Kindest regards
Corneilius
Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe
On, Survivors, Helpers and Missionaries…..
There are so many causes and so many people in need, and so many people who wish to help.
And yet progress is incredibly slow.
More than 100 years after the first public awareness campaign of the criminal and brutal abuse (a word that does not do justice to the realities – it’s more akin to torture) of children in Institutional settings, we are still struggling to come to terms with practices that are ancient and deeply embedded in the Dominant Culture.
Oliver Twist was the second novel by English author Charles Dickens, published by Richard Bentley in 1838. The story is about an orphan Oliver Twist, who endures a miserable existence in a workhouse. Shock and horror followed, yet fundamental change did not.
The highly organised Aboriginal Residential School Systems that were instituted in Law by the British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, African, Asian, North and South American Governments and the Churches all started at this time.
Residential Schools, where the children of colonised cultures children were forced into Institutions to be ‘trained’ or ‘assimilated’ are at least 500 years old. There are threads of these kinds of mechanisms dating back to the Roman Empire.
Children today are still forcibly removed from their families and placed in Institutional ‘care’, often on the most spurious of grounds, and are still suffering from the adverse affects of ‘helpers’, some of whom are genuine, some of whom are predators. The damage from such 'mistakes' may never be repaired.
And still the stories, that is to say the evidence of living Survivors, and the historical record, is routinely ignored, dismissed, denied, suppressed.
Survivors are targeted, intimidated, manipulated, hospitalised in psychiatric wards and marginalised. Not least by those who are responsible for those systems of ‘care’ that have harmed so many children. Or their supporters.
There can be no statute of limitations when a child’s life is destroyed thus, for the sentence of pain, confusion, shame, fear last the entirety of the life of the adult that child becomes, and is often passed on as a silent legacy through their chidlren and their families in what is known as intergenerational trauma pattering. "The sins of the fathers.........." means more than most understand, and those who do understand what this means take opposing views; one side sees it as an essential tool of power, the other as an essential understanding to break the cycles of abuse and neglect.
All too often those who seek to help the Survivors are themselves embedded in the ideologies and beliefs of the system and unwilling to confront the realities of that system in a meaningful way. They are funded and given legitimacy by those Institutions most culpable for the abuses Survivors survived. They have internalised the system to such a degree that to confront the system means confronting their own sense of identity. And time and again, when Survivors bring this up, the Survivors are called 'trouble makers' or worse....
All too often helpers get in the way of the Survivors, and are co-opted by the Societal power flows so as to protect those Powers.
All too often, helpers become frustrated with those they seek to help – because they do not understand that the affects of abuse and neglect are life long, that they recur again and again, and all too often the helpers claim that those they seek to help are ‘their own worst enemies’.
Catholics who want to help Survivors yet refuse to confront the realities of Catholic Institutional Power are caught in a vice, trapped in a conflict of interest, and in most cases the Survivors, the children are the losers, and the loss is immense : one’s natural expectation of a life that is loving and loved, healthy and nurturing.
Psychologists and Social Workers who limit their purview such that Society and the Establishment (Power) are not identified as the drivers of distress that they are; who sustain the myth that it is all in the mind of the person in distress and if only that person can properly ‘manage’ their mind, then all will be well and the person can re-integrate into a toxic Society, get a job and ‘have a life’ – and on whose terms?
Psychiatrists, who claim that distress and adverse behaviour is genetic, and news media that repeat this inaccurate and damaging 'theory' when it is obvious and known scientifically that this is not the case at all, and who prescribe pharmaceuticals as the means to a management system, managing the symptoms of distress that will not abate precisely because the locus of distress is ignored.
People of Faith, who subscribe to the presence of supernatural demons causing adverse behaviour in human beings, who deem that if only those demons can be exorcised the health will return, and who therefore diminish the human agency at the heart of all abuse.
Conspiracy Theorists who claim that Reptiles, Aliens and other entities are controlling the human race in adverse ways, and in so doing absolve real human beings of real and material responsibilities, and worse stimulate unreasonable fear in many, many people.
Technocrats who posit technological solutions to the problems of Civilisation which do not include the leaving of lands as yet ‘unexploited’ to the peoples (and animals ) that dwell therein, whose cultures are now understood to be both sustainable, healthy in physiological and psychological terms, whose societies are as diverse as the habitats they have emerged from, and the return of those lands already taken, for remediation according to the wisdom of experience of those ancient, ancient cultures.
In all these cases, the helpers ‘sense of identity’ replaces their ‘sense of self’. The external is governing the internal. And thus they are unable to respond accurately, appropriately to the realities of Survivors, Aboriginal Peoples, the Environment.
Too many operate under the false assumptions of the Society they were born into, and conditioned by; too many say “If only they could be more like me, us, if only they could find a way to ‘fit in’!”
The helpers and Missionaries are NOT always helping as much as they would like to believe.
The well-meaning MUST face the realities. They must face their own culture and confront it at every turn.
Thus they will leave the space open for those who suffer to help themselves.
Nature is a self healing process. Self healing demands that those who wish to help get out of the way. Giver space to that which needs to grow.
Both Ivan Illych and Paolo Friere have written profoundly, and with great clarity, empathy and honesty on the issue of helpers and missionaries, and their works do a far better job on this issue than I do here...
Alice Miller too has written extensively, and with clarity on this crucial matter, of the helper, the 'enlightened witness'.
"Q.: What kind of therapist, do you feel, is adequately trained to deal with the adult who has been damaged as an early child?
AM:. In my opinion, only therapists who know well of the painful stories of their own childhoods can respectfully and effectively deal with the suffering of their patients. They will not preach them forgetting and forgiveness out of their own fear; they will know that ALL of their patients suffer from the effects of the denial of having been beaten, humiliated or even tortured."
So too David Smail....
"Having spent my working lifetime in the British National Health Service, I have found that only a minority of patients enter my office feeling themselves subjectively the moral equal of their peers. In addition to the distress that brings them there, most people are apprehensively expecting to be judged.
This, when you think about it, is an unusual state of affairs for someone consulting a professional adviser. For example, even though you expect a lawyer to be wiser than you in the ways of the law, you do not anticipate when consulting one that you will be treated as a morally inferior being, and any lawyer who treats clients as such is unlikely in the long run to prosper."
And yet, the evidence is that helpers do assume this superiority, time and time again.
With disastrous results for those they purport to help.
I will be writing more on this. I will be presenting evidence and so will others around the world.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe
Big Society? Think again.
It's an intentional scam - Cameron came across the www.powerinquiry.org back in 2006 which revealed a few key points - that voter apathy was a myth, that what actually was occurring was that more and more people saw the way the politicians sought a mandate then did the pretty much what they wanted , broke promises, had their noses in various troughs, launched wars no-one wanted, suppressed democractic dissent, bailed out bankers for their gambling debts, etc etc and thus tpublic rust in politicians had plummetted , along with live membership of policial parties, whilst involvment in social community works of all kinds increased as people started to do more for their communities at the grass roots by themselves , for themselves- which built in a growing sense of independence and strength.
It revealed in some detail that people were, in general, quite capable of making decisions on matters that affect their lives and were now desirous of a political democracy that conferred that power (the means to make the decisions on how to use taxes to support their communities on issues that directly affected their lives) onto them, away from the central, and finally, that the people had thought long and hard about how to do this (hence the 47 reccomendations of The Power Inquiry) and had come up with viable changes and methods to do this.
In other words Big Society was up and running.... and was therefore seeen as direct threat to centralised Power...
In other words Big Society was up and running.... and was therefore seeen as direct threat to centralised Power...
Cameron, Menzies Campbell and Ed Milliband attended the Power Inquiry Conference and made flowery overtures to the assembled people, nearly 600 strong, from all over the UK. I was there, I heard the speeches. I attended the break-out sessions. I read The Power Inquiry Report, cover to cover. I saw what could be.
Two days later, media reported the politicans as saying that the reccomendations of the Power Inquiry were 'impractical'. And that was that. End of.
Camerons Big Society is an attempt to privatise that constituency so as to undermine it. This includes ,of course, amongst other things, forcing smaller local grass roots charities to close, handing their 'services' over to larger charities whose purse strings are controlled by Corporate and Government funding, the privarisation of the NHS under the false guise of 'improving services' - using that wanton mantra of the market being the natural driver of excellence.
He agrees with Thatcher. There is no such thing as Society - or rather, he and those he works with, dines with, would prefer there was no such thing as Society as a responsive, intelligent and empathic collective, but rather individuals, whose qualities, flawed or otherwise are entirely of their own making, scrambling over each other for a slice of the pie. He's trying to dismantle what has been built up at the grass roots.
Which is why this week, Cameron has gone to Egypt, with a defence sales team on tow.
If you haven't already read the Power Inquiry, I suggest you do so at the soonest opportunity.
We need to know what is possible and what has been rejected by the politicians.
"Yasmin Khan, senior campaigns officer at the charity War on Want, called for the Prime Minister's "shameful" and "ill-timed" trip to be cancelled. She said: "It is deplorable that David Cameron is seeking to exploit the crisis by promoting sales of weapons and torture equipment to the region."
Sarah Waldron, campaigns co-ordinator at Campaign Against the Arms Trade, said: "The UK Government prioritises the interests of arms companies – it makes a mockery of claiming to have a rigorous approach to arms sales. People in the Middle East are dying in an attempt to get democracy and yet Cameron and other ministers are still selling weapons used to oppress them."
People power must be thwarted at every turn. Directly, or indirectly.
If you haven't already read the Power Inquiry, I suggest you do so at the soonest opportunity.
We need to know what is possible and what has been rejected by the politicians.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe
Irish Bishops : Symbolism or Action?
THE CATHOLIC Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin and the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston Seán O’Malley, who washed the feet of a carefully selected group Survivors of clerical child sex abuse in “an act of humble service” at Dublin’s Pro-Cathedral, this Sunday February 20th.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe
Here's a video of The Silent Protest by Survivors outside the Catherdral in Dublin, after the Mass...
The Letter was published in the Irish Independent on 27th February 2011...
Here's a video of The Silent Protest by Survivors outside the Catherdral in Dublin, after the Mass...
The Letter was published in the Irish Independent on 27th February 2011...
Kevin Annet, UK speaking tour and The ITCCS
My dear friends, Happy Spring!
May the joys of the season of budding-ness flow freely for you.
This is a time of renewal.
Here's an event I feel happy to support. There will be more like this, I think.
This month February 2011, Kevin Annett, arrives in Europe to speak about his work, and to advocate for those whose voices have need of hearing.
He will be touring, with readings from his new book, screenings, meetings, lectures, radio shows and more, in Britain and in Europe for the next month.
_______________________________
Weds 23th Feb 7.00 pm
'Canada's Genocide: One Man's Journey to Uncover the Truth’
with Rev. Kevin Annett
Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, King’s Cross,
London, N1 9DX
_______________________________
Sat 26th Feb 11.30am - 1.00pm
Brighton Peace & Environment Centre - book signing and demo
39-41 Surrey Street, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 3PB
_______________________________
Sat 26th Feb 2.00-4.00pm
Earth and Stars (pub) - lecture
26 Windsor Street, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 1RJ
_______________________________
Fri 11th March 7.30pm
Quaker Meeting House
21 King Street, Hereford HR49BX
_______________________________
Sat 12th March 2.30pm to 6.00pm
Crown Hotel
43 Lime Street, Liverpool, L1 1JQ
_______________________________
Wednes 16th March 5.30 - 8.30pm
Bosworth Independent College
Queen's Building
Barrack Road
Northampton
NN2 6AF
_______________________________
Fri March 18th 7.00pm-10.00pm
SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), UCL
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG
Kevin learned about the Canadian Indian Residential School System whilst he was a start-up Pastor for a small community near Vancouver, Port Alberni.
He learned it from the Survivors themselves, and followed that up with a detailed review of all historical documents on the matter, and found that yes, indeed, their harrowing stories were more than common: ubiquitous.
He started to speak out about the matter, in the spirit of true remorse at what his own culture had done to another, in the spirit of empathy and compassion and found there was little support from his Church. The United Church of Canada... or from The Canadian State.
The Church, as an Institution, was deeply implicated in the materialisation of that hidden history, and the hiding of the history itself today. As was the State. This whole system of residential 'care' for the purposes of 'assimilation' of the Indian' was all legislated for, by statute, and funded by State and day to day operations were handed to Orders of Priests, Clergy and Laity,
He turned his research into a book, which he self published. It was removed from Canadian Libraries, and Colleges and is now available on-line.
This following is a document that is partly foundational, in that it lays out the philosophy, the key thinking, the cold rationalisations, the preposterous assumptions, the abject justifications for these systems of 'assimilation'. This Document originated in the USA, though it forms part of a body of work that was a world-wide process.
"Beginning in 1887, the Federal US government attempted to “Americanize” Native Americans, largely through the education of Native youth. By 1900 tens of thousands of Native Americans were studying at almost 150 boarding schools around the United States." They were sent there under duress.
Kevin continued to work as a Pastor, and to share what he knew, to build awareness, to remove the veil, expose the lies. He met and continues to meet resistance, and sometimes extreme hostility, not least from the United Church of Canada.
For being truthful and honest.
He made a documentary about the Canadian Indian Residential School System, the reveal and expose, the stories of survivors, the documented proof of those stories.....
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6637396204037343133# - UNREPENTANT
"documentary reveals Canada's darkest secret - the deliberate extermination of indigenous (Native American) peoples and the theft of their land under the guise of religion.
This never before told history as seen through the eyes of this former minister (Kevin Annett) who blew the whistle on his own church, after he learned of thousands of murders in its Indian Residential Schools..."
***Best International documentary - 2006 Los Angeles Independent Film Festival
***Winner: Best Director for and International Documentary - 2006 New York International Film Festival.
Kevin's work is part of a worldwide net-work of Survivors and their Advocates, who are a diverse population, spanning Nation States, creeds, cultures, all with a common story, and a common wisdom, the wisdom of experience, which by being heard, informs and heals.
It matters not which Institutions or which people are those who act in such a clearly mediated and abusive manner, what matters is that where ever it has occurred, it must be addressed, and where it is still occurring, it must end - and it cannot be said to have ended until full restorative justice, with all that that naturally entails, is actively and materially seen to be done.
I hope you have time to explore this matter, as a friend to all people .....
May the spring be auspicious, and may a new flowering of honesty and empathy prevail amidst the noise.
Kindest Regards
Corneilius
do what you love, it's your gift to universe
In June, 2010, the The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS) was established. Drawing on the work of advocates and Survivors from Canada, the USA, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Australia it will start the process of addressing these matters as a world-wide unified campaign.
The International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State - http://itccs.org/about/
It's 5 basic principles are:
1. Full reparations for survivors,
2. Full disclosure of the crimes,
3. Repatriation of the dead,
4. Criminal prosecution of those responsible,
5. Preventative measures to ensure that the crimes against children end.
----------------------------
And it's coming to London, this September, 2011.
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe
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