys aged 11–15. In 1978, Glenn Wilson and David Cox approached Mr O’Carroll with a request to study the PIE membership. A meeting was held with the PIE leadership to vet the survey instruments and, after approval, these were distributed to PIE members in the course of their regular mailing. Wilson and Cox went on to use the data in writing their book, The Child-Lovers – a study of paedophilies in society.[12]

Relevance today[edit]

Despite the fact that PIE disbanded in 1984, the name still seems to have some power and crops up from time to time in discussions, even in parliament.[13] In the discussions of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill in 2000, Sir Paul Beresford had this to say, for example:
Lightheartedly, I should like to ask the Minister to put himself in the shoes of a well-known paedophile – perhaps we could call him Gary, and imagine a little more hair and some high-heeled shoes to add some character. As a paedophile, Gary believes that it is acceptable to have sex with children. He thinks that the bulk of society is completely out of step. He belongs to a group called the paedophile information exchange, and he and his disgusting friends use the internet to exchange data, ideas, names, photographs and even films related to their paedophile activities. That is all stored electronically, and protected by a sophisticated encryption system.

Wednesday 16 October 2013

Ayden's Law - @Aydenslaw Beat Bullying!


WHAT IS AYDEN’S LAW?

Photo of Ayden Olson
On 14 March 2013, 14 year old Ayden Olson took his own life. 

He'd been bullied to death. Tragically, Ayden's name is only the latest to be added to a growing list. But while the victims themselves may have found peace, their families are left behind, scarred forever by the agony of losing a child.
Ayden's Law is a campaign on behalf of all those young people, their families and any child or young person being bullied today.

BeatBullying, The Sun, and families of children like Ayden are calling on the Prime Minister to take action. We want to call a summit with him and relevant ministers to discuss how we can prevent any more tragedies — and the creation of Ayden's Law, a new children's anti-bullying bill designed to stop bullying in our society once and for all.


For more on Ayden's Law click HERE 

SHY KEENAN

“Our wonderful 14 year-old son Ayden died on the 14th of March 2013 - his spirit defeated, he was bullied to death at school and driven... out of pain and despair... to take his own life.
“We miss him so much. Our hearts just ache for him and as we try to adjust to a life without him, we have committed to carrying his dreams of bully free schools ahead with Ayden's Law.”

Saturday 12 October 2013

How Safe Are Our Children? - NSPCC research @NSPCC


How safe are our children?

NSPCC research

How safe are our children

April 2013

This report compiles the most robust and up-to-date child protection data that exists across each of the four nations in the UK.
It sets out 19 different indicators and each indicator looks at the question from a different perspective. These indicators will be regularly updated as new statistics are published.
The report allows us not only to understand how many children are being abused and neglected, but also to track progress so that society can be held to account for its responsibility to children. Only by monitoring the extent of child abuse and neglect in the UK can we judge whether efforts to prevent maltreatment and to protect children are working.



Key messages

The number of children experiencing abuse and neglect and those known to services
The report finds that in some ways today's children are safer from abuse and neglect than those of previous generations but worrying levels of abuse still remain.
Even though there has been an increase in the number of children being made subject to child protection plans or registers, the report finds that:
"for every child subject to a child protection plan or on a child protection register in the UK, we estimate that there are likely to be around eight other children who have suffered maltreatment."
The report also looks at nine key risk factors that can put children at an increased risk of maltreatment.

Key findings

The report shows that:
  • the child homicide rate is in decline and fewer children are dying as a result of assault or suicide in England, Wales or Scotland but still more than one child a week dies because of maltreatment
  • one in five children today have experienced serious physical abuse, sexual abuse or severe physical or emotional neglect at some point in their lifetime
  • new threats are emerging, particularly with the increasing amount of time children spend in the digital world
  • the public is becoming more vigilant; in the past three years there has been a 40 per cent increase in the number of people coming forward to report concerns about abuse and neglect to the NSPCC
  • children who are referred to social services are more likely to receive an assessment or be subject to some further action compared with five years ago
  • "drift" in decision-making seems to be lessening as shown by a decrease in the proportion of children subject to child protection plans or registers for more than two years
  • more children are coming off child protection plans or registers after shorter periods of time and not being re-registered, suggesting that risk is being reasonably assessed
  • the proportion of looked-after children who have had more than three placements has decreased in England and Wales, suggesting an improvement in placement stability.

Download the full report: How safe are our children? (PDF, 2.5MB)


Please cite as: Harker, L., Jütte, S., Murphy, T., Bentley, H., Miller, P., Fitch, K., (2013) How safe are our children? London: NSPCC. Available at:www.nspcc.org.uk/howsafe.
See also the 19 separate indicators used to assess how safe our children are.

Contact the NSPCC Information Service with any question about child abuse, child neglect or protection

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