Dispel the Illusion

China's coercive one-child policy has resulted in sex-selection abortions of some 40 million baby girls and leads to about 70,000 children being sold every year, reveals a new undercover documentary to be shown on HBO next Monday. "China's Stolen Children," narrated by Ben Kingsley, was made by filmmakers posing as tourists and tells of the after-effects of the country's strict population-control limit of one child per couple through the personal stories of several families. Headed into its 30th year, the one-child policy is characterized as "the world's largest experiment in social engineering."

Although China has made improvements in the area of religious freedom issues over the past several years, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom says that in the last year Chinese police detained 600 Protestants and sentenced 38 to more than a year in prison. This year China is ranked No. 10 on Open Doors’ World Watch List which annually ranks the severity of persecution of believers in 50 countries. In the past year there has been a concerted, on-going campaign by China to scrutinize house church leaders and to silence some believers.

A large number of endangered, unwanted, and unborn children held a town hall meeting on the 4th of July - alarmed at the brutal and untimely killing of millions of their brothers and sisters in recent years. That the murderous war waged on them had the full force and respectability of the law made their plight all the more terrifying. Their complaint was humble and it was simple. They were not distressed by rising gas prices, or the deteriorating economy in general. They were not even frightened by the exponential increase of natural disasters. The threat of global warming or global terrorism did not greatly disturb them. They had become an endangered species, and little had been done to answer their terrified and silent screams from the womb.

One had the distinct impression of a dam bursting. For the better part of two decades, Canadians who confess a desire for some sort of legal limits, however mild, on abortion, have been effectively silenced. They have been told that the issue is settled, that it was decided long ago, that a consensus had formed. Or else they were told it is too divisive a subject, sometimes by the same people who told them it was settled. So effective was this campaign that anyone who persisted in arguing the point risked being marginalized as extremist, ultra-conservative, outside the mainstream.

The leaders of some of the world's richest nations finished off a sumptuous eight-course dinner with a "G8 Surprise" pudding. But it is the sheer lavishness of the menu which might surprise some as the same politicians spent some of the day discussing how to combat food poverty. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and wife Sarah were among the distinguished guests at the culinary feast last night at the close of the first day of the G8's annual summit.

Two schoolboys were allegedly disciplined after refusing to kneel down and "pray to Allah" during a religious education lesson. It was claimed that the boys, from a year seven class of 11 and 12-year-olds, were given detention after refusing to take part in a practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped. Yesterday parents accused the school of breaching their human rights by forcing them to take part in the exercise.

Jenny was a healthy 13-year-old living in Northern California -- until 15 months ago when, her parents say, she received the third and final shot of the vaccine designed to protect against human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV causes a large percentage of cases of cervical cancer. Soon after getting that third injection, her parents say, Jenny began experiencing the first signs of a degenerative muscle disease. They say their daughter is now almost completely paralyzed. Did Gardasil cause Jenny's condition?

The United States' so-called war on drugs brings to mind the old saying that if you find yourself trapped in a deep hole, stop digging. Yet, last week, the Senate approved an aid package to combat drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America, with a record $400 million going to Mexico and $65 million to Central America. The United States has been spending $69 billion a year worldwide for the last 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion, on drug prohibition -- with little to show for it. Is anyone actually benefiting from this war? Six groups come to mind.

Dr. William Harrison, notable for being Hillary Clinton’s former OB-GYN as well as for performing over 20,000 abortions, has admitted in recent a e-mail exchange with a prominent Christian psychologist that abortion “cancels” a human soul. “Anyone who has delivered as many babies as I have, and has seen hundreds of living and dead embryos and fetuses being spontaneously aborted as have I, knows exactly what we are doing when we provide an elective abortion for our patient. We are ending the life of an embryo or a fetus,” Harrison wrote in an e-mail to Dr. Warren Throckmorton, associate professor of Psychology at Grove City College in Pennsylvania.

A Ugandan health official is challenging popular conceptions that his continent’s devastating AIDS pandemic can only be solved through an increased use of condoms. In the face of worldwide efforts to combat AIDS in Africa with contraceptives and treatment, the head of Uganda’s National AIDS Prevention Committee, the Rev. Sam Ruteikara, said worldwide efforts to combat AIDS in Africa with contraceptives are not as effective as the strategy that Uganda in particular has used successfully: the ABC Plan. ABC stands for “Abstain, Be faithful, or use Condoms (as a last resort.)”

This year’s gathering is quite a unique one. The Prince of the Netherlands joined his mom Queen Beatrix this year. And of course Queen Sofia of Spain attended, as always. We’ve got Fouad Ajami, who seems to be a regular. He’s Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Another Arab mask on the NWO face. Probably being ordered to continue misrepresenting Arab culture to youth and propagandizing for the agenda ...

The cost of Britain’s "surveillance society" measures is now running at £20 billion, a new report reveals today. The amount is equivalent to £800 per household and includes £19 billion for the planned ID card system and £500 million for CCTV cameras ... Mr Davis said: “This is yet further damning evidence of Big Brother’s expensive tastes. ID cards, CCTV, the DNA database and other measures are a huge waste of taxpayers’ money on policies that undermine freedom and are utterly ineffective in fighting crime or terrorism.

A leading headmaster who is leaving one of the most popular schools in the state system to work in the private sector has accused the Government of turning teachers into "social workers and surrogate parents". Rod MacKinnon, the head of Bexley Grammar School, south-east London, said schools were being forced to shun traditional lessons as ministers manipulated the education system for the purposes of "social engineering". He said schools "cannot solve all of society's ills" and should be left to teach.

None of this could have happened in the United States, where the right to say what's on your mind, no matter whose feelings it may hurt, is considered vital to the self-government of a free people. The First Amendment means that in our liberal democracy, we have to tolerate speech many of us find obnoxious or offensive. But it affirms that enduring hateful or distasteful oratory is far less dangerous than giving taboos on controversial speech the force of law.

THE new cervical cancer jab is believed to be behind a huge jump in the number of women and girls suffering bad reactions to vaccinations. The first annual vaccination statistics for New South Wales to include Gardasil reveal a 1600 per cent surge in reported adverse side-effects among young females who were immunised last year. These include allergic reactions, collapsing, dizziness, nausea and unexplained illnesses. New female cases pushed the total adverse reactions to immunisations last year to the highest on record.

Few monks remain, however, in the province's three most important monasteries. Many have disappeared, their whereabouts a mystery. Chinese officials have deployed troops and paramilitary police around the ancient religious institutions, suspecting these sprawling hillside communities are at the heart of the unrest that has swept the region since early March. Dozens, possibly several hundred, have been arrested or are detained and under investigation for their roles in the anti-Chinese demonstrations and riots that hit Lhasa on March 14.