One billion children are at risk today from war, poverty and hunger, failed by the world's governments

By Stephen Khan

They are a billion strong. Diseased, malnourished, uneducated, they are a people on the run from wars that take the lives of their brothers and sisters. And they are all children - half the children on earth today.
http://207.44.245.159/article7454.htm

Predatory capitalism must go. Sharon, too.

[ 11 December 2004: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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 'Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,' said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, 'but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?'

   'It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,' was the Spirit's sorrowful reply. 'Look here.'

   From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

'Oh, Man! look here! Look, look, down here!' exclaimed the Ghost.

   They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

   Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

   'Spirit, are they yours?' Scrooge could say no more.

   'They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!' cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. 'Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And abide the end!'

   'Have they no refuge or resource?' cried Scrooge.

   'Are there no prisons?' said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. 'Are there no workhouses?'

   The bell struck twelve.

   Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/DicChri.html

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We are (relatively) wealthy, skillful and smart. What can we each do as individuals to help just one child? Locally or globally, we can volunteer, donate, write letters.... there is much that a few dedicated Canadian adults could do to change things.

http://www,google.com
Warchild
UNICEF
Save The Children
Free the Slaves
and others...

[ 11 December 2004: Message edited by: yankcanuck ]