Joseph Sarandos
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U.N./UNICEF Report lists Britain and AMERICA as the WORST places for children
As you read the following article, keep in mind that the United States spends $100 BILLION per year to enrich the Providers of so-called "Child Protective Services".
Joseph
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http://today.reuters.com
U.N. report says Britain worst place for children
Wed Feb 14, 2007 11:13 AM ET
By Astrid Zweynert and Kate Kelland
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is the worst country in the industrialized world in which to be a child, closely followed by the United States, the United Nations Children's Fund said on Wednesday.
The UNICEF charity looked at 40 indicators to gauge the lives of children in 21 economically advanced nations -- the first study of its kind -- and found Britain's children were among the poorest and most neglected.
Britain lagged behind on key measures of poverty and deprivation, happiness, relationships, and risky or bad behavior, the study showed.
It scored better for health and safety of children but languished in the bottom third for all other measures, giving it the lowest overall placing, just below the United States.
The United States was ranked worst for health and safety and only Britain scored lower for relationships and risky or bad behavior. The highest ranking for the United States was for education where it was ranked 12th out of the 21 countries.
The study found there was no consistent relationship between a country's wealth, as measured in gross domestic product per capita, and a child's quality of life.
The Czech Republic, for example, achieved a higher ranking than economically wealthier France, which was mired in the bottom third along with Britain and the United States.
Children's happiness was rated highest in northern Europe, with the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark leading the list.
"All countries have weaknesses that need to be addressed and no country features in the top third of the rankings for all six dimensions," said David Bull, UNICEF UK's executive director.
DOG-EAT-DOG SOCIETY
Jonathan Bradshaw, professor of social policy at York University in England, one of the report's authors, put Britain's poor ratings down to long-term under-investment in children and a "dog-eat-dog" society.
"In a society which is very unequal, with high levels of poverty, it leads on to what children think about themselves and their lives. That's really what's at the heart of this," Bradshaw told a news conference.
Colette Marshall, UK director of charity Save the Children, said the report was a "shameful" verdict on Britain.
"Despite the UK's wealth, we are failing to give children the best possible start in life," she said in a statement.
She said "drastic action", including an injection of 4.5 billion pounds, was needed to meet a government target of halving the number of children in poverty by 2010.
A government spokeswoman said the data in the report -- mainly taken from 2000 to 2003 -- was not up to date and that reforms introduced through the "Every Child Matters" initiative had improved child welfare.
George Osborne, Treasury spokesman for the opposition Conservative Party, said the report was a damning indictment of the policies of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his finance minister and likely successor Gordon Brown.
"After ten years of his welfare and education policies, our children today have the lowest well-being in the developed world," he said. Brown had "failed this generation of children and will fail the next if he's given a chance," Osborne said.
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2/27/2007, 3:48 pm
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Joseph Sarandos
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Re: U.N./UNICEF Report lists Britain and AMERICA as the WORST places for children
quote:
Joseph Sarandos wrote:
As you read the following article, keep in mind that the United States spends $100 BILLION per year to enrich the Providers of so-called "Child Protective Services".
Joseph
In a "broadcast" reply to the dozens of E-mail queries about the "$100 Billion per year budget" of CPS, Adoptions, and their closely related other services out of the same funding source, I'm posting the following article by a recognized expert in the field:
From the June 2001 Idaho Observer:
http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20010609.htm
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McGuckin-inspired letter exposes American child protection industry
PHILADELPHIA, Penn. -- Howard Fishman is a child abuse and custody expert whose credentials have been accepted in thirteen jurisdictions in the U.S. and Canada .
Fishman believes that the manner in which the McGuckin case has been handled is due, at least in part, to the influence of state child protective services attempts to get custody of the family's six children.
Fishman, a former director of continuing medical education in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School , sent the following letter to Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne, the tourist commission, Child Protective Services, the state potato commission, Bonner county commissioners and four local newspapers:
The McGuckin Case: Idaho Earns a Nomination to the Hall of Shame
Throughout most of this nation's history, the plight of the McGuckin family would have aroused the concern and protectiveness of government agencies, whether police, courts, or social welfare. But this is the New Age of Hillary's Village. Today, when the awesome powers of the State are amassed against a poor widow and her minor children in the form of a gross misinformation campaign, violation of their constitutional rights, entrapment, and a host of other Nazi-like barbarities, the glib gurus blithely continue to mouth the Big Lies: vicious dogs, malnourishment, abused kids; a ****ensian existence -- and just as fictional.
Most will shrug off these injustices as an anomaly or as a not-so-serious overreaction by the authorities. Such a reading of the facts would be a travesty. In fact, they reflect normative behaviors of self-appointed “child savers” throughout the United States. Child abuse hysteria has run amok and many thousands of innocent children and their families have been devastated at the hands of tax-funded “do-gooders.”
Based on good intentions, a determination to “err on the side of the child,” and the ubiquitous “best interests of the child,” we have constructed a monstrous child-maiming and family-destroying industry that we call the “child welfare system.” It is a program fueled by intentionally distorted statistics, radical feminist ideology, politically correct claptrap and more than one hundred billion dollars in taxpayer funding annually. It is an enterprise staffed by deluded therapy gurus, self-serving bureaucrats, politically amibitious prosecutors, arrogantly ignorant caseworkers and an abysmally dysfunctional court system.
The headlines blare: “More than 3 million child abuse reports annually.” Often omitted even in the fine print is the qualifier: almost 70% are “unfounded” or “unsubstantiated” and at least one-third of the remainder are ultimately determined to be inaccurate. This “error rate” in excess of 80% is unconscionable and would not be tolerated in any other arena.
These realities are not unknown to legislators, policy makers, journalists, academics and the rest of us. But we somehow manage to rationalize their perpetuation. Just as so many of us remained silent while Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin and other despots have slaughtered millions of innocent people, we stand mute as our benevolent “democracy” destroys innocent children and their powerless families.
More than 600,000 children are currently in state care in the U.S. Most of them have never been physically harmed by their parents. Highly regarded researchers have regularly concluded that two-thirds of these “state-orphaned” youngsters could be safely returned to their homes immediately. Instead, we hear only about budget increases, ever more bizarre therapies, and ever more draconian policies.
George Orwell described a mind set that seems to allow certain individuals to ignore these facts:
“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. In nationalist thought there are facts which are both true and untrue, known and unknown. A known fact may be so unbearable that it is habitually pushed aside and not allowed to enter into logical processes, or on the other hand it may enter into every calculation and yet never be admitted as a fact, even in one's own mind.” (Notes on Nationalism, 1945)
It is more than time for people of good will and common sense to demand fundamental and comprehensive reform of this destructive and dysfunctional system.
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2/28/2007, 10:26 pm
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