8/7/00

29/6/00

< size="2" color="#FF0000">UK fathers be warned. The disgusting behaviour of American power-hungry government officials will probably soon be a feature to be dealt with here.

THE CRIMINALIZATION OF FATHERHOOD

By  Stephen Baskerville 

Printed in the Newsletter of the Women's Freedom Network (July/August 2000) and in MEDIA BYPASS August 2000.

Fatherhood is now the rage: presidential initiatives, federal staff conferences, congressional task forces and resolutions, federal grants, new non-profit organizations, and media reports now "promote" fatherhood.

Yet the nation's discovery of fatherhood also has a darker side: law enforcement initiatives targeting "deadbeat dads," federal registers monitoring millions of parents, databases and information gathering on American citizens accused of nothing, new cadres of armed, plainclothes police, and endless "crackdowns" on allegedly dissolute parents. 

Campaigning for president, Al Gore calls for incarcerating more fathers.

What we are seeing today in fact is nothing less than the criminalization of fatherhood: criminal penalties imposed on citizens who have committed no act but are made outlaws through the actions of others. This phenomenon proceeds largely from involuntary divorce and is effected by family courts. 

Family courts are the arm of the state that routinely reaches farthest into the private lives of individuals and families. "The family court is the most powerful branch of the judiciary," writes Robert W. Page, Presiding Judge of the New Jersey Family Court. 

By their own assessment, "the power of family court judges is almost unlimited." One father was told by a New Jersey judicial investigator: "The provisions of the US Constitution do not apply in domestic relations cases."

A father brought before these courts ? in the absence of any civil or criminal wrongdoing will immediately have his movements, finances, personal habits, conversations, purchases, and contact with his children all subject to inquiry and control by the court. 

He must submit to questioning about his private life that author Jed Abraham has termed an "interrogation." He must surrender personal papers, diaries, correspondence, and financial records. His home can be entered at any time. His visits with his children can be monitored by court officials and restricted to a "supervised visitation center," for which he must pay an hourly fee and where he and his children will be observed and overheard throughout their time together. Anything he says to his spouse or children, as well as family counselors and personal therapists, can be used against him in court, and his children can be used to inform on him. 

Fathers are questioned about how they "feel" about their children, what they do with them, where they take them, how they kiss them, how they feed and bathe them, what they buy for them, and what they discuss with them. 

A father will be forced, on pain of incarceration, to pay for lawyers and psychotherapists he has not hired. His name will be entered on a federal registry, his wages will be garnished, and the federal government will have access to all his financial records. If he refuses to cooperate he can be summarily incarcerated or ordered into a psychiatric examination. 

Henceforth that parent has no say in where the children reside, attend school or daycare, worship, or visit the doctor and dentist. He has no right to see their school or medical records nor any control over what medications or drugs are administered to them. He can be enjoined from taking his children to a physician when ill. He can be told what religious services he may (or must) attend, what he may do with them, and what subjects he may discuss with them in private. And he can be forced to pay two-thirds or more of his income as "child support." 

If for any reason the father falls more than $5,000 behind he becomes a felon. If he moves to another state while he is in arrears, perhaps to find work, he becomes a felon. It is possible he can even become an instant felon from the time his children are taken. If his ordered child support is high enough, and if it is backdated far enough, he will be an instant felon and subject to immediate arrest. 

A presumption of guilt pervades child support enforcement where "the burden of proof may be shifted to the defendant" according to one ruling. In clear violation of the Constitution it has been held that "not all child support contempt proceedings classified as criminal are entitled to a jury trial," and "even indigent obligors are not necessarily entitled to a lawyer."

Setting child support is a political process conducted by interest groups involved in collection but from which parents who pay the support are excluded. Such legislating by courts and enforcement agencies raises serious questions about the separation of powers and the constitutionality of the process. Where officials in all branches and at all levels of government develop a financial interest in hunting "delinquents," it is predictable that they will create delinquents to hunt. 

Obviously the more onerous the child support levels, and the more defaults and arrears created, the more demand for coercive enforcement and for the personnel and powers required.

Private collection firms also set the levels of what they collect. Not only does an obvious conflict-of-interest arise in terms of the amount to be collected, but the firms can create precisely the "delinquents" and "deadbeats" they are hired to pursue and on which their business depends.

In Los Angeles former Deputy District Attorney Jackie Myers told the Los Angeles Times she left office in 1996 because "we were being told to do unethical, very unethical things." 

Myers is not alone. "I got a call from a homeless shelter and was told that I had put a man and . . . his four children out on the street because I had put an enforcement order . . . for 50% of his income," ex-Deputy District Attorney Elisa Baker recalled. "That was the first time I was in touch with the ramifications of what I was doing."

Men are now forced to support children who are acknowledged not to be theirs biologically. Stepfathers are ordered to pay support for stepchildren. Grandparents and second wives are pursued by child support prosecutors. 

A presumption of guilt also pervades allegations of domestic violence made during custody proceedings, where a father's contact with his children is criminalized through restraining orders that are routinely issued with no evidence of wrongdoing whatever - orders that cannot protect anyone because they criminalize not violence (which of course is already criminal) but a father's contact with his own children. 

Family law is now criminalizing rights as basic as free speech. In many jurisdictions it is now a crime to publicly criticize family court judges, and fathers have been jailed for doing so. 

A paper funded by the Justice Department, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (an association of ostensibly impartial judges who sit on actual cases) attacks fathers' groups for their political opinions and activities!

No figures are available on how many fathers are incarcerated for "family crimes." Informal estimates put as much as one-third of the nation's jail population consisting of fathers on contempt-of-court charges. Some jurisdictions now propose creating forced labor camps specifically for fathers to relieve overcrowded jails. Not since the fall of the Weimar republic has a democracy treated millions of its own citizens in this fashion.

The author, Professor Stephen Baskerville, teaches political science at Howard University.

27/6/00

The Soul of Britain with Michael Buerk (broadcast on BBC1 25/6/00)

The following extract seemed worth mulling over. 

Michael Buerk: 

"Tim Steel had a highly successful career in marketing and advertising, until five years ago, when he left it all behind and moved to the west coast of Scotland."

Tim Steel: 

"Marketing people believe that their job is to increase the demand - to create a demand - and not simply to inform and supply that demand. 

My problem, for myself, is that I know how effective I am in creating those desires in people. And when I see marketing people whom I admire, and they are as, or more, effective at doing it [than me] I see it as being a bit like a trained killer. And just because you are trained at killing doesn't mean that you have to go out and kill everybody! 

... Marketing works to create a sense of insecurity. And then it panders to it. ... They are compensating for an insecurity. It is perfectly legitimate, therefore, [for marketers and advertisers] to work to increase that sense of insecurity, and then to sell people a palliative that will help them to compensate for those insecurities. ...

And the hype and the hysteria generated by the media, the government and the charities, also create insecurities in people. And this gives those organisations more power!

Now, advertisers create insecurities particularly well.

As an example, the NSPCC's 'in your face' Full Stop Advertising campaign of 1999 was 'researched', created and launched by Saatchi and Saatchi! It's one of the world's leading advertisers. 

You don't get much better than that!

Is it any wonder, therefore, that there is 10 times more depression now than in the 1950's?

After all, it's what the best advertisers in the world are selling us!

23/6/00

NATIONAL POST (CANADA) 

Monday, June 12, 2000
By Susan Martinuk

"The United Nations may have hosted a worldwide conference on women's equality, but it is abundantly clear this was one conference where all women were not equal. In fact, some women were not even welcome.

If you're a radical, left-wing gender feminist who is pro-abortion and considers the traditional family to be a repressive patriarchy, the door was wide open. If you're a lesbian, even better. Heck, the Canadian government might even have paid your way to the conference or given you a position on its negotiating team.

But if you're a stay-at-home mother, or a social conservative who is straight, anti-abortion and pro-family, then you were officially persona non grata -- and the Canadian government supported efforts to ensure that your influence was limited.

One of the government's academic funding agencies gave a $98,000 grant to the University of Quebec so "researchers" could investigate the lobbying "tactics" of conservative women's groups and devise strategies to counter them at the Beijing+5 conference that ended Saturday in New York.

Apparently, this was deemed necessary because feminist groups "expressed their unease at the presence of right-wing feminist groups at the UN." The researchers describe such "intimidating" tactics as wearing red buttons saying Motherhood or blue buttons saying Family. Of course, feminist groups sport buttons saying [M]Otherhood and FAKE Women (a slam at REAL Women, a conservative women's group).

The report also alleges that some people carry Bibles (although other reports say there is no evidence of this) or wear religious robes (the only Christian group to do so was a group of Catholic brothers who wear such attire every day of the year). The study also claims that Christians had ashen crosses on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday. But the report doesn't make any reference to Muslim women who wear religious veils and head coverings or delegates from other traditions that have particular dress requirements.

One hundred thousand taxpayer dollars to report that priests wear robes and that buttons proclaiming Motherhood are frightening! Perhaps the government and the authors of the report have forgotten the very scary fact that by far the majority of women in Canada are mothers. Compare these "intimidating" tactics to those used by the feminists (including Canada's official delegation) to ensure their radical agenda was adopted:

Members of conservative NGOs (non-governmental organizations) were shouted down at meetings and had their recommendations pushed to the end of the agenda -- only to be deleted as time ran short. Meeting times and places were changed - and conservative groups conveniently not notified. 

The UN gave official NGO status to more than 2,000 feminist and left-wing groups -- but conservative groups numbered between 15 and 20. The UN bureaucracy deliberately acted to further limit the influence of conservative groups by reducing the number of official participants to three per NGO. Given such numbers, one can see why such an overwhelming conservative presence would be intimidating!

If using bureaucracy to manipulate the proceedings didn't work, there were more blatant tactics. A pro-life, pro-family delegate from Poland was told to support the push for sexual and reproductive rights or risk Poland's acceptance into the European Union. A pro-family member of the Nicaraguan government who opposed the proposed definition of gender was fired when the UN threatened to withhold funding to Nicaragua if this position was not reversed. Humanitarian aid packages are frequently used as political tools to enforce compliance with coercive population methods and the western agenda on sexual rights.

So much for the feminist cry of "choice" and "equality" and "tolerance" for all women. It is clear that equality and tolerance are only extended to those who agree with feminist and pro-homosexual rights positions.

The movement for women's rights and equality has been overtaken by fringe, minority groups with militant agendas that have nothing to do with equality. Their goals do not represent those of the majority of Canadian women, nor do they advance the cause of women in developing countries who still lack access to basics such as education and employment.

As one feminist shouted to a pro-family delegate from Australia last week, "You're invading our space. This is our conference." It is indeed.

But as the pitch of their cry increases, we would do well to remember that he (or in this case, she) who shouts loudest probably has the least to say."

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So, 43% of American Women view feminists 'unfavourably' and 13% 'don't know'. 

More polls from Americans?

16/6/00

Men by Valerie Solanas

"The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection of tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming. He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than the apes because, unlike the apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings -- hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt -- and moreover, he is aware of what he is and what he isn't."

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14/6/00

A Founding Mother of the Women's Movement is a Liar Says her Husband.

The extract below is taken from Howard Kurtz's article in The Washington Post.

"When Betty Friedan charged in her new memoir that her ex-husband had beaten her, the media found the story line--a feminist with black eyes--irresistible.

"Battling for Women While Being Beaten at Home," said a George magazine headline. "A founding mother of the women's movement getting black eyes from her husband?" asked the New York Times.

But with a couple of exceptions, reporters made little attempt to reach Carl Friedan, who says the allegations are flatly untrue.

"It's been miserable," he says. "We've been divorced 30 years, and I'm haunted by this."

In a belated attempt to secure equal time, the 80-year-old former advertising man has launched a Web site (Carlfriedan.com) and a letter-writing campaign to the news outlets involved. "Her book is just full of lies," he says."

< size="2" color="#008000">And if you read Howard Kurtz's article, you will discover that Betty Friedan now pretty much admits to it all.

< size="2" color="#008000">Here's some of what Carl Friedan has to say on his website

"Consider my account here of just a few episodes of her insanity, a few of many, and you will begin to understand what went on between us behind the four walls. I have no alternative but to speak out as I am doing now to defend myself against these false charges. 

People often call someone else "crazy" as a put down, but they don't mean literally crazy. When I use the word "insanity" here, I mean real insanity. This should not come as any surprise to people who have had any closeness to her. 

In the mid-sixties one pyschiatrist of hers, Dr. Dalmau, prescribed the drug Thorazine which she took for a week or two until she discovered it was widely used at that time to subdue hysterical mental patients. She stopped taking it, insulted that a doctor would consider her nuts. Early on here on this website you were exposed to one unsettling incident - the one with the kitchen knives. Similar episodes happened a number of times before - her coming at me with knives. I considered that small time compared to the episodes you are about to hear. 

The day before we separated for good she slammed shut a bedroom bureau drawer with such force a huge mirror attached to it shattered. Chards of glass were everywhere. In her fury and panic at the prospect of being abandoned she'd take huge pieces of sharp jagged mirror glass and come at me threateningly. For the first time I seriously believed she could actually kill me. That was some night. I slept with one eye open until the next day when I escaped forever (so I thought).

There are enough witnesses to the kind of behavior I describe and also witnesses to her raging fits and near-raging fits to make all this credible even to her most loyal followers. There were often eye-witnesses to the kind of episodes related here but mostly not, because they occurred behind the four walls. She might lose her temper before her peers and even have tantrums in public , but with them she restrained herself from letting it escalate to physical and vocal violence. 

Children and servants were another matter - their presence didn't matter. She let loose in front of them. And also strangers meant nothing to her like what happened in Guadaloupe in the winter of 1964. That's when she went rushing up and down the corridors of the hotel screaming uncontrollably "You f**king homosexual" because I was not interested in screwing she repelled me so. And then in a small French inn on the same island she threw a heavy ashtray at a picture window. She didn't succeed in breaking the window but her hysteria woke the entire hotel. The manager came along with a cup of tea, thinking that would calm her down. And as for me - she apparently thought she had a connubial right to attack me physically. For better or for worse, she never hesitated. ... "

Carlfriedan.com