Green cremation method renders human bodies into fertilizer

Photo: Resomation Ltd.

Green (gross?) cremation method produces liquid fertilizer

New climate-friendly cremation method uses water and lye to transform human remains into 200 gallons of liquid fertilizer.

mnn.com | Dec 7, 2009

By Stephanie Rogers

There are an awful lot of people on the planet, and modern methods for disposing of human remains aren’t exactly earth-friendly. A new alternative to cremation and burial could change that — and even increase food production for those still living — if we can get past the ‘ick factor’ of liquefying our dead relatives.

“Resomation” is the process of disposing of human corpses through alkaline hydrolysis, which occurs when the body is sealed inside a vault-like tube filled with water and lye and steam-heated to 300 degrees. Three hours later, some powdery bone fragments and 200 gallons of fluid are all that remains.

Essentially, Resomation — which was developed by Scottish company Resomation Ltd. — is just like the natural process of decomposition, but on fast-forward. The fluid can be safely dumped into sewer systems or even used as fertilizer on farms and gardens — a proposal that some say comes a little too close to ‘Soylent Green’ for comfort.

But unlike cremation and traditional burial, alkaline hydrolysis doesn’t lead to toxic chemicals like dioxin and formaldehyde being released into the atmosphere or water supply. It also uses 80 percent less energy than standard cremation.

Despite its apparent eco-friendliness, it’s improbable that Resomation will become a common way to deal with human remains any time soon. It seems unlikely at best that Americans will accept pouring what’s left of a loved one down a drain or consuming food that has been sprayed with corpse juice.

But as world leaders struggle to deal with the immense specter of global warming, solutions like Resomation may become more palatable — and it’s already accepted by many religious faiths, including Catholicism.

“We’re not opposed to it. Environmentally, it seems like the right thing to do,” says Catholic Cemeteries manager of marketing Amy Profenna.

‘Copenhagen Summit : On The Road To the Dark Age’

mindanaoexaminer.com | Dec 4, 2009

By Erick San Juan

Makati City, Philipines – THIS COMING WEEK, December 7-18, 2009 in Copenhagen , Denmark, the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15) the successor to the Kyoto Protocol and will be attended by 20,000 delegates from 193 nations, approximately 65 heads of government (including the Philippine President).

Amidst the climategate scandal of e-mails that hackers have revealed in the e-mail communications of “scientists” of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of East Anglia University in Great Britain , the summit will go ahead as scheduled.

In October this year, President Gloria M. Arroyo signed into law Philippine Climate Change Act of 2009 that would enable the country to better respond to disasters spawned by climate change. This law which is also known as R.A. 9729, seeks to influence climate change policy into the formulation of government agenda by setting up a National Framework Strategy and Program on Climate Change along with the creation of the Climate Change Commission that will coordinate, monitor and evaluate the government’s programs and actions to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

Like other countries riding the bandwagon of climate change, it seems that the globalists are succeeding in their effort for world governance in which depopulation is the centerpiece. Why do we say this? The following quotes from the movers of the global warming scare, will give light as to why we are caught riding the bandwagon on the road to the dark age.

The global warming alarm was initiated at the United Nations in the 1980s.The “original” goal was to use it to achieve global governance and fund it through a global carbon tax.

In 1991, Maurice Strong, a key developer of global warming scare and one of the original members of the Club of Rome came out with the report – “The First Global Revolution”, which stated : “It would seem that humans need a common motivation…either a real one or else one invented for the purpose….In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then, is humanity itself.”

In that same report – “The First Global Revolution”, the concept of global governance was promoted which asserted that current problems “are essentially global and cannot be solved through individual country initiatives [which] gives a greatly enhanced importance to the United Nations and other international systems.”

Also, way back in 1974, Maurice Strong gave a speech at a college in Canada at which he said: “The ethic of abundant resources must give way to the ethics of scarcity and conservation” … “Economic growth is not the cure, it is the disease” He also said: “Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.”

“The world has cancer and the cancer is man.” – quote from A. Gregg as the opening to Chapter 1 of the “Second Report to the Club of Rome – Mankind at the Turning Point”, 1974.

Finally, “I hope [the Club of Rome] will continue for many years to come to spell out the unpalatable facts and to unsettle the conscience of the smug and apathetic.” – Prince Philip in his message to the Delegates, 20th Anniversary Conference of the Club of Rome (in “The First Global Revolution”). Prince Phillip has also made the statement: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.” in the foreword to Fleur Cowles’ “If I Were an Animal” 1987.

It is now clear that the forerunners of the global warming myth mentioned above singled out humanity as the culprit and that economic growth through industrialization should take the backseat as climate change will transform into a weapon of mass taxation, as one writer put it.

To elaborate further our point here, the Chairman of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT) of the London School of Economics said, “It’s always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions – the carbon tonnage can’t shoot down as we want, while the population keeps shooting up.” In other words, the cheapest way to combat climate change is through family planning method of contraception. This was also featured as the main problem – the population, in
Al Gore’s video, An Inconvenient Truth, which is now being lambasted as a film of very convenient lies based on questionable data.

Six months before the Copenhagen summit, World Business Summit on Climate Change (WBSCC) was held and already came out with key decisions for the December meeting. It was attended by prominent world business leaders including Al Gore and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. The report by the WBSCC has been given to all the Copenhagen summit participants which is actually, has nothing to do about protecting the environment. Then what is the real agenda of this global sham?

“The Copenhagen Summit not only serves powerful corporate interests, which have a stake in the global multibillion dollar carbon trading scheme. It also serves to divert public attention from the devastation resulting from the “real crisis” underlying the process of economic globalization and a profit driven war without borders, which the Pentagon calls “the long war”. (Michel Chossudovsky)

The multibillion dollar carbon trading scheme of the world’s financial oligarchs is the real agenda of this climate change fiasco. The large financial conglomerates, involved in derivative trade, including JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Barclay’s, Citibank, Nomura, Société Générale, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are actively involved in carbon trading.(FACTBOX: Investment banks in carbon trading | Reuters, 14 September 2009)

A report from The Guardian also support this article, “the carbon market could become double the size of the vast oil market, according to the new breed of City players who trade greenhouse gas emissions through the EU’s emissions trading scheme… The speed of that growth will depend on whether the Copenhagen summit gives a go-ahead for a low-carbon economy. But Ager says whatever happens, schemes such as the ETS will expand around the globe.”

It is very real that this Copenhagen summit will lead us back to the dark age, where the tools of economic growth will be wiped out in the name of falsehood and greediness of the chosen few, who will feed on the unwilling victims’ fear of the ‘unknown’ – the “climate change”. As panic grips humanity, no one will notice the global governance of the few as they lead us to that new world (dis)order. God forbid!

Erick San Juan: culdesac0002@yahoo.com.ph

China admits it runs illegal black jails to torture citizens who file complaints

A magazine run by the Chinese government has revealed the existence of a network of secret detention centres or “black jails” in Beijing where inmates are often beaten or tortured.

The Liaowang report said that the number of people employed by local governments to abduct citizens can reach over 10,000

The victims of the jails are usually ordinary Chinese who have travelled to Beijing to lodge a complaint, or petition.

Telegraph | Nov 26, 2009

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai

Until now, the Communist Party has strenuously denied running black jails, despite a growing number of testimonies and evidence from former inmates.

However, a report in Liaowang (Outlook), a magazine which is written for elite government officials and published by the official Xinhua news agency, laid the system bare.

The victims of the jails are usually ordinary Chinese who have travelled to Beijing to lodge a complaint, or petition, with the central government that their local officials have ignored.

Every day, hundreds of petitioners arrive in Beijing from across China, only to be hunted down by plain-clothes policemen or even private security firms sent by their home province to “retrieve” them.

Since local governments are judged on the number of grievances that arrive in Beijing, officials are often determined not to let the petitioners file their claims. The Liaowang report said that the number of people employed by local governments to abduct citizens “can reach over 10,000″.

“In Beijing, a monstruous business network has emerged to feed, house, transport, man-hunt, detain and retrieve petitioners,” said the magazine. It added that there are at least 73 black jails in the capital, often in unused homes or psychiatric wards. Private security firms demand fees of 100 yuan (Pounds9) to 200 yuan per person they abduct.

Liaowang said the system “seriously damaged the government’s image”.

Inside the black jails, all mobile phones and identification cards are confiscated, and many inmates are beaten, sexually-abused, intimidated and robbed, according to Human Rights Watch, which interviewed 38 former detainees for a report which it published just two weeks ago.

At the time, the Foreign ministry angrily rejected the accusations from the NGO. “There are no black jails in China,” said Qin Gang, a spokesman.

In the report, one 46-year-old former detainee from Jiangsu province, who spent more than a month in a black jail, said: “They are inhuman…two people dragged me by the hair and put me into the car.

My two hands were tied up and I couldn’t move. Then [after arriving back in Jiangsu] they put me inside a room where there were two women who stripped me of my clothes [and] beat my head [and] used their feet to stomp my body.” At the beginning of November, a guard at a black jail pleaded guilty to raping a 20-year-old woman from Anhui province in front of a dozen witnesses. However, the court dismissed the charges against the “guesthouse” and two provincial liaison officials, according to the official China Daily newspaper.

For some activists, the state-sanctioned articles in Liaowang signalled a possible willingness by the Communist party to confront the problem.

“They have categorically denied there are even black jails. This is the first time an official, high-level magazine acknowledges that they exist. This is fairly significant,” said Wang Songlian at Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Intel Wants Brain Implants in Its Customers’ Heads by 2020

Matrix creep: Mind Trip Intel wants into your brain. (Image Warner Bros.)

Researchers expect brain waves to operate computers, TVs and cell phones

PopSci | Nov 20, 2009

By Jeremy Hsu

If the idea of turning consumers into true cyborgs sounds creepy, don’t tell Intel researchers. Intel’s Pittsburgh lab aims to develop brain implants that can control all sorts of gadgets directly via brain waves by 2020.

The scientists anticipate that consumers will adapt quickly to the idea, and indeed crave the freedom of not requiring a keyboard, mouse, or remote control for surfing the Web or changing channels. They also predict that people will tire of multi-touch devices such as our precious iPhones, Android smart phones and even Microsoft’s wacky Surface Table.

Turning brain waves into real-world tech action still requires some heavy decoding of brain activity. The Intel team has already made use of fMRI brain scans to match brain patterns with similar thoughts across many test subjects.

Plenty of other researchers have also tinkered in this area. Toyota recently demoed a wheelchair controlled with brainwaves, and University of Utah researchers have created a wireless brain transmitter that allows monkeys to control robotic arms.

There are still more implications to creating a seamless brain interface, besides having more cyborgs running around. If scientists can translate brain waves into specific actions, there’s no reason they could not create a virtual world with a full spectrum of activity tied to those brain waves. That’s right — we’re seeing Matrix creep.

Toronto woman becomes first transexual Body Worlds donor

Visitors who see Paige’s body on display will see up close the results of an extensive surgical male-to-female transition. She has had full cranial facial reconstruction and separate feminization surgeries for her nose, lips, cheeks, breasts, hips and hair line — plus full-body laser hair removal.

xtra.ca | Nov 20, 2009

TEACHER & COACH. Body Worlds donor Dina Paige says that her body will help educate people about gender after she dies, because it will be plastinated as part of the Body Worlds project. (beyouwithddp.com)

Paige is the first transgendered person to donate her body to the program, which preserves bodies through a process called “plastination” and puts them on display in cities around the world.

The process was created by German scientist Gunther von Hagens, who initially used plastinated bodies for medical instruction and later created the Body Worlds series of public exhibits. More than 28 million people have seen the exhibit around the world, according to the Body Worlds web site.

Paige, a 54-year-old “full-blooded Italian,” runs her own business coaching transgendered people through the transitioning process and says being part of the Body Worlds exhibit will allow her work to continue long after she dies.

“The preserved bodies will last for a thousand years and beyond. The preservation technique is better than the pharaohs,” she says. “I was born a man, and look like a female, and yet have breasts and a penis. I couldn’t think of a better way for humanity to look at and evaluate the issues of what it means to be male, female, or both.”

Visitors who see Paige’s body on display will see up close the results of an extensive surgical male-to-female transition. She has had full cranial facial reconstruction and separate feminization surgeries for her nose, lips, cheeks, breasts, hips and hair line — plus full-body laser hair removal.

Paige says she decided to donate her body when she saw Body Worlds the first time it was in Toronto. The process of donating was simple, she says.

“It’s very much like filling out a donor card,” says Paige. “They ask some questions and let you know what the process is. They have a guide for donors and a guide for survivors. It’s quite simple.”

Donors are not paid for their bodies and must cover the cost of shipping the cadaver to the nearest Institute for Plastination embalming centre. Donors must have died of natural causes, must not be autopsied, and must be “largely intact,” according to the Body Worlds web site. Donors who carry infectious diseases like HIV or hepatitis may be accepted on a case-by-case basis.

Paige recommends that anyone considering donating his or her body should give the matter “sober consideration” and discuss it with their next of kin.

“Let loved ones and relatives who are going to look after the arrangements be very comfortable with it,” she says, noting that her family has been very accepting of her decision.

“My children, who are 29 and 28, are almost sick of me talking about it. I brought my son and daughter to the exhibit and my son is even considering donating his body,” she says.

Suicide Epidemic Sweeps France Telecom

Employees of France Telecom, Europe’s third-biggest telecoms firm, demonstrate in front France Telecom’s headquarters in Marseille October 20, 2009 to protest against a wave of suicides at the former state monopoly that unions blame on restructuring and work pressure. The banner reads ” No to Torment at Work. No to the Stress. No to 150 Employees in the Same Workplace”.  Reuters

Corporate Culture and Stress Cited as Contributing to 26 Deaths in Last 18 Months

CBS | Nov 20, 2009

If you work, no one has to tell you that stress is part of just about every job. But at one company it’s out of control.

France Telecom is undergoing a major restructuring with the goal of cutting $2.25 billion in expenses. But as the company strives to save money, it’s losing employees to an epidemic of suicide, CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar reports from Paris.

Ludovic Nouclerq started hallucinating about hanging himself one year ago. He was a manager at France Telecom and was told he had failed to achieve corporate goals, a common experience in the working world.

But Nouclerq claims that in the case of this giant company, undermining employees is a deliberate management strategy that has led to suicide.

“I knew that what I will do won’t be successful,” said Nouclerq, who says he was being set up to fail.

France Telecom began a massive re-organization three years ago, cutting one fifth of its workforce. Since then employees have been going to a lot of funerals. There have been 26 in the last 18 months.

In France, the suicide rate is 16 suicides per 100,000. At France Telecom, it is 17.6.

Work is usually not the reason for suicide. But in the case of France Telecom, many of those who have committed or attempted suicide have directly blamed the company and its management for creating working conditions that have made their lives intolerable.

The suicides and dozens of attempts are happening all over the French network. Suicide notes tell similar stories, blaming constant pressure to resign, impossible goals, frequent forced relocations and chaotic reorganization.

One woman jumped to her death from her fifth floor office window after she was told her job was changing yet again and that she was being assigned to another new boss.

“I’d rather die,” she wrote.

Yonnel Dervin stabbed himself in the stomach at work after his manager told him he no longer had the skills the company needed.

“You’re in your own bubble. Too bad. It’s a bubble without oxygen. You understand? You just can’t live anymore,” Dervin said through a translator.

Noelle Burgi has studied the France Telecom problem and says suicide is just the tip of the iceberg.

“People are treated like numbers,” Burgi said. “It’s a cumulative process.”

The company’s CEO, Didier Lombard, was booed by employees after yet another suicide. Pressured by the French government to stop the deaths, Didier has had to announce the suspension of job transfers and corporate re-organization at least until the end of the year.

But suicide attempts at the company continue and no one thinks these measures will put an end to this epidemic any time soon.

Gang ‘killed victims to extract their fat’ for anti-wrinkle cosmetics

The remains of victims that were allegedly kidnapped and killed by a criminal gang in the jungle of Peru for human fat trafficking. Photograph: National Police Of Peru/EPA

Peruvian police arrest suspects who allegedly drained their victims and sold liquid as an anti-wrinkle treatment

Guardian | Nov 20, 2009

by Rory Carroll

Peruvian police have arrested a gang which allegedly killed scores of peasants, drained their bodies of fat and sold the liquid abroad as an anti-wrinkle cosmetic.

Three suspects have confessed to killing five people for their fat, said Colonel Jorge Mejia, chief of Peru’s anti-kidnapping police, but the number of victims was believed to be much higher and to date back decades.

Two of the suspects were arrested at a bus station in the capital, Lima, carrying bottles of liquid fat which they claimed were worth up to £36,000 a gallon.

At a news conference police displayed two bottles of fat, which laboratory tests confirmed were human. “The fat was extracted from the thorax and thighs,” said Eusebio Felix Murga, chief of police of Dirincri district. Police also showed a photo of the rotting head of a 27-year-old male victim discovered last month in a coca-growing valley.

Medical experts said human fat had cosmetic applications to keep skin supple but were sceptical about an international black market.

“It doesn’t make any sense at all because in most countries we can get fat so readily and in such amounts from people who are willing and ready to donate,” Adam Katz, a professor of plastic surgery at the University of Virginia medical school, told the Associated Press.

Police named the band the “Pishtacos” after a myth dating to pre-Columbian times of killers who slaughtered victims with machetes to extract fat. The gang allegedly operated in Huanuco, a rural province dotted with Inca temples between the jungle and Andean peaks.

Six members remained at large including the alleged leader, Hilario Cudena, who has been killing to extract fluid for more than three decades, said police.

Sixty people were listed as missing in Huanuco this year alone, though the province is also home to the Shining Path, a drug-trafficking leftist rebel group.

Mejia, the police chief, said his force received a tip four months ago about a trade in human fat. It infiltrated the gang and arrested Serapio Marcos Veramendi and Enedina Estela at a Lima bus station with a litre of human fat in a soda bottle.

Their testimony led to the arrest of another alleged member, Elmer Segundo Castillejos, 29, who led police to the severed head and supplied grisly details: the gang would sever victims’ heads, arms and legs, remove organs and suspend torsos from hooks above candles which warmed the flesh as the fat dripped into tubs below. Castillejos claimed other gangs were engaged in similar killings.

The three suspects were charged with homicide, criminal conspiracy, illegal firearms possession and drug trafficking, according to Lima’s superior court.

Police said they were searching for alleged buyers.

Police Officer Uses Taser On 10-Year-Old Girl

4029tv.com | Nov 17, 2009

OZARK, Ark. — Ozark police said they were called to a home where a mother asked for help with her unruly child, but the 10-year-old’s father said he’s outraged at the force police used against his daughter.

“I would like to say Ozark police Tased this little girl right here. Ten years old and [they] shot electricity through her body, and I want to know how the heck in God’s green earth can they get away with this,” said the girl’s father, Anthony Medlock.

Medlock said his daughter was at her mother’s house when Ozark police Officer Dustin Bradshaw shocked her in the back with a Taser and arrested her.

“If you can’t pick the kid up and take her to your car, handcuff her, then I don’t think you need to be an officer,” Medlock said.

Medlock said his daughter does show signs of having emotional issues, but she “doesn’t deserve to be treated like a dog. She’s not a tiger.”

According to a police report, the officer was called to the home by the mother and witnessed the child kicking and screaming.

The officer’s statement said the girl’s mother, Kelly Hamlert, told him to use a Taser on her if he needed to.

The officer did shock the girl after he said she kicked him in the groin.

“He had no other choice. He had to get the child under control,” said Ozark police Chief Jim Noggle.

Noggle said the officer shocked the girl for about a second.

Ozark police said it is their policy to use a Taser on someone who is a threat to others, no matter their age.

Noggle said simply restraining the child could be harmful.

“Well, if he tried to restrain her, he might hurt her by restraining her. If you grab somebody, you can slip an arm out of joint. They can slip from you and fall on the ground,” Noggle said.

“I don’t know what kind of policy it is. I don’t think it’s right,” Medlock said.

Medlock said this is not the first time the girl’s mother has called police to take her daughter to a juvenile facility. He said he will now try to get custody of his daughter.

“She just wants somebody to love her, and I do,” he said.

40/29 News checked with several other police agencies about their taser policies. The Fort Smith Police Department said it will only uses a Taser on a person 14 years old or older if they are a threat to someone.

Fort Smith Police said it’s usually the discretion of each police department to make their own policies on using a Taser.

Noggle said no action is being taken against the Ozark officer who used the Taser on the girl, and he said her case will go before the juvenile court system.

Congress examines China’s coercive one-child policy

“Abort it! Kill it! Terminate it! You cannot give birth to him or her!” is just one example of the several banners in the streets of China

BP | Nov 16, 2009

by Cindy Ortiz

WASHINGTON (BP)–Congress heard testimony Nov. 10 regarding China’s one-child policy, which employs widespread forced abortions and sterilization as population control methods, ahead of President Obama’s trip to the communist nation.

Witnesses before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission noted that pregnancies in China must be authorized by the government. The hearing occurred two days before Obama left for Asia Nov. 12 to meet with Chinese officials.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of China’s one-child policy, which was implemented to curb the birth rate of the world’s most populous country. It limits women to one child, although exceptions are made, especially in some rural areas for couples whose first child is a girl. The policy has been enforced somewhat differently recently, the commission was told.

A measure codifying the policy, the Law of Population and Family Planning of the People’s Republic of China, went into effect in 2002. The family planning officials “illegally” enforce the law through forced abortions and sterilizations, lawyer Jiang Tianyong said at the hearing. Jiang has been persecuted for defending human rights activists.

In its 2009 report issued in October, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China said, “‘Termination of pregnancy’ is explicitly required if a pregnancy does not conform with provincial population planning regulations in Anhui, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Hubei, Hunan, Jilin, Liaoning and Ningxia provinces.”

All couples are required to apply for a birth permit before a pregnancy. If a couple has an unauthorized pregnancy, it must be terminated. After having the limited number of children — one in most areas — a spouse must be sterilized. Refusal results in forced sterilization. If the couple has more than one child, the woman will be forced to have an abortion, Harry Wu, director of Laogai Research Foundation, said at the hearing.

Families that abide by the law and get abortions receive a “One Child Parent Glory” certificate, something the government is using to “beautify” the policy, Annie Jing Zhang of Women’s Rights in China told the commission.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a letter to Obama Nov. 10 regarding his trip to China. “The letter makes the point that you cannot engage in China … without having very serious and candid dialogue about protection of human rights,” USCIRF Chairman Leonard Leo said at a news conference before the hearing.

Rep. Chris Smith, R.-N.J., who chaired the commission hearing, said, “I believe the Chinese government would respond to the president if he were to take the lead in speaking up in defense of human rights in China.”

Jiang appealed to Obama to speak to Chinese officials about reinstating his law license, which was revoked along with those of other attorneys earlier this year for defending human rights cases.

Smith criticized the Obama administration for its restoration of federal money for a United Nations agency that supports China’s coercive family planning policy.

“It is outrageous that the Obama administration lavishly funds — to the tune of $50 million — organizations, including the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), that partner with China’s National Population Planning Commission,” Smith said.

The Chinese leadership, however, thinks the policy is a great accomplishment, because China’s fertility level (1.7 live births per woman) is lower than replacement level, said Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute. Exclusive of immigration, 2.1 births per woman is the fertility level that ensures a non-declining population.

China’s low birth rate means an age and gender crisis loom within the next two decades.

According to the most recent Chinese population survey, there are 120 males for every 100 females, Eberstadt testified. An ordinary human population ratio would consist of 105 males to 100 females, meaning — by Chinese government estimates — that by the year 2020 there will be 24 million more men than women. The result will be dim marriage prospects, contributing even more to the lack of child births.

The dearth of children also means China eventually will lose its comparative labor advantage to competing countries such as India and Bangladesh. Population projections show that by 2030, India will become the world’s most populous country, with 1.53 billion citizens compared to China’s 1.45 billion. On top of that, China’s shrinking working-age population will have to shoulder an increasing workload (financial and otherwise) of caring for a massively elderly population.

Chinese demographers also predict that in 2025 there will be a generation of only children in China, Eberstadt said. These children will have no siblings, aunts, uncles or cousins.

“It’s as if we’re all going to be privileged to watch a sort of science-fiction movie that will be playing out on our watch. We have never seen anything like this before,” said Eberstadt.

At the age of 35, Feng Junhua was in her ninth month of pregnancy when she was forced to have an abortion by family planning officials in June in Guan county of Shandong province. The injection that aborted the child caused hemorrhaging and killed Feng, according to the CECC report.

“We believe this is the worst women’s rights violation in the history of the world. Forced abortion … is a crime against humanity,” Smith said.

Families or women who refuse to have an abortion are charged a hefty fine or get their homes destroyed by the government.

“They went to their home, took their valuables, their beds … their tractors, their TV, their clothing. Those that don’t have anything left, [they] took … their children,” Jing Zhang of Women’s Rights in China said at the hearing. “The same method that was used in [the 1989] Tiananmen Square massacre now is being repeated in various, different villages.”

More than 500 Chinese women commit suicide every day, according to worldhealthcare.org, Smith said. The suicide rate for women is three times higher than that of men.

“I don’t think that this suicide rate is unconnected to the forced abortion in China,” Reggie Littlejohn, an expert on the policy for Human Rights Without Frontiers, said at the news conference before the hearing.

“Abort it! Kill it! Terminate it! You cannot give birth to him or her!” is just one example of the several banners in the streets of China that the Family Planning Commission uses to promote the policy, Wu said in his written testimony.

Australia apologizes to British child sex slaves

1950 b/w file photo of 10 year old twins Brian Thomas Sullivan (left) and Kevin James Sullivan from Islington, London, who carry their luggage to the boat train ‘Rangitoto’ as they leave Liverpool Street station in London bound for Auckland, New Zealand. Britain and Australia are saying sorry to thousands of British children who were promised a better life overseas, only to suffer abuse and neglect thousands of miles from home. The British government said Sunday that Prime Minister Gordon Brown will apologize for 20th-century child migrant programs that saw thousands of poor British children sent to Australia, Canada and other former colonies until the 1960s. Many ended up in institutions or were sent to work as farm laborers. (AP Photo / pa File)

Australia apologizes to Brit kids sent to colonies

Associated Press | Nov 16, 2009

by Rod Mcguirk And Jill Lawless

CANBERRA, Australia – When John Hennessey was 10 years old, he was sent from a war-weary Britain to an orphanage in Australia, where he was told food was plentiful and children rode kangaroos to school.

Instead, he was beaten and sexually abused, leaving him emotionally scarred and with a stutter that persists 60 years later.

“There’s no other country in the world that has deported their children to the other side of the world and then abandoned them,” the 72-year-old said before an emotional ceremony Monday in Australia, where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized for his country’s role in a shameful episode in British colonial history.

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Sex-slave trafficking soars in UK

“They stole our innocence,” he added, calling his caretakers in Australia “a ring of pedophiles.”

Rudd acknowledged the deep wounds inflicted by the programs that sent an estimated 150,000 British children to distant colonies — intending to ease pressure on post-World War II Britain’s social services, provide orphaned or abandoned children with a fresh start and supply the empire with a sturdy supply of white workers. Rudd extended condolences to the 7,000 survivors of the programs who still live in Australia, many of whom grew up in institutions where they were physically and sexually abused or were sent to work as farm laborers.

“We are sorry,” Rudd said. “Sorry that as children you were taken from your families and placed in institutions where so often you were abused. Sorry for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold absence of love, of tenderness, of care. Sorry for the tragedy — the absolute tragedy — of childhoods lost.”

The ceremony at Parliament House comes one day after the British government said Prime Minister Gordon Brown would apologize next year for the child migrant programs, which lasted from 1618 to 1967. After 1920, most of the children went to Australia.

Rudd also apologized to the “forgotten Australians” — children who suffered while in state care during the last century. According to a 2004 Australian Senate report, more than 500,000 children were placed in foster homes, orphanages and other institutions during the 20th century. Many were emotionally, physically and sexually abused.

After Rudd spoke, Hennessey climbed the stage to show the prime minister a framed photograph of his mother, May Mary Hennessey, who handed her 4-week-old son over to nuns at an English Roman Catholic orphanage because she was not married. In 1947, the Irish order of Christian Brothers offered to take care of him and other supposed orphans in Australia.

“They said to us kangaroos will take us to school, there’s food everywhere, and we said: ‘of course we’ll go’ — little did we know it was on the other side of the world,” Hennessey said.

Sparsely populated Australia’s close shave with Japanese invasion during World War II inspired a national motto of “populate or perish” and triggered a wave of Australian government-assisted migration from Europe.

Australia had an immigration policy that favored British and white immigrants until the 1970s.

“The Archbishop met us at Fremantle (in Western Australia),” Hennessey said. “I can still remember his words. He said: ‘Welcome to Australia. We want white stock because we’re terrified of the yellow peril.’”

A 1998 British parliamentary inquiry, meanwhile, noted “a further motive was racist: the importation of ‘good white stock’ was seen as a desirable policy objective in the developing British Colonies.”

When Hennessey arrived in Boys Town orphanage — now an elite private school in the farming village of Bindoon, 55 miles (90 kilometers) north of the western city of Perth — the boys slept for more than a year on thin mattresses and iron beds on verandahs until they built their own dormitories.

“When it rained and was windy, we’d get wet and yet the brothers were inside tucked away in their lovely warm beds,” Hennessey said.

Hennessey said his stutter began with a particularly violent and harrowing assault at the orphanage when he was 12 years old. He was stripped naked and nearly beaten to death by the headmaster for eating grapes he had taken from a vineyard without permission because he was hungry.

“What terrified me most was that in my mind I thought: ‘That’s my father. What’s he doing?’ I had nobody else, and he was the one I’d looked up to,” Hennessey said.

He left Boys Town at the age of 17 and became a house painter and decorator in Campbelltown, 40 miles (70 kilometers) southwest of Sydney on the east coast.

After a 13-year search, he was reunited with his mother in England in 1999, when she was 86. She had eventually married, but three pregnancies subsequent to Hennessey’s birth had ended in miscarriages.

Hennessey said he never told his mother, who died in 2005, about the abuse he’d suffered.

“It was bad enough me not being there, but if she realized I was sexually abused and physically abused, you could image how she’d think because she had a guilt complex,” Hennessey said through reddened eyes.

Andrew Murray, a former Australian senator who was sent from Britain to an orphanage in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, called on Australia to pay reparations.

British High Commissioner Valerie Amos said her government had not yet addressed the compensation question, though Britain has been trying to make amends since the late 1990s by funding trips to reunite migrants with their families in Britain.

Brown’s office said officials would consult with representatives of the surviving children before making a formal apology.