Social Engineering

"For a transgender person, having the world refuse to accept the gender identity that you say you are is the most profound harm because it's a denial of your human identity."
"[The] dad's expression rights end at the point where they harm [the child]."
"His dad doesn't think that transgender is a thing, that it's essentially not human."
Barbara Findlay, lawyer for transgender child

"It's really hard to explain to anybody who's not transgender how terrible it feels to have a body that doesn't match your gender. Sometimes I feel like I want to rip my skin off."
"[Since hormone treatments were started] When I look in the mirror I see myself. ... It is so amazing to feel normal."
"I don't really want to see my father right now because he only wants to harass me about being trans."
Child's affidavit excerpts

"Just because you say [the father] is acting in a particularly evil manner would not seem to justify restrictions that go beyond what's necessary."
Justice Harvey Groberman, panel member, B.C. Appeal Court hearing

"We're in this complicated situation where it can't be done -- in the face of [the father's] past conduct -- in a more narrow way [without restrictions]."
"[The child] is distressed because of the mismatch between his body and who he really is. And a part of that is how the world receives him, and his dad is a big part of that world."
Jessica Lithwick, lawyer for child's mother

The case started last year as a clash between child autonomy and parental rights

Basically, a family dispute between father and mother and a young daughter who declares herself to have been wrongly identified at birth despite all the visual clues available identifying her as a girl when she really has the mind and soul of a boy, with the mother supporting the daughter, now her son, and the father objecting that the whim of a brain-washed child will not be validated by him. He recognizes the fact that he has a daughter, not a son.

This is the kind of dispute that might once have been settled within the family group, and is now a public interpretation and settlement issue, bringing in consenting physicians and the justice system in defence of a child's insistence that she knows her gender and it is not the one that nature assigned her to. It would be fascinating if a really rigorous study were conducted to determine the number of young girls who fantasize being a boy and who briefly or permanently fashion themselves into tomboys to accomplish that fantasy in part.

Many if not most of these girls outgrow the impulse to act like a boy. Either by losing interest, by acting out the fantasy as a boyish girl competing with boys in recognized male spheres while still maintaining their female alter-personas, or by recognizing that nature frequently cross-fertilizes her creations so that while one gender is the dominant one, an individual can still demonstrate ownership of identifiers of another gender and still fall within a 'normal' persona range.

But just as the global community has finally advanced to the point where homosexuality and lesbians should be accepted for what they are and respected for their individuality, other branches of non-binary identifiers have emerged to declare their equal rights and in the process accuse mainstream society of forcibly closeting gender-identity differences. Guilt-ridden society has succumbed to placating and pleading forgiveness for the truly horrible wrongs done in defence of 'normalcy'.

And while society has adapted to the new normal in equality and human rights, the scales appear to have tipped a tad too far on LGBTQ-2 rights to encompass children's restless explorations of themselves, deciphering all affectations, whether misguided and temporary, dysphoric or legitimate as one and the same. And that parents and society must henceforth accede to all children's 'choices' of gender identity.

In the case cited above a girl who identified as male from age 11, now fourteen years of age, was referred by a psychologist to B.C. Children's Hospital for treatment of gender dysphoria where the gender clinic at the hospital declared the child's best interests would be served to proceed with hormone therapy in transition from a female body to a male. The mother consented, along with the child, the father failed to.

When the father attempted to block the treatment it was ruled by a B.C. Supreme Court justice that the child was "exclusively entitled" to consent to treatment and moreover the child must be referred to by male pronouns. Any effort on the part of the father to refer to his child with female pronouns, or to persuade his child to abandon treatment "shall be considered to be family violence". The sadly wayward father continued to refer to his 'daughter' and used female pronouns, dismayingly.

A month later another B.C. Supreme Court justice issued a protection order restraining the father from discussing the case publicly, leading the father to file another appeal on the basis that all scientific opinion on such treatments had not been considered; an individual the age of his child being incapable of appreciating the possible consequences of a "still experimental treatment", and an order preventing him from discussing his child's conundrum infringed on his freedom of expression.

At the three-day appeal court hearing, another panel member questioned whether the father's actions truly met the definition of family violence to which the lawyer for the child responded that the father's insistence that his child remain someone he is no longer, represented a clear effort at coercion and intimidation.

A case regarding a parent's ability to intervene in their child's treatment for gender dysphoria is before the B.C. Court of Appeal. (Maggie MacPherson/CBC)

"It is clear that interference of the state and its agents — which include the courts, the schools, and hospitals — is eroding parental authority. Parents are now at the mercy of every agenda-driven school counselor, sympathetic psychologist, and activist judge."
"It is time that Canada took that pledge seriously and protected a parent’s fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children."
"To that end, we need to create a parental bill of rights. If elected, I will work alongside my colleagues to strengthen parental rights legislation. In a free society, the most cherished and sacred relationship is that between parents and their children."

Angelina Ireland, political candidate, People’s Party of Canada, Delta, British Columbia

Twisted, Tormented Love

"Life may have been bad, but it made me strong. I fought to become the person that I am. I saw my dad change my mom. They almost changed me, but I realized what was happening."
"...I'm a fighter. I'm strong and I'm shooting through life like a rocket."
Daughter of California couple, Louise and David Turpin

"I cannot describe in words what we went through growing up."
"Sometimes I still have nightmares of things that had happened such as my siblings being chained up or getting beaten."
"That is the past and this is now."
"I love my parents and have forgiven them for a lot of the things they did to us."
Son of Louise and David Turpin

"I'm sorry for everything I've done to hurt my children. I love my children so much."
"They are very smart, amazing individuals. I hope they get all the education they need to make their dreams come true."
"They deserve only the best in life. I don't want any of them to be sad or depressed because of all of this."
"I want them to know that Mom and Dad are going to be OK. ... I really look forward to the day I can see them, hug them and tell them I'm sorry."
Louise Turpin, Sentenced to life in prison

David Turpin, right, and wife, Louise, left, listen to the judge, along with attorney Allison Lowe, during a courtroom hearing, Feb. 22, in Riverside, Calif. Their case was dubbed a 'house of horrors.' (Jae C. Hong/Associated Press)

"You have severed the ability to interact and raise your children that you have created and brought into this world."

"[The lives of the children] have been permanently altered in their ability to learn, grow and thrive." "You have delayed their mental, physical and emotional health. To the extent that they do thrive ... it'll be not because of you both but in spite of you both."
"The only reason that your punishment is less than the maximum time in my opinion is because you accepted responsibility at an early stage in the proceedings to spare your children from having to relive the humiliation and the harm they endured in that house of horrors."

Judge Bernard Schwartz, Riverside California court

There were no fewer than thirteen children in the Turpin household, ranging in age from 29 to a toddler of two years. A family where the father of the children -- living in a middle-class area of Perris, a city around 100 kilometers from Los Angeles -- a 57-year-old engineer for Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, and mother Louise 50, a housewife, strictly controlled their children's lives. Neighbours, though rarely seeing the children, had no reason to suspect anything was amiss, the house seemed well tended and everything appearing normal.

Normal is not knowing your neighbours, not taking note of the strange absence in public of a dozen siblings who were seldom permitted to move outside the house, children controlled to the extent that they were given permission to shower only once yearly, children strictly kept in their rooms other than for meals; and that only one meal a day. There was nothing normal about this family or the lives the children led, not allowed to play as normal children do.

The one thing that was 'normal' in their lives were trips taken by the entire family to Las Vegas or Disneyland. Surely no self-respecting American family could forego a trip to Disneyland...? Abnormal was sleeping through the day and moving about at night for a short period, and this was their life. Until a teenaged daughter escaped through a window. A girl of 17 whose home-schooling failed to imbue her with the simple knowledge of her home address, what month it was.

But she did know that if she punched 9-1-1 into a a cellphone it would connect her to the outside world and there help could be had. Where a police dispatcher listened to her description of a lifetime of horrible and unbelievable abuse at the hands of loving parents. One of her siblings asked that a lighter sentence than the 25 years her parents were given, be considered because in her opinion "they believed everything they did was to protect us".

The oldest daughter completed third grade under her father's home tutelage for which the parents had filed paperwork with the state to ensure that everything was legal and beyond questioning. "We don't really do school. I haven't finished first grade", stated the 17-year-old whose  runaway escapade had resulted in the rescue of the children from their parents' house of horrors. When deputies arrived at the house they found a 22-year-old son shackled to a bed. Taking the place of two sisters just set free.

The Turpin children were underweight, malnourished and grime-covered, since bathing was not permitted but once a year. They lived in a home deep in filth, where the odour of human waste permeated. At their release from their lifelong imprisonment by their loving parents, the children informed their rescuers that they were regularly beaten, caged and shackled -- as punishment for failing to obey their parents.

Of the thirteen children in the care of these two people, only the two-year-old had been spared abuse. Despite which, on their release from the house which had been their prison all their lives, all thirteen were initially hospitalized. Their parents had 14 criminal charges laid against them to which they pleaded guilty. Prosecutors stated the two would in all likelihood be in prison for the remainder of their lives.

"The defendants ruined lives, so I think it's just and fair that the sentence be equivalent to first degree murder", explained district attorney Mike Hestrin.

As for the resilient children, they spoke of their love for their parents even while they described the dread abuse they had suffered.

Balloons, stuffed animals and flowers are seen in the front yard of the home of David Allen and Louise Anna Turpin in Perris, California, U.S., January 24, 2018. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

Adolescent Delusion of "Belonging", or Recognized Pathology?

Study Abstract:
"In on-line forums, parents have been reporting that their children are experiencing what is described here as 'rapid-onset gender dysphoria', appearing for the first time during puberty or even after its completion. The onset of gender dysphoria seemed to occur in the context of belonging to a peer group where one, multiple, or even all of the friends have become gender dysphoric and transgender-identified during the same timeframe."
"Parents also report that their children exhibited an increase in social media/internet use prior to disclosure of a transgender identity. The purpose of this study was to document and explore these observations and describe the resulting presentation of gender dysphoria, which is inconsistent with existing research literature."
A Study of Parental Reports, Lisa Littman, researcher, department of Behavioral and Social Sciences, Brown University School of Public Health

Elliott Kunerth, 17, a transgender male high school student in Mankato, hugs his girlfriend, Kelsi Pettit, 17, after the Minnesota State High School League board voted to pass the Model Gender Identity Participation in MSHSL Activities Policy in Brooklyn Park, Minn., on Dec. 4, 2014.Leila Navidi / Star Tribune via AP file

Suddenly the rare becomes commonplace. Some boys and girls have always mused to themselves what it might be like to be a boy if one were a girl, or a girl if one were a boy. It is the syndrome of the 'grass' being 'greener' elsewhere. Many people have a disinclination to accept what and who they are, and many people feel cheated by life's circumstances, wondering what they have missed or are missing, and why cannot they have experiences and recognition relating to being someone else. There is also the attraction to many of being rebellious and 'different', of eliciting notice to their person; good or bad, that acknowledgement that they are singularly different is compelling.

Young people imagine themselves to be misunderstood, overlooked, taken for granted, not taken seriously. Suddenly, they are being taken seriously. The medical community has been pressured by a very vocal group who challenge the common sense and mostly appropriate custom of gender recognition and identification at birth (natal identification), assigning proper acknowledgement in gender through natural selection. What appears to be at issue is the dysphoria claimed between physical characteristics and mental attitudes.

Infants gravitate toward behaviours and attitudes that are not gender-specific. And occasionally boys will be fascinated with attributes of girlish functions and vice-versa. Mostly these impulses are transitory. There is nothing in the development of the human being that must insist certain behaviours are off limits to the opposite gender. There are many boys and men who reflect behavioral emotions and interests most commonly seen in women and the opposite is also true. And while there are instances when the mind and the body simply are not a match, it's doubtful their numbers reflect what is now seen in society.

Where parents of infants feel they can read their child turning to the opposite sex and viscerally react by guiding them away, there are also parents in the present more 'tolerant' social scene who set out to demonstrate just how supportive they are of their children's 'real' persona that they encourage the deviance from one sex to another, making of it a perfectly normal transition which in this social climate, brooks no criticism. Yet there is a kind of social hysteria at work here resulting from the loudly assertive and angry accusations from the LGBTQ-2 community succeeding in persuading those parents they're on the right track.

Society has turned from its rejection of seemingly abnormal gender identification that once harassed homosexuals, in threatening and violent attitudes, to its current attitude of acceptance, long in coming. But that acceptance didn't suffice to persuade the once-persecuted that they were now viewed as part of society; many among them demanded all the formal trappings of  'normal' society, as in marriage, denoting which among the same-sex couples be viewed as 'husband' and which as 'wife', a fairly risible situation, but one which the general public was prepared to accommodate.

When Children Say They’re Trans   The Atlantic Hormones? Surgery? The choices are fraught—and there are no easy answers.

The present-day rash of young children and teens declaring themselves to be a mind placed in the wrong body has turned the normalcy of the social covenant inside-out and upside down. Some parents may be complacent, reassured that society now accepts it all as 'normal-abnormal', while many more parents are anguished and confused, unhappy with their children's insistence that they are not the boy or girl their parents thought they were, but since the medical profession has given a clean bill of health to the reassignment process, feel they have nowhere to turn.

"When we tried to give our son's trans doctor a medical history of our son, she refused to accept it. She said the half-hour diagnosis in her office was sufficient ..." recalled one parent whose story was repeated in the newly published study. "I overheard my son boasting on the phone to his older brother that 'the doc swallowed everything I said hook, line and sinker. Easiest thing I ever did'", reported another on the credulity of her child's therapist.

The study's author, taking a critical look at Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), took the time to review popular Internet sites such as Reddit, SubReddit and Tumblr to pick up additional problematical comments, where contempt for parents is rife and encouraged by the examples of others, and the festering emotions of victimhood are shared in a mutual resentment of parental authority. Linked with criticism of heterosexuals and "cisgenders" the common cause of rebellion takes its form in declarations of life-changing claims of transgenderism.

Before 2012, points out Ms. Littman, there was little research on adolescent onset of gender dysphoria. Two clinics existed prior to 2012, one in Canada, the other in The Netherlands, in possession of data providing empirical information on adolescents presenting with gender dysphoria. Both of the institutions studying the issue concluded that individuals in adolescent-onset were "more likely to have significant psychopathology".

The study included 256 parents of ROGD adolescents and young adults who completed detailed surveys. Most of the young adults were female, averaging 15 years of age and of that group 41 percent claimed to have expressed non-heterosexual urges prior to onset, while 62 percent had been diagnosed with at least one mental health disorder. According to the study, none of the young adults "would have met diagnostic criteria for gender dysphoria in childhood". Tellingly was the finding that parent-child relations tended to deteriorate once the girls "came out".

The study leans heavily on ROGD as a form of "social contagion". Common among these teens was the time spent on websites, particularly Tumblr and Reddit where advice on best lying practices are available when confronting clinicians: "Get a story ready in your head ... keep the lie to a minimum" and "look up the DSM for the diagnostic criteria for transgender and make sure your story fits it". 

Study Conclusion:
"Rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) describes a phenomenon where the development of gender dysphoria is observed to begin suddenly during or after puberty in an adolescent or young adult who would not have met criteria for gender dysphoria in childhood."
"ROGD appears to represent an entity that is distinct from the gender dysphoria observed in individuals who have previously been described as transgender."
"The worsening of mental well-being and parent-child relationships and behaviors that isolate AYAs from their parents, families, non-transgender friends and mainstream sources of information are particularly concerning."
"More research is needed to better understand this phenomenon, its implications and scope."

Hope Springs Eternal in the Human Heart

"If we find them, the first thing is to provide first aid and food before thinking of how to bring them up."
"We will not stop, we will work 24 hours. We're racing against time and we want them to be safe."
"The SEAL team will be working non-stop because it's already dark here too. So night and day doesn't make a big difference. They'll just need to rotate."
Thailand Interior Minister Anupong Paochinda

"We  hope this [electricians working to install electricity in the cave] will provide lights for work and fans for ventilation for the SEAL team."
"Also, it means we can use electric engines to pump water out of the cave as well."
Chiang Rai Governor Narongsak Osottanakorn

Rescue workers and park officials at Tham Luang Nang Non cave. Photograph: Chaichan Chaimun/EPA

Twelve boys, part of a soccer team, aged between 11 and 16, under the care of their 25-year-old coach had embarked late Saturday on an adventure that took them into the famed Chiang Rai province geological wonder represented by the Tham Luang cave. That the cave complex with its many large open chambers and tunnels is often flooded during monsoon season that takes in the month of June was perhaps something the coach was oblivious to.

But information published online by the tourist bureau makes it quite clear that entry to and exploration of the caves should be avoided during this vulnerable flooding period. Local authorities and rescue teams have become accustomed to the plight of tourists trapped during these floods in the caves and having to be rescued, on occasion after having been forced to spend days stranded before rescue could be safely completed.

Hopes were high that the thirteen stranded people -- the boys and their coach -- would be quickly recovered and brought to safety. But as the days passed and the boys' families stationed in tents outside the cave forlornly view their children's bicycles, backpacks and soccer equipment resting beside the cave entrance, to be retrieved when the group emerged, time goes slowly and hope becomes fragile. The boys are believed to have made their desperate way to the back of the cave as the flooded area continued to expand and rise.

Thai Navy Seal divers are leading the search, handicapped by muddy water which in some of the cave's chambers has reached as high as the ceilings. They need breathing space to be enabled to proceed with safety, and water is being pumped out, but the rains have continued and the flooded areas continue rising, although the main cave entry remains dry. Special oxygen tanks that will enable the divers to remain under water for longer periods are being brought in.

Thai rescue officers search for alternative entrances during the rescue operation for missing football players in Tham Luang cave. Photograph: DNP/EPA

Electricians had worked continually in the light of day and the dark of night to ensure that light and ventilation for divers was available. In a situation where flood waters rise up to seven metres inside the underground complex they are desperately working to penetrate deep into the area in hopes of finding the stranded group. The divers, facing such difficult conditions, have been forced to suspend operations on several occasions, hampering their search to find a way forward through the cave complex.

Two fissures in the rock on the mountain where the cave is located were thought to represent another option for use as a "chimney" to be descended to gain cave access but turned out not to be an entry point, after all. With the aid of the power line extended inside the cave the divers are able to communicate with those waiting and hoping on the outside. When the boys ventured into the cave late Saturday afternoon, their failure to return alarmed a mother who reported her son missing after soccer practice.

Thus began the desperate search and rescue operation. Off limits during the rainy season as a result of experiences with flooding in the past, the caves nonetheless presented as a lure to the adventurous sense of exploration lodged deep in the psyches of young boys and older men alike. "We are still optimistic they are alive", commented Thai deputy prime minister Prawit Wongauwon.

People pray near the Tham Luang caves during a search for members of an under-16 football team and their coach, in Chiang Rai, Thailand. Photograph: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters

The ISIL Returnees Issue: The Dilemma of Unmitigated Child Abuse

"The government has absolutely no choice but to protect the Charter rights of these Canadians [who choose to go abroad to fight with terrorists in Syria and Iraq]."
"The embassy, the consulate would have to deal with them, the way they would any Canadian who's gotten in trouble abroad and assist them to come home if that's what they want to do."
"They [federal officials] always stress ... 'We cannot in any way afford to allow our actions to result in a Canadian citizen receiving basically torture, or abuse. That will never happen again'."
Lorne Dawson, professor, University of Western Ontario

"Does the Canadian government have a legal, let alone a moral, responsibility to act on these people's behalf? I think the answer is 'No'."
"They made a conscious decision to leave this country and to join a group that everyone and his dog knows is a terrorist group ... 'It sucks to be you; live with it'."
"This issue of orphans and kids born to people who joined Islamic State is going to haunt us for a decade. Who wants to take care of them? It's not the kids' fault, but these are the sons and daughters of terrorists."
Phil Gurski, former Canadian Security Intelligence Service analyst

"I really think they need to work with the Muslim community in terms of developing plans to assist them."
"They [terrorism-linked returnees] are Canadian kids, we can't just sort of throw them away."
Barbara Jackman, immigration lawyer, Toronto

UN: ISIL kills 163 people in Mosul in one day: Al Jazeera

The issue is undeniably a complex one, and fraught with emotion; a sense of compassion for the children born to people who of their own free will have dedicated their time, energy and aspirations to be part of an Islamist caliphate of conquest, restrained by nothing, evincing themselves no compassion whatever for the other Muslims and non-Muslims they slaughter through deliberate enactment of atrocities, the better to shock the watching world.

And it is telling, the response from various sources. From a professional immigration lawyer who speaks for immigrants and refugees, a response weighted in favour of human rights irrespective of the fact that human rights have been entirely trashed by the very people now anxious to return to a society they spurned in favour of one that modelled itself on Islam at its inception in the 6th Century as a warring, conquest-driven ideology encompassing religion, politics, social life.

From a professor who has studied the phenomenon of radicalized  youth from the perspective of a liberal-left profession priding itself on its 'progressive' credentials that allow it to proudly and loudly support the entitlements of Palestinian Arabs whose response to the creation of a Jewish state was to initiate a wide-ranging program of violent assaults, airplane hijacking, suicide bombings, attacks on Jews in foreign countries, the creation of a death cult inciting their youth to become martyrs.

From a man whose prism is that of a former intelligence officer who has seen at first-hand the plots and schemes and actions and crimes of terrorist groups threatening the stability of civilized nations serene in their democratic processes, suddenly placed on notice that their geographical distance from the volatile violence taking place in the Middle East will no longer grant them immunity from violence inflicted on them because the world has become a smaller place where air travel minimizes distance and trained assassins motivated by religious zeal commit themselves with lethal passion, and more latterly Western societies well infiltrated by religious zealots are readily conscripted to jihad.

At the present, and in the moment, as it were, when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the most current iteration of terrorist-jihad central in its purest-yet form of incendiary hatred theologically inspired, is in the process of swift collapse book-ending its swift rise, the issue of the hundreds of Western-sourced Islamists, trained as jihadists in the use of lethal weaponry turn restively to their adopted countries, including what offspring they have conceived. Some of whom have been known as the lion-cubs of ISIL, trained as children to kill, shoot, behead.

Social media images alleging to show an Isil sniper believed to be 16-year-old German Linda W Credit: Twitter

Canada, like other Western countries, is bracing for their return. And how to react, to treat them, to deal with them all, is an issue of grave and great concern. Canadians have experienced a taste of how their government will react under the Liberals, when a mere two weeks earlier, the al-Qaeda/Taliban-linked Omar Khadr, child soldier of Islamofascism was released from his status as a terrorist through a government apology to him, resuscitating his 'reputation' and sweetening it with a $10.5-million gift.

The government of Canada is consumed with the contrite view that it must not under any circumstances be seen to be complicit with other governments seeking to bring to justice Canadian jihadis who might be exposed to some form of torture while imprisoned, preparing to repatriate, perhaps prosecute them, but ensuring they are not persecuted for their misdeeds, as Canadian citizens. The fate of vulnerable children is yet another, critical issue which must be resolved. And it can readily be done.

With the recognition that the parents that bore them did so while threatening and committing unspeakable violence and planning far more in the future, those parents qualify for the designation and recognition of unqualified to raise those children on the evidence. Those children under their care have not been nurtured with love, but taught hatred. Their destiny, as far as their parents were concerned, was to populate a fascist Islamist state whose agenda was conquest through fear and slaughter.

Having proven themselves incapable of raising children in a familial environment based on the virtues of civilized society and providing for those children security and nourishment of the spirit, the children should be taken into custodial care. Parents charged under the Criminal Code under section 83 for leaving Canada to join a terrorist organization, participating in or facilitating terrorist activity or committing a crime for a terror group which has penalties up to life in prison are in no position to raise children.

A little girl named Amina was found by Iraqi Army soldiers when they heard her cries from the rubble.  Credit: Rex

The Religion of Peace

"One doctor we spoke to told us that infants as  young as one week old, children and mothers were emerging wounded and covered in dust and soil, some were malnourished."
Hamida Ramadhani, UNICEF deputy representative, Iraq

Amina, thought to be about three, was pulled from the rubble in Mosul after being trapped for days. The little girl is believed to be the daughter of ISIL fighters from Chechnya who died in battle.© Carol Guzy via ZUMA Wire

"Damn them. They killed our families, why should they get to live?"
"Mosul will never be the same again. There's nothing to be optimistic about."
Walid Khalid, 28, Mosul, Iraq

"We had been two days without water. One fighter said you can have water but in exchange I will kill one of your children."
"Another fighter stood by a running hose and said: 'This water is for the brothers only'."
Vehyeh Zekeria, liberated Mosul, Iraq

"The best way is to build a camp outside the city and they [Islamic State families] can all live there together. Their ideology is like a caner and we don't want it infecting us."
"People welcomed Daesh (ISIL) because they suffered so much before when the army was here."
"Right now, because of what they saw under Daesh, the people of Mosul are very happy to see the army again. But if the army goes back to hurting people that could change."
Samir Ahmed Sofi, Sunni Iraqi, liberated Mosul

Sunni Iraqis, after the downfall of Sunni Baathist dictator Saddam Hussein found themselves under the majority Shiite Iraqi government that took power in the same situation that the Shiite were in, beleaguered and discriminated against by the minority Sunni Iraqi government. The dissolution of the Sunni control of Baghdad and the dismissal of all Sunni members of Saddam's military created the initial resurgence of deadly reaction between the sects as each, despite the presence of international troops led by the U.S., began slaughtering one another.

In the failure of the government set up by the U.S. administration to reflect the interests of Iraqi Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, when the majority Shiites wrenched authority to itself  reflecting its majority status, a viral undercurrent of lethal discontent roiled Iraqi Sunnis leading to a gradual emergence of militias aligning themselves with foreign terrorist groups, then morphing as a new jihadi movement under the banner of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

In Syria, as in Iraq, ISIL militias ruthlessly embarked on a bloody campaign and swiftly gained a reputation as militarily unbeatable and cruelly murderous, gaining territory as they swept the geography of both countries, claiming for themselves a huge swath of both that they called their Islamic Caliphate. Finally, the Kurdish Peshmerga, defending Kurdistan from ISIL even as the Iraqi military abandoned the second largest city in Iraq to ISIL, led the country to vanquish the jihadis in battle.

The sun sets behind destroyed buildings in the west side of Mosul, Iraq. The nine-month fight to defeat ISIL in Mosul ended in a crescendo of bombardment that damaged or destroyed a third of its historic Old City in just three weeks. AP Photo/Felipe Dana/File

The greater Sunni population in Mosul had at first welcomed the presence of Sunni-led ISIL, but soon realized how devoid of humanity their new overseers were. Now those remaining in Mosul view what remains of their once-proud city, and recount their misery living under the Islamist fist of the Islamic State. While Mosul was being slowly liberated, a central core in the Old City continued to be held by ISIL jihadis many of them foreign fighters dedicated to the Daesh mission.

With them, their families, wives and children, since Mosul became an ISIL centre, its headquarters in Iraq just as Rakka was in Syria. The United States has been giving air cover to the Iraqi military as it entered Mosul along with Iranian Shia militias, as viciously brutal in their hatred as the Islamic State. The Kurds, whose fighting spirit and resilience has been responsible for ISIL defeats, were ordered to remain outside Mosul, so the full glory of the recapture of the city would remain with the Iraqi military which had turned tail at the entry of ISIL, leaving their U.S.-sourced arms and vehicles as gifts to ISIL.

In the bombing of Mosul's Old City to dislodge the Islamic State fighters, buildings are destroyed with their inhabitants within. Rescue missions have been discovering in the ruins of those buildings dozens of children, from infants and newborns upward -- the children of ISIL fighters dedicating themselves to martyrdom in suicide attacks or killed by Iraqi forces and Shiite militias in an orgy of vengeance.

A little girl of three, rescued after several days trapped in the remains of a shattered building, asked where her parents were, responded that they were "shaheeds". Another young boy was eating raw meat from the ground in a state of starvation. Needless to say, the only 'raw meat from the ground' that would be present would represent the remains of people killed by the bombing littering the ruins.

UNICEF has announced an increased number of unaccompanied children at their medical facilities, some of them babies found alone in the debris of the ruined streets, brought in by rescuers. The business of retributive killings and the desire to exact revenge through collective punishment targeting those residents of the city thought to have supported the Islamic State presence, is most certainly underway.

Those who suffered under ISIL rule share their stories of family members killed, of destroyed homes and deprivation. Burnishing their motivation to strike out against whatever is left of the Islamic State authority that made such a misery of their lives.

Clowning Around Aleppo

"We can't keep up. We're having to choose who we find and who we don't."
Ibrahim Abu Laith, White Helmets civil defence group volunteer, Aleppo

"Where we used to bury one man, we lay down entire families now."
"We dig and we dig. It never ends."
Abo Jaafar, east Aleppo coroner

"For the sake of humanity, we call on, we plead with the parties and those with influence to do everything in their power to protect civilians and enable access to the besieged part of eastern Aleppo before it becomes one giant graveyard."
Stephen O'Brien, head, UN humanitarian body

"He would act out skits for the children to break the walls between them."
"All of us in this field [child care] are exhausted, and we have to find strength to provide psychological support and continue with our work."
Samar Hijazi, Space for Hope, east Aleppo

(ZEIN AL-RIFAI/AFP/Getty Images)

"My brother Anas Al Basha who was the reason why besieged children smiled ... killed today in Aleppo due to the Russian-Assad shelling."
"[Anas] lived to make children laugh and happy in the darkest most dangerous place. Anas who refused to leave Aleppo and decided to stay there to continue his work as a volunteer, to help the civilians and give gifts for the children in the streets, to bring hope for them."
Mahmoud al-Basha, Facebook

Anas al-Basha was killed in an air strike on the besieged city. He was 24 and newly married AP

When Anas al-Basha's family left Aleppo to preserve their lives and their sanity, he decided to remain behind. He had a mission as a member of a local civil society group, and as a social worker. To give hope to children for another life beyond what they have known for five years, when the assaults against their community by their president would come to a halt and some kind of normalcy might ensue. The kind of normalcy that might ensue would never return to them their dead parents. These are children whose mother, or father, or both were killed by the regime.

A more dire situation for a child cannot be imagined and the loathing and fear of death must haunt their sleeping hours and their waking days. Anas al-Basha sought to give them hope, with his clown humour to make them laugh, to think about better times and to remember how much they were loved. He died in a missile strike in eastern Aleppo, yet another body count notched up to the Syrian regime and their Russian ally for whom bombing schools and hospitals simply represent normalcy.

Oh, and yes of course, bombing funeral processions and cemeteries, those too. Making it now too dangerous to bury the dead in broad daylight. It is now a night-time activity to swiftly conduct the funeral rites, when warplanes don't tend to circle above, nor ground troops venture into eastern Aleppo's rebel held districts. Eastern Aleppo continues to be pounded and the rebels set off their rockets even as their enclaves steadily shrink.

Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraqi and Iranian Shiite militias are all aligned in the deadly game of retribution against Syrian Sunnis, alongside the Alawite regime and the sectarian-oblivious Russians. New districts keep falling to the military offensive, causing massive displacement which the UN estimates at over 31,000 as having fled, mostly to Kurdish areas, preferring to shield themselves from further violations of human rights should they flee to the government side of the city.

Russia has now lost two of its warplanes, but not as a result of the rebel defence, since they are not equipped to match the armaments of the regime and its co-fighting supporters, but to technical-mechanical deficiencies on the Russian aircraft carrier stationed in the Mediterranean. In eastern Aleppo the graveyards are full and shallow graves have been spreading in public parks.

Among them the grave of a 24-year-old social worker who dressed as a clown to entertain children, to take their minds away from their dreadful losses, their fear and pain, their miserable existence, orphaned by the president of their nation.

Al-Basha was a center director at Space for Hope, one of the many important but unheralded local initiatives that has operated against the odds to provide the services of civil society in Syria's war-torn opposition areas. (Ahmad al-Khatib/AP)

The Most Vulnerable of Refugees

"What's important is that these children on the move are children. And they should be treated as children."
"They deserve to be protected. They need access to services, such as education."
Ted Chaiban, UNICEF director of programs, Geneva

"Children do not bear any responsibility for the bombs and bullets, the gang violence, persecution, the shrivelled crops and low family wages driving them from their homes."
UNICEF report

"The world hears the stories of child refugees one child at a time and the world is able to bring support to that child, but when we talk about millions it provokes incredible outrage and underscores the need to address the growing problem."
Emily Garin, author of Uprooted: The Growing Crisis for Refugee and Migrant Children

"Every child that has suffered, died, is a reminder of this huge challenge that we face. Every one of them deserves our help."

"In some places, like Eritrea and northern Nigeria the children are fleeing violence and conflict -- their parents are almost sending them ahead of them because its safer to flee than it is [to remain] where they are."

"Often parents are judging that their children would be safer to move than to stay put and that's a terrible decision."

"All of these children, whether they're fleeing Central America and gang violence or war in Africa or from Syria are threatened by traffickers and smugglers and they desperately need our protection and our help in getting an education and a future."

Justin Forsyth, deputy executive director, UNICEF

According to figures newly released by UNICEF in a report documenting child refugees, twenty-eight million children have been forced from their homes and countries of origin, as a result of conflict and violence. Refugees include a million asylum-seekers whose status as refugees remains undetermined formally by the United Nations, along with another 17 million who have been displaced from their homes but remain within the borders of their own countries.

Overall, the figure of 41 million refugees who are internally displaced persons remain in their countries of origin, but have fled their homes which are located within active theatres of conflict. Of that total, 7 million are children, internally displaced, within the borders of their countries. The other figure is for refugees and asylum-seekers and that total is 25 million who have fled their countries of origin for reasons of safety and security as well as economic opportunities; of that 25 million, 11 million represent children.

War, violence, poverty, are all crises whose proportions have compelled people to leave their homes and to set out on miserable journeys to find safety for themselves and their families. The topmost drivers of the refugee tide are Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Sudan, along with Pakistan and Iraq. What these countries all have in common is violence, tribal and sectarian both within their borders and cross-border. And what else they all have in common is that all are Muslim-majority countries. As Islam is claimed to be a religion of peace, it is difficult to discern how Islam pacifies its faithful.

The dysfunction within Islam of an overabundance of violence and criminal belligerence against others victimizes those who are unable to protect themselves from the oppression, the threats and the dire living conditions imposed upon them by the powerful among them. A surfeit of dictators and tyrants plagues the world of Islam, where liberal democracy is not viewed as fit company for Islamic values and when those values are on full display we count the victims, the slaughtered and the fleeing. 

 

If refugees do not leave, in hopes of avoiding death, they leave for the prospect of humane living conditions.

UNICEF says 45% of child refugees are from Syria or Afghanistan [Jamal Saidi/Reuters]

According to the report, Syria and Afghanistan can take pride of place in producing fully 45 percent of child refugees. The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, another United Nations agency, identifies roughly 11 million Syrians as having been displaced by conflict. This number is inclusive of about 100,000 refugees that have resulted in the past eight days alone, thanks to the bombing of helpless Sunni Syrian civilians by their Shiite Alawite government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Poverty and gang violence also drives children from their homes. An estimated million child asylum-seekers are on their own, travelling unaccompanied by adults, with all the dire dangers that minors travelling without supervision face them on their journeys. They seek asylum in 78 countries, a dramatic increase over the numbers of years before. Risks of drowning at sea during crossings, of malnourishment, of dehydration, of kidnapping, of rape and murder all plague these children on the move.

The UN report addresses the problem of burgeoning child refugees by appealing to the international community to step in and provide protection, education and health services to the children; that governments address the root causes which are contributing to this large-scale migration of the world's most vulnerable. The 'international community' being appealed to is the non-Muslim world of liberal democracies in Oceania, North America and Europe, to foot the UN bills and to absorb greater numbers of mostly Muslim children.

As for the Muslim world which generates these cast-offs whom they care so obviously little about, how will they consider resolving the problems of their inner dysfunction under a religion that is responsible for every facet of daily and communal life, and for harnessing the populations of the oppressed to the yoke of Islamic imperialism that sacrifices humanity for the greater ideal of world domination? They have done such an exceedingly superior job of governing their own benighted lands, and they seek Islamic conquest and dominion over others....

Saving Children's Lives Through Borderless Charity

"Hello dear Madam!
"This boy is my cousin who has been suffering from hole in heart. If you can do anything for his good health, we would be very thankful to you."
Farhad Zaheer, teacher, Jalalabad to Anna Mussman, Israel

"I realize helping a child from a country which Israel has no diplomatic relations [with] is not easy, but perhaps possible."
"Thanks so much and Shabbat Shalom."
Anna Mussman, 69, retired U.S. State Department official

Doctors at Wolfson Medical Center perform open heart surgery (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

 

When Ms. Mussman (whose Holocaust survivor parents gave birth to their daughter in a displaced persons camp in Germany), contacted Simon Fisher, executive director of Save a Child's Heart located in Holon, Israel, she had little doubt that he could help. Just as Farhad Zaheer, whose relatives asked if he could help their 14-month-old son Yehia, had confidence that if he asked Anna Mussman, help would be forthcoming.

Little Yehia, living in Peshawar, Pakistan, of Afghan parents was born with his two main arteries reversed. If that wasn't trouble enough, he also had two holes in his heart. Yehia's parents made contact with a local specialist capable of performing the needed surgery, but the charge was $7,000. Yehia's father sells flour for a living. The family had saved $200, soon eaten up by medical bills. They approached Mr. Zaheer on a trip back to Afghanistan to attend a family wedding, for help.

Mr. Zaheer had once worked on a teacher training project in Nouristan Province and he had come to the notice of Ms. Mussman, then overseeing the project for the U.S. State Department. After he had contacted her asking for help for the infant, she recalled reading about an Israeli charity that provides free surgeries to children from developing countries.

Yehia's father would not divulge the family name, fearing a backlash for having taken his child to Israel for medical treatment. Thus becoming the first child from Afghanistan to be treated by Save a Child's Heart. In its 20 years of operations half of the charity's four thousand patients have been Palestinian children; 200 others, children from Iraq and Syria. Children from Tanzania, Ethiopia and Moldova have also had treatment in Holon, Israel, where the charity is positioned.

Ms. Mussman put Mr. Zaheer in touch with an Iranian American who had worked in Jalalabad. That diplomat provided the required visas for the family needing to cross into Israel through Turkey, to make that trip. Then a translator was required to help the father, speaking Urdu and Pashto. The Hebrew-speaking staff at the hospital needed to communicate with Yehia's father.

Finally, a retired rug seller who had left Kabul for Israel 32 years earlier agreed to translate. The surgery was undertaken with a medical team of almost a dozen people. The eight-hour surgery took place near Tel Aviv, at Wolfson Medical Center, Holon. On the completion of the surgery the baby, covered in bandages was wheeled out to see his father.

Sympathetic people surrounded the father, offering empathy and congratulations.

Doctors from Save a Child’s Heart monitor the catheterization procedure of a six-year-old Haitian boy at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon. Photo by Flash90

"Deeply Shocked. And Appalled"

"Like all Australians, we are shocked by the report, by that evidence that was shown on Four Corners [Australian Broadcasting Corporation television program Four Corners investigation] last night. Deeply shocked."
"We have moved swiftly to get to the bottom of it."
"We need to get all the facts out as swiftly as we can. We need to expose the cultural problems, the administrative problems that allowed this type of mistreatment to occur."
"We want to know how this came about. We want to know what lessons can be learned from it. We want to know why there were inquiries into this centre which did not turn up the evidence and the information that we saw on Four Corners last night."
"This is a shocking state of affairs and we will move quickly to establish what happened."
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull

"[I want to thank the] whole Australian community for the support you have showed us boys [teen prison incarcerates] as well as our families."
"I would also like to take this opportunity to apologize to the community for my wrongs and I can't wait to get out [of prison] and make up for them."
Dylon Voller, 17, featured in investigation into prison abuse of young boys in Australia

"The impact of those years of brutalization must be immediately measured and he needs immediate assistance."
"Any child locked up in solitary confinement in the Northern Territory needs to be released immediately."
Peter O'Brien, lawyer for Dylan Voller

"[Dylan] deserves his life back. [He] lost everything ... lost hope."
"The last time I went to visit him there was no smile, there was no emotion, there was nothing. I couldn't give him anything to be positive about and that really broke me."
"I want him to know he's still a person and people still love him and he still has hope for a life."
Kira Voller, Dylan's sister 

Dylan Voller shackled into a restraining chair -- ABC news

Aboriginal Australian youth are sometimes defiant and socially deviant, as the term goes to express the kind of resentment engendered by systematic, institutionalized racism that afflicts most colonial-era-derived societies. Australia appears to have reached the conclusion at some time in the near past that the best remediative treatment for insufferable anti-social behaviour is to brutalize those exhibiting that behaviour, to persuade those placed in prisons where they are treated to even greater incidents of contemptible disciplinary punishment for spurning societal norms, to straighten out and fly better.

That is evidently accomplished by long episodes of solitary confinement, earned when young prisoners act out intolerably. This earns them a bout of tear gas and placement for weeks on end in isolation, but not before being exposed to physical brutality. Isolation bereft of natural light, running water or breathable air where the reek of urine and the scuttle of rats distinguish the environment is certain, authorities must feel, to engender a chastening effect. It is called a correctional system after all, and not for nothing. Unfortunately, for a teen who has spent his formative years in the system it doesn't appear to have worked.

Dylan Voller in and out of detention since childhood -- ABC News

The systemic abuse of children and teens, most of Aboriginal extraction, has produced a cadre of of youth who have never known normalcy in their lives, but somehow learned to live through and endure the unspeakably atrocious punishments that a clearly dysfunctional system believes they have earned. On the other hand, it could only be sadism imposed by psychopaths who would impose such vicious punishment on children for the crime of non-compliance with authority. Do the prison guards who exhibit those tendencies have a leg up on job selection?

In 2014 Dylan was among six boys tear-gassed as treatment meted out to ensure a "riot" didn't proceed; a concern that lodged in the imagination and nowhere else since closed-circuit television and video recordings staff themselves created indicated that one boy had escaped from his cell when it was left unlocked by a guard. In the program that was aired on Monday evening, 'corrections' officers appeared on screen tear-gassing children in their cells, wrestling them to the ground, calling them "little f---ers".

With the emergence of shocking footage of teenagers being assaulted and abused in juvenile detention centres, the ABC wants to hear any stories you have of similar acts. Contact us ABC

Footage from 2010 when Dylan was all of ten years old, showed him being hurled across his cell floor, kneed and knocked to the ground where he was stripped naked numerous times and kept in solitary confinement, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Originally from Alice Spring, Dylan was imprisoned after a 24-hour meltdown when, high on methamphetamine, he attacked two men and a police officer. This could have been entitled Life As A Nightmare.

Dylan, said a social worker who has cared for Dylan, "has been in and out of trouble, needs to get serious counselling and it needs to be funded by the government. If a boy commits a crime, I'm not saying they don't have to face the music, but where's the duty of care? They need a place where they can be safe." All these revelations have utterly shocked the conscience of the nation; above all the government which disclaims any knowledge of such wretched situations victimizing children.

Oddly enough, the former Northern Territory children's commissioner, Dr. Howard Bath, undertook a lengthy investigation into this situation of institutional penal mistreatment. The fact that Australia was founded by the British as a penal colony must have tainted the atmosphere in perpetuity. The results of the lengthy investigation were presented to the government in 2012. It must have been neatly filed away. It had never been publicly released, let alone tabled in parliament.

Parliament is now engrossed in the earned embarrassment of nasty revelations.


Videos obtained by Four Corners show prison guards stripping, assaulting and mistreating teenager Dylan Voller over a period of more than four years. ABC

Utopia in the Far North of Ontario 

The untimely and sometimes inexplicable deaths of young First Nations men and women in their teens and early 20s represents a societal failure of deep dimensions whose solution seems forever elusive, and that would be owing to the vast complications inherent in the matter. Young people are torn between wanting to live in the modern world with all its benefits, conveniences, exciting innovations and opportunities, and yet not wanting to reject their heritage, particularly when they become aware that achieving opportunity can often result in the abandonment of heritage.

That abandonment relates to the choices First Nations people make, to cling to life in traditional geographic areas that are all too often isolated, where tribes living on reserves are left to their own devices, and their own devices are reduced in usefulness when they no longer live in a traditional manner to match their geography. No longer resilient and capable as they once were to fend for themselves in a demanding landscape with fewer modern conveniences their lives become sub-par.

The seven students who have died in Thunder Bay since 2000 are, from top left, Jethro Anderson, 15, Curran Strang, 18, Paul Panacheese, 17, Robyn Harper, 18, Reggie Bushie, 15, Kyle Morriseau, 17, and Jordan Wabasse, 15. (CBC)

All the more so that there is little employment available to ensure that people can make do for themselves, and since there is that lack they become completely dependent on financial distributions by various levels of government to tribal councils which then dole out funding as they see fit. The infrastructures, domestic and public, that exist in the reservations are paid for by the federal government and allocated to tribal members. There is no incentive for reserve residents to maintain the property they live in and they are allowed to deteriorate.

And nor are there any guarantees that everyone living on the reserve can expect equal treatment. Instead how they fare is at the discretion of reserve councillors, the elected members of council who all too often act to benefit themselves, their families and friends. It is the plight of the children who are not beneficiaries of all the distractions and socializing variety available to children living in urban centres, leaving them bored, dissatisfied and looking for mischief that is a universal concern.

Along with the social dysfunction of First Nations societies on reserve where alcohol and drug abuse, marital problems and child-rearing lapses, along with a propensity to violence against women that is of concern generally.  With all this as background, when First Nations teens are sent to towns and cities with high schools to complete their education, they have difficulties adjusting, and often have to cope with loneliness, disaffection and self-harm.

Alcohol poisoning, drowning, perpetration of violence, all take their victims, young, homesick and vulnerable kids. A coroner's inquest in Thunder Bay was the venue for the introduction of a joint slate of recommendations to the inquest jury. The Nishnawbe Aski Nation's lawyer, Julian Falconer, was in full agreement with most of the 118 recommendations passed by the inquest; that sweeping changes take place to deal with aboriginal education in Canada.

One directs Ottawa to build a daycare and kindergarten program for all preschool children in all reserves in NAN territory, along with an elementary school and a high school as well as an adult learning centre. To take the place of existing schools on the reserves. Mirroring educational accommodations in Canadian cities paid for by municipal and provincial taxation. The schools are meant to "further the physical, social, emotional, spiritual and cognitive development of the children".

At the elementary and high school levels, extracurricular activities should be presented which "include traditional, cultural, recreational, academic, artistic and athletic activities." Another recommendation has it that the federal government must ensure adequate Internet bandwidth is present in all the schools. And that three hot meals daily be served for both students and school staff. Housing, water-treatment systems and wastewater systems must be upgraded on the reserves, alongside an anti-poverty strategy.

Among other recommendations within the 118 rendered, was another which would ensure that the federal government give allowances for personal needs including clothing, registration fees, tutoring and "travel to other cities in Ontario and Canada", to all reserve students in the Thunder Bay area. Is it likely that if any federal government had the wherewithal to provide such generous financial initiatives to one jurisdiction, it could conceivably avoid the obligation to provide the same for all throughout Canada?

The financial burden that this would entail, lifting holus-bolus all the benefits accruing to those living in dense urban areas, and who work for their living, owning properties they must themselves maintain, into isolated, often fly-in-only areas of the country would be certain to bankrupt the country. And to whose benefit might that be?