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[This post originally appeared on the "Fathers Issues" message board. - SPARC Admin]

This post originally appeared on the "Fathers Issues" message board. - SPARC Admin


"A new poll says that if the election were held today, John Kerry would beat President Bush by a double digit margin. The White House is so worried about this, they're now thinking of moving up the capture of Osama Bin Laden to next month." -- Jay Leno

"President Bush says he has just one question for the American voters, 'Is the rich person you're working for better off now than they were four years ago?'" -- Jay Leno

"There was a scare in Washington when a man climbed over the White House wall and was arrested. This marks the first time a person has gotten into The White House unlawfully since President Bush." -- David Letterman

"President Bush said he was 'troubled' by gay people getting married in San Francisco. He said on important issues like this the people should make the decision, not judges. Unless of course we're choosing a president, then he prefers judges." -- Jay Leno

"This week, both John Kerry and Wesley Clark are making campaign appearance with the guys who saved their lives in Vietnam. Meanwhile, President Bush is campaigning with a guy that once took a math test for him." -- Conan O'Brien

"As you know President Bush gave his State of the Union Address, interrupted 70 times by applause and 45 times by really big words." -- Jay Leno

"The new Prime Minister of Spain has called the war in Iraq a disaster, and plans to bring his troops home as soon as possible. In fact, President Bush is so upset at Spain that he is now threatening to close down the border between Spain and the US." -- Jay Leno

"The White House has now released military documents they say prove George Bush met his requirements for the National Guard. Big deal, we've got documents that prove Al Gore won the election." -- Jay Leno

[Secret Service Investigates Teen's Art Project Depicting Bush As Devil]

Now even 15-year-old boys who draw pictures of Bush are suspected of terrorism. What the &#^! has happened to our country? Is this what we're supposed to be using FBI agents for- investigating children who draw unflattering pictures of the President?

Secret Service Investigates Teen's Art Project Depicting Bush As Devil
 
PROSSER, Wash. -- One drawing showed President Bush's head on a stick. Another depicted Bush as a devil launching a missile.

The drawings by a 15-year-old boy in Prosser, Washington, were enough to prompt some questions from the Secret Service.

Agents questioned the teen after being called by police. The boy's art teacher told school officials about the drawings, and they called police.

The boy was not arrested but the school district has taken disciplinary action.


http://www.wftv.com/news/3223988/detail.html

[Then we are instructed to clean up our speech: "manmade" must be changed to "artificial," "midshipman" to "midshipperson," and so forth. Why the report fails to object to such obviously sexist terms as "mother tongue," "Mother Nature," "ladybug," and "sister city," I can't possibly guess.]

Radical Feminists on the U.S. Supreme Court

March 17, 2004
by Carey Roberts

Just five short days after President Bill Clinton's nomination, Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been confirmed by the Senate and sworn in as Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. That was during the Dog Days of August 1993. Obviously, the Clinton Administration wanted to fast-track the process so no one would have time to ask any embarrassing questions.
Because of her low-key manner, people believed Ginsburg was a moderate. But if the Senate had bothered to look into Ginsburg's background, they would have been troubled, indeed.

Ruth Ginsburg received her law degree from Columbia Law School. In 1971 she established the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. Throughout the 1970s Ginsburg acquired a first-hand knowledge of the workings of the Supreme Court as she argued six cases – all feminist issues – to the Justices.

Ruth Ginsburg made the same assumption as the rest of the feminist movement. She accepted without question the Marxist claim that women's role as mothers and wives is inherently oppressive. And she believed that equality of opportunity should always translate into identical social roles.

In 1977, Ginsburg wrote a report for the Commission on Civil Rights titled "Sex Bias in the U.S. Code". This report demanded 800 changes to federal laws in order to eliminate any and all distinctions between men and women.

For starters, the report claims that the Boy Scouts perpetuate stereotyped sex roles, so they must be gender-integrated or abolished. You can't help but wonder if the current Leftist hostility to the Boy Scouts stems from this recommendation.

Then we are instructed to clean up our speech: "manmade" must be changed to "artificial," "midshipman" to "midshipperson," and so forth. Why the report fails to object to such obviously sexist terms as "mother tongue," "Mother Nature," "ladybug," and "sister city," I can't possibly guess.

But page 206 of this report is where it all comes out. There we learn of Ginsburg's grand vision to reshuffle the deck of the traditional family. She proposes to do away with the husband-as-primary-breadwinner concept:

"Congress and the President should direct their attention to the concept that pervades the Code: that the adult world is (and should be) divided into two classes--independent men, whose primary responsibility is to win bread for a family, and dependent women, whose primary responsibility is to care for children and household. This concept must be eliminated from the Code if it is to reflect the equality principle."

But we're still not done. On page 214 Ginsburg urges us to adopt Communist-style day care services: "The increasingly common two-earner family pattern should impel development of a comprehensive program of government-supported child care."

Radicals often moderate their stance as they get older and wiser. But not Ruth Ginsburg.

On January 29, Justice Bader appeared at a lecture sponsored by the National Organization for Women Legal Defense Fund. Over the years the NOW Legal Defense Fund has used the cover of gender equality to promote their agenda of destabilizing the family and promoting Marxist ideals. Justice Ginsburg not only appeared at the meeting, she introduced the speaker for the 4th Annual Ruth Bader Ginsburg Distinguished Lecture Series on Women and the Law.

In that appearance, Ginsburg showed that she remains ever-faithful to the Sisterhood. Plus, she fostered the perception that she lacks judicial impartiality and objectivity. As Hofstra University law professor Monroe Freedman remarked, "I think this crosses the line."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's writings reveal the true intentions of radical feminism: achieve a gender-less society and impose totalitarian ideals on American society. And her recent appearance at a NOW conference reveals she still hews to the fem-socialist line.

Justice Ginsburg is now 70 years old, and may step down from the bench in a few years. But for now, radical feminists can rest assured that they have a friend in very high places.

Carey Roberts

[Two weeks earlier, she had voted in a medical screening case and taken the side promoted by the legal defense fund in its friend-of-the-court brief.]

Another high court justice faces questions on ethics

Los Angeles Times
Thursday, March 11, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has lent her name and presence to a lecture series co-sponsored by the liberal NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund, an advocacy group that often argues before the court in support of women's rights that the justice embraces.
 
In January, Ginsburg gave opening remarks for the fourth installment in the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Distinguished Lecture Series on Women and the Law.

Two weeks earlier, she had voted in a medical screening case and taken the side promoted by the legal defense fund in its friend-of-the-court brief.

The liberal Ginsburg's involvement with the legal activist group, and recent outside activities by a conservative colleague, Justice Antonin Scalia, have touched off a debate over what kinds of extra-judicial appearances and contacts are appropriate for Supreme Court justices.

The code of conduct for the federal courts does not set clear rules for judges' involvement with advocacy groups. But it warns jurists to steer clear of outside legal activities that would "cast reasonable doubt on the capacity to decide impartially any issue that may come before" them.

Federal law says a judge or justice "shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

Several legal experts said Ginsburg's ongoing affiliation with the legal activist group undercuts her appearance of impartiality. Ginsburg declined to comment.

(Of COURSE she won't comment on her highly questionable and unethical activities. Is anyone surprised? Not me. ...Brent)


Though Ginsburg was well-known as a lawyer for her support of women's rights, Hofstra University law Professor Monroe Freedman said she should have severed her public ties with advocates for women's issues when she was elevated to the Supreme Court by President Clinton in 1993.

"I think this crosses the line," he said.

Kathy Rodgers, president of the NOW legal defense fund, said Ginsburg's connection with the group should not raise questions about her impartiality as a Supreme Court justice.

"She is always very careful in her remarks," Rodgers said. "I've never heard her address cases that are in front of the court. So I don't see any evidence of her violating her impartiality."

Ummmmm, then try opening your eyes, Mzzzzzzz Rodgers- the very fact that Justice Ruth has lent her name and presence to a private, gender-biased special interest group seems like incontrovertble evidence to me. I have to wonder if Mzzzzz Rodgers would be comfortable with a fellow Supreme Court Justice who openly supported a group like 'Fathers Against Paternity Fraud' or something along those lines. My guess is "no".


http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/auto/epaper/editions/today/news_04f4fe8d07a132d90065.html

Both mom and the boyfriend should be shot or jailed, in my opinion. They have NO business raising children.

Posted on Tue, Mar. 09, 2004  
 
Police: Mom tied up child
A grandmother calls the police on her daughter after finding her granddaughter tied up, crying hysterically, police say.

BY DANI DAVIES AND PILAR ULIBARRI
Palm Beach Post

BOYNTON BEACH - A woman and her boyfriend used a bedsheet to tie up her 1-year-old daughter so they could go out dancing, according to police.

The baby's grandmother, Olivia Claros, 50, arrived home shortly after 10 p.m. Saturday and heard her granddaughter, Hayli Nicole Claros, crying hysterically from a bedroom. A sheet was tied around her neck, arms and legs, according to a police report.

Claros, 50, found Hayli's mother, Carolina Pineda, 25, in the bathroom, preparing to go out.

Her boyfriend, Oscar Sánchez-Lucas, 24, was waiting outside in the car. Claros told her daughter to untie the child, but she refused and said Hayli was fine, according to a police report.

Claros said it wasn't the first time she had seen Hayli or her 3-year-old brother, Andrés Daniel Pérez Claros, mistreated, so she called police.

Sánchez-Lucas was arrested and charged with aggravated child abuse for allegedly tying up Hayli. Both he and Pineda were charged with aggravated child abuse for allegedly beating Andrés with a belt, and with child neglect.

Both were being held Monday in the Palm Beach County Jail; bail was set at $15,000.

Police and the state Department of Children & Families are investigating the case. The children's aunt, Elizabeth Del Carmen Ramos, who also lives in the house at 230 NW First Ave., said Monday that Pineda punishes the children every day.

Pineda recently hit Andrés across his back with a belt, leaving a mark police saw Saturday night, according to the police report.

Pineda also has an 8-year-old son, who told investigators his mother and her boyfriend tied up Hayli on another night and left her and Andrés in a bedroom by themselves when they went out for the night, according to the report.

''They cry because they are hungry,'' Ramos said. ``But (Sánchez-Lucas) tells (Pineda) not to feed them.''

Instead, he fixes up the baby's bottle with sour milk and puts chili pepper in their food so they won't want to eat, Ramos said.

''And if they act up, he takes off their diapers and hits them,'' she added.
 
From the Miami Herald and wire service sources.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/8138612.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

"Science Marches On"

 Technology that illuminates the darkest recesses of handbags

 [img src=http://www.webzine.bayer.com/en/bayerwelt/smartsurface/images/art1.jpg" width="430" height="149]
 
Lighting up the gloom. A luminescent film from Bayer Polymers and Lumitec dispels the darkness in handbags. A battery supplies the required energy – and Bayer the necessary materials.
 

It's truly ironic that while engineers have long since succeeded in turning night into day in our big cities, a primeval darkness still prevails in women's handbags, swallowing lipsticks, compacts, mobile telephones and keys.

Those days are now gone. The international leather and bag specialist BREE has brought light into the "black hole" by creating the first illuminated business handbag with Smart Surface Technology. A prototype of this world first was presented to the public at the international "Summer Styles" leatherwear trade fair held in Offenbach in September 2003.

"We had been toying with the idea of illuminating the dark interiors of handbags for quite some time," explained company presidents Axel and Philipp Bree, "but up to now had not been able to find an elegant solution that not only met our traditionally high demands with regard to style and function, but was also technically feasible."
 
Smart Surface Technology
The very solution they were looking for is now available in the form of the Smart Surface Technology developed by Bayer Polymers and the Swiss company Lumitec. It is based on electroluminescence (EL) and is really and truly a "cool" concept because, unlike other light sources, it does not produce heat.

Films of this kind have been around for some time. In the past, however, only small, flat surfaces could be achieved. But with Smart Surface Technology it is now possible to produce luminescent surfaces in any shape you like. What's more, the luminescent film developed by Bayer Polymers and Lumitec lights up on both sides. So when used as a compartment divider inside a handbag, it can bathe two compartments in a pleasant light simultaneously. A battery provides the necessary energy at the press of a button. Smart Surface Technology relies on two materials from Bayer: Bayfol® from Bayer Polymers and Baytron® P from H.C. Starck, a subsidiary of Bayer Chemicals.

The illuminated bag could be in the stores as early as 2004. Axel and Philipp Bree are convinced that the demand is there: "In less than five years, interior light will be just as common in handbags as mobile phones are today."

This is a lot like my life, but without the sound. May take a moment for the image to load.


[img src=http://www.generyx.de/anime.gif" border="0]

Synopsis: "War is bad. Men wage war. Therefore men are bad and women are victims."

Gosh, it's all so simple when ya put it like that.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=51&ItemID=5018


The Connection Between Militarism and Violence Against Women
by Lucinda Marshall
February 21, 2004


With no end in sight to the horribly misguided and damaging 'War on Terrorism', it is increasingly urgent to recognize the effects of war on women. There can be no true peace while the pandemic of violence against women continues, a pandemic that is greatly exacerbated by militarism. Making the connection between militarism and violence against women is critical to ending the siege of violence under which all women live.

The theory of Power Over an 'other' provides the common thread between military campaigns and assaults against women. What this theory says is that it is allowable for a person, ethnic group, government, etc. to get what they want by way of power over an other. This modus operandi has led us to a point where, as Patricia Evans points out, we as a civilization have assumed so much power over people and resources, that we now have the power to wipe out the world.

In order for the power over theory to work, an 'other' must be defined by creating distinctions (no matter how false) between people, cultures and so on. The other can be a person, country, ethnic group, etc. This theory is the lifeblood of militarism, which depends on the creating of an other by declaring distinctions between two groups. The other is then asserted to be 'less than'. Once that definition is made, then the other must be protected or destroyed.

All too commonly, whether implicitly or explicitly, women are the 'other'. Consequently, it becomes necessary in the eyes of those who seek Power Over to control and belittle women, and all aspects of womanhood. In many cultures, women are viewed as the possessions of their men. Therefore, when a woman is raped, it is effectively an attack on the manhood of her man. Using this reasoning, women become the targets of war in order to attack the honor of the men of a particular culture, ethnic group or country. For these reasons, rape and other forms of sexual assault against women are always a part of war and conflict. When women are assumed to be possessions that can be attacked, stolen and dishonored, they become a means of feminizing and degrading the enemy.

Many types of violence against women are exacerbated by militarism, including the indirect effects on civilian populations and post-conflict situations. These include: Rape/sexual assault and harassment both within the military and perpetrated on civilian populations. Domestic violence. Prostitution, pornography and trafficking.

Since the beginning of the patriarchal age, women have been considered the spoils of war, invisibilized under the euphemistic phrase, 'collateral damage'. In Rwanda, at least 250,000 women were raped in the 1994 genocide. During the 1990's, more than 20,000 Muslim women were raped as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign in Bosnia. And as recently as 2003, the U.N. reported thousands of women and girls had been raped during fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Gang rape was so widespread and brutal that doctors began classifying vaginal destruction as a combat-related crime.

Military training frequently encourages the hatred and belittling of women. The use of gender slurs motivate men to act aggressively, both toward women within their own culture and women of the 'other' culture. Pornography and prostitution have always been unofficially sanctioned forms of entertainment for soldiers. Until 1999, pornography could easily be purchased by servicemen at U.S. military base commissaries, which were one of the largest purchasers of hard core pornography. It's removal cost the commissaries at least $10 million.

Prostitution is another perennial side effect of military action. There has always been an unspoken U.S. military policy of keeping the men happy. An active sex industry for military R and R has been consistently allowed and encouraged to flourish, in direct violation of U.S. and international law. Women are forced into prostitution as de facto sex slaves for the military in a variety of ways, such as false employment promises, being sold by their families, abduction, etc. It is no surprise that trafficking routes tend to spring up near military bases. More than 5000 women, mainly from the Philippines and the former Soviet Union were trafficked into South Korea in the mid 1990's, primarily to work as 'entertainers' at bars near U.S. military bases.

Women within the military are also considered fair targets. In a recent study, 30% of female veterans reported experiencing rape or attempted rape by U.S. servicemen. According to a Department of Defense survey, one in five female cadets at the Air Force Academy said they had been sexually assaulted during their time there. Unfortunately many of these assaults were not reported when they occurred because the victims feared retaliation, such as damage to their careers or being accused of being disloyal or unpatriotic.

Sexual harassment has long plagued women in the military. The Tailhook Scandal illustrates the depth of the problem. In that case, over 50 officers were implicated in making women run a gauntlet where they were man-handled in a variety of sexual ways. Six other officers were accused of blocking the investigation into the scandal. What is most significant is that despite Congressional hearings and massive news coverage, none of those implicated were ever court martialed or prosecuted in civilian courts.

There is also a long history of domestic violence within the military culture. There have been 218 domestic murders in the U.S. Military since 1995. While there are services available for military families who experience domestic violence, the system makes it hard for military wives to report DV.

In general there are very few safeguards for the victim. Batterers are rarely prosecuted or even barred from getting near their victims. The attitude of commanders when told of domestic violence incidents has tended to be, "I'll take care of it, he's my soldier," rather than one of protecting the victim. It is not uncommon for commanders to ignore orders for anger management counseling and the like when it conflicts with military assignments. In fact, the military has handled most cases of domestic violence by administrative actions rather than by court martial. In sharp contrast, in 1990, 80% of civilian cases were referred for prosecution.

The effects of militarism during post-conflict periods are also quite grave. Men returning from 'war' frequently transfer their entitlement to commit violence from the battlefield to their own communities. For example, after the supposed end to the war in Afghanistan, the condition for women in that country has worsened considerably. Rape, forced prostitution and marriages, acid burnings, the bombing of girls' schools, and the sale of women are daily atrocities. And here in the U.S., 3 soldiers returning from duty in Afghanistan promptly killed their wives at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

The time has come when we can no longer deny that misogynist violence is a major component of militaristic power over thinking, as well as a significant part of the global pandemic of violence against women. But we must go beyond that and recognize the reality that men's violence against women is so prevalent, that even in 'peacetime', there is no peace for women. According to a recent UNIFEM report, one in three women will be sexually assaulted during their lifetime. According to the U.S. Justice Department, every ninety seconds, a person over the age of 12 is sexually assaulted. 89% of the victims are female, 99% of the perpetrators are male. It is therefore critical that those who are working to raise awareness about misogynist violence and those who are working to end militarism recognize the intersection of their agendas and find ways to work together.

Towards this end, there are many tools that can and should be used. These include the implementation of UNSC 1325 and CEDAW as well as the utilization of the ICC.

The International Criminal Court, established by treaty in 2002, codifies accountability for gender-based crimes against women during military conflict by defining sexual and gender violence of all kinds as war crimes. It also includes means to facilitate better investigation of these crimes and protection of witnesses and victims as well as legal counsel for victims.

UNSC Resolution 1325 mandates the protection of, and respect for, the human rights of women and girls, and calls for the increased representation of women in decision-making for the prevention, management and resolution of conflict and peace processes. It also calls for increasing the number of women appointed as special representatives. Other provisions include support of local women's peace initiatives and respect for international law applicable to the rights and protection of women and girls. It calls for adopting special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, and calls for ensuring that Security Council missions take gender considerations and rights of women into account, including through consultation with local and international women's groups.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), was adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly. It defines discrimination against women as, "...any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field." CEDAW has frequently been referred to as a bill of human rights for women.

It is important to know that the U.S. does not participate in the International Criminal Court and has not signed UNSC 1325 or ratified CEDAW. However, both Iraq and Afghanistan have agreed to all three measures and therefore a case can be made that they are applicable to the situations in those countries. In particular, it should be obvious that violence always violates the human rights of the victims and therefore, UNSC 1325 and CEDAW are obviously applicable to these conflicts. In addition, the documented pandemic of rapes in both of these countries should certainly be addressed by the ICC.

Beyond demanding the utilization of these tools, it is also necessary to speak out against men's sexism and violence. We need to name these for what they are, and make the connection between this toxic sense of male entitlement and the militarism that is killing women.

Finally, we need to find and travel different paths to empowerment. We need to utilize what Riane Eisler calls partnership thinking, to create a sustainable system that derives its power from within and among rather than from power over. As Eisler points out, in a partnership society, based on egalitarian and democratic values, there is a low degree of violence because it is not needed to preserve domination over as it is in patriarchy. Among other things, accomplishing this requires a shift in spending priorities. For instance, we know that quality childcare and good education greatly impact a child's ability to grow into a capable adult. Yet the amount we spend on training educators and childcare providers is a minute fraction of what we spend on training and enabling soldiers to kill. Thus, militarism is enabled to play a disproportionate role in socializing people to accept violence and patriarchy as the norm. By shifting spending priorities, we could begin to change the process of socialization that allows power over gender domination to one of constructive partnership.

Lucinda Marshall is a feminist artist, writer and activist. She is the Founder and Co-Moderator of the Feminist Peace Network, //www.feministpeacenetwork.org..

She is the Co-facilitator of a workshop about militarism and violence against women, that she developed with Rus Ervin Funk of Men Ending Violence and the Center for Women and Families in Louisville, KY, . This article is based in part on material offered in that workshop.

Endnotes:

1. Evans, Patricia. The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to recognize it and how to respond, Avon Media Corporation, Avon, Massachusetts, 1996, p. 29. It is interesting to note that this book focuses on power over in personal relationships, yet right at the beginning, she makes the connection between the personal and political.

2. Women, War, Peace and Violence Against Women, //www.womenwarpeace.org/isues/violence.htm.

3. " Rape So Common In D.R.C., It Is Considered Combat Injury", U.N. Wire, October 27, 2003, http://www.unwire.org/UNWire/20031027/449_9787.asp.

4. "The Pentagon Takes Aim on Pornography", Kentucky Citizen Digest. March, 1999, //www.tffky.org/articles/1999/199903dc.htm.

5. Raja, Kanaga. "Women From Philippines And Former USSR Trafficked Into South Korea For Sex", Third World Network Features, September, 2002, //www.twnside.org/sg/title/2396.htm.

6. Herdy, Amy and Moffeit, Miles. "Female GIs Report Rapes In Iraq War: 37 Seek Aid After Alleging Sex Assaults By U.S. Soldiers", Denver Post, January 25, 2004. In just the last few months, we have learned that 88 cases of sexual assault have been reported by soldiers in the Gulf region during the U.S.'s current invasion of Iraq, with 37 women seeking assistance upon returning from active duty. The women reported not being able to get appropriate help when the incidents occurred.

7. Herdy, Amy and Moffeit, Miles. "Betrayal In The Ranks: For Crime Victims, Punishment", Denver Post, Nov. 16, 2003. This is one of an excellent series of articles. The reporters have continued to report on this story as it unfolds.

8. "Air Force Academy: Few Cases Resolved", Kansas City Star, February 5, 2003. Since new leadership took over in April, 2003, 21 cases of sexual misconduct have been reported at the Air Force Academy. Only four cases have been resolved with only one case resulting in criminal prosecution. In that case the perpetrator was sentenced to 100 hours of community service.

9. "The Tailhook Scandal", 1994, //www.galegroup.com/free.resources/whm/trials/tailhook.htm.

10. Also from Herdy and Moffeit's "Betrayal In The Ranks: For Crime Victims, Punishment".

11. See //www.rawa.org for numerous reports.

12. "One In Three Women Worldwide Could Suffer Violence Directed At Her Simply Because She Is Female", UNIFEM, November 24, 2003, http://www.unifem.org/pressreleases.php?f_page_pid=6&f_pritem_pid=149.

13. "Sexual Assault Statistics", //www.stopfamilyviolence.org.

14. Jefferson, LaShawn R., "Human Rights Watch World Report 2004, In War as in Peace: Sexual Violence and Women's Status", January, 2004, http://www.hrw.org/wr2k4/15.htm.

15. Dixit, Promila, Time Out! Women Call Premptive Strike For Peace: Open Letter to the United Nations Security Council, Spring, 2003. As a member of WILPF, Promila Dixit has worked tirelessly for the enforcement of UNSC 1325.

16. "International Obligations To Protect Women's Rights", Amnesty International, October, 2003.

17. Eisler, Riane, "Work, Values and Caring: The Economic Imperative For Revisioning The Rules of the Game", Center for Partnership Studies, Pacific Grove, CA, 2003. Eisler's The Chalice and The Blade: Our History, Our Future is also critical reading on this subject.
 

Idiots on Parade:

Weather forecasters weren't yet sure whether a snowstorm was coming, but Somerville, Massachusetts, Mayor Joseph A Curtatone wasn't taking any chances. Though not a flake of snow was in sight, he declared a snow emergency. The next day, citizens of the city awoke to find little snow. But some 3,000 of them found $50 tickets on their cars for parking on a snow emergency street. They were the lucky ones. Another 200 had their cars towed. The mayor says he has no plans to forgive the tickets or to cancel the towing charges, which could net the city some $179,000. Neither the state nor any other city in the area declared a snow emergency.

A funny sent to me by the admin:

If you remember the original Hollywood Squares and its comics, this may bring a tear to your eyes. These great questions and answers are from the days when "Hollywood Squares" game show responses were spontaneous and clever. Peter Marshall was the host asking the questions, of course.
 
Q. Do female frogs croak?
A. Paul Lynde: If you hold their little heads under water long enough.
 
Q. If you're going to make a parachute jump, at least how high should you be?
A. Charley Weaver: Three days of steady drinking should do it.
 
Q. True or False, a pea can last as long as 5,000 years.
A. George Gobel: Boy, it sure seems that way sometimes.
 
Q. You've been having trouble going to sleep. Are you probably a man or a woman?
A. Don Knotts: That's what's been keeping me awake.
 
Q. According to Cosmo, if you meet a stranger at a party and you think that he is attractive, is it okay to come out and ask him if he's married?
A. Rose Marie: No; wait until morning.
 
Q. Which of your five senses tends to diminish as you get older?
A. Charley Weaver: My sense of decency.
 
Q. In Hawaiian, does it take more than three words to say "I Love You"?
A. Vincent Price: No, you can say it with a pineapple and a twenty.
 
Q. What are "Do It," "I Can Help," and "I Can't Get Enough"?
A. George Gobel: I don't know, but it's coming from the next apartment.
 
Q. As you grow older, do you tend to gesture more or less with your hands while talking?
A. Rose Marie: You ask me one more growing old question Peter, and I'll give you a gesture you'll never forget.
 
Q. Paul, why do Hell's Angels wear leather?
A. Paul Lynde: Because chiffon wrinkles too easily.
 
Q. Charley, you've just decided to grow strawberries. Are you going to get any during the first year?
A. Charley Weaver: Of course not, I'm too busy growing strawberries.
 
Q. In bowling, what's a perfect score?
A. Rose Marie: Ralph, the pin boy.
 
Q. It is considered in bad taste to discuss two subjects at nudist camps. One is politics, what is the other?
A. Paul Lynde: Tape measures.
 
Q. During a tornado, are you safer in the bedroom or in the closet?
A. Rose Marie: Unfortunately Peter, I'm always safe in the bedroom.
 
Q. Can boys join the Camp Fire Girls?
A. Marty Allen: Only after lights out.
 
Q. When you pat a dog on its head, he will wag his tail. What will a goose do?
A. Paul Lynde: Make him bark?
 
Q. If you were pregnant for two years, what would you give birth to?
A. Paul Lynde: Whatever it is, it would never be afraid of the dark.
 
Q. According to Ann Landers, is their anything wrong with getting into the habit of kissing a lot of people?
A. Charley Weaver: It got me out of the army.
 
Q. It is the most abused and neglected part of your body, what is it?
A. Paul Lynde: Mine may be abused, but it certainly isn't neglected.
 
Q. Back in the old days, when Great Grandpa put horseradish on his head, what was he trying to do?
A. George Gobel: Get it in his mouth.
 
Q. Who stays pregnant for a longer period of time, your wife or your elephant?
A. Paul Lynde: Who told you about my elephant?
 
Q. When a couple have a baby, who is responsible for its sex?
A. Charley Weaver: I'll lend him the car, the rest is up to him.
 
Q. Jackie Gleason recently revealed that he firmly believes in them and has actually seen them on at least two occasions. What are they?
A. Charley Weaver: His feet.
 
Q. According to Ann Landers, what are two things you should never do in bed?
A. Paul Lynde: Point and Laugh.

Working off an anonymous tip, agents from the Business Software Alliance conducted their deadliest--and most successful--software piracy audit to date.  The raid took place at Children's World Daycare Center in Faribault, Minnesota, where it was suspected that employees had installed unauthorized copies of Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Junior Puzzle Challenge on at least thirteen Compaq PCs, a spokesman for the BSA said.

The early morning raid took place Monday as busy parents dropped their preschool-aged children at the door of the  Children's World compound and headed off to work.  A little over half of the center's 48 children had arrived by the time the raid began.  In full riot gear, agents of the BSA fired three rounds of tear gas pellets through first-floor windows of the small building and then stormed in through both the front and rear entrances.  The plan was to seize all thirteen suspect computers and immediately return them to headquarters for license key analysis.  

However, BSA agents say they encountered fierce resistance in the cubby room area, as children began hurling rocks and broken bottles at the officers and chanting anti-American slogans.  It's not clear whether the first shot came from the agents or from the angry child mob, but after the volley of gunfire had subsided, one toddler was dead and three others were hospitalized in serious condition.  One agent suffered a bruised shin, while another accidentally inhaled a dangerous amount of tear gas.
           
Results of the audit concluded that staff members of the daycare center had indeed violated Microsoft End-User License Agreements by installing the same copy of Windows and Junior Puzzle Challenge on every PC in the compound.  The EULA clearly states separate copies must be purchased and registered for each individual PC, with the exception of large corporations participating in Microsoft's "Software Assurance"  annual subscription plan.  Microsoft estimates the damage caused by Children's World to the overall US economy to be nearly 8 billion dollars.
           
"We make no distinction between software pirates and those that harbor them," the BSA wrote in a statement.  "Anyone who installs or uses unlicensed software is threat to both Microsoft interests and national security, and will be dealt with in a harsh and swift manner."  All Children's World students and staff are currently being held without bail in Rice County as they await federal charges.
           
Under the new USA Patriot Act, even extended family members of users of unlicensed Microsoft software can face steep criminal penalties.  The mother of the slain boy was arraigned in Minnesota Superior Court today for harboring a user of pirated software.  If convicted, the woman, whose name has not been released to the media, could face up to $50 million in fines or two years in prison.  Parents of the children who were wounded are also facing criminal charges.
           
All thirteen Compaq PCs had their hard drives removed and then destroyed in a quarantined area to prevent the unlicensed software from infecting other PCs.  Agents say at least one mp3 file was found on one of the hard drives but declined to name the title or artist, citing infringement concerns.


(For those of you who are Humor-Impaired, "It's a joke".)

[USB devices have been around for like 5 YEARS now]

SCO is run by a bunch of scum-sucking maggots, and a press release touts their new service pack for their crappy product. I had to comment on this...


"The two key features of the service pack are that it allows OpenServe administrators to to connect their systems to USB-compatible devices, including USB 1.1- and 2.0-compatible printers, and that it includes the object-relational database management system, PostgreSQL"

So, SCO's shitty software can now connect to USB devices. What a coup, except for the fact that USB devices have been around for like 5 YEARS now. Wheeeee, what a breakthrough! Man, leave it to SCO to be on the cutting edge. (cough, cough)

Second, SCO's lame-ass software now includes "PostgreSQL", a little-known database application that is a worthless piece of crap. They couldn't use mySQL (because that would work better and be faster), so they picked PostgreSQL. Ooooh, I'm dizzy from all the innovation.

Google results for "mysql":  about 16,100,000

Google results for "postgresql": about 3,280,000

In other words, there are about 5 times as many people using/coding for mySQL as Postgesql. Way to go, SCO- pick a loser, then announce it as if it was a smart move. Yeah.


In other news, buggy-whip companies reported lower earnings this quarter....

Ugh. It's hard to believe there are this many bad parents in the world. :(


http://asdf.org/~anna/fucrel/fucked_archive3.html

In either a brilliant move or a sick commentary on politics (or both), Amazon is now selling U.S. Presidential candidates, or at least contributions to such.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/misc/flag.html/102-7327236-8000915

Police: Dad Beats Sexual Predator For Touching Son
Boy's Father, Man Arrested

POSTED: 10:48 PM EST January 6, 2004
UPDATED: 11:09 AM EST January 7, 2004

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The father of an 11-year-old boy beat a registered sexual predator with an ax handle for touching his son, and both men were arrested, police said Tuesday.
[img src=http://images.ibsys.com/2004/0107/2747031.jpg]
Police said Roosevelt Reed, who is listed on the state's sexual predator registry, allegedly entered the room of other tenants at a private community home and touched the boy on the stomach before being scared off by another resident of the room.

When the boy's father learned of what happened, he beat Reed with an ax handle before police could respond, said Lt. James Troiano.

Reed was jailed on charges of burglary and battery of an 11-year-old child. The father was arrested on a charge of aggravated battery.

Reed was being held without bond and his case has been assigned to the Alachua County Public Defender's Office, jail officials said late Tuesday. The father's name wasn't released to protect the identity of the boy, so the jail could no give information on his status or legal representation.

http://www.local6.com/news/2746028/detail.html

[Man says he's addicted to cable; wants to sue Charter]

Man says he's addicted to cable; wants to sue Charter

By Lee Reinsch
[email protected]

Cable TV made a West Bend man addicted to TV, caused his wife to be overweight and his kids to be lazy, he says.

And he's threatening to sue the cable company.

Timothy Dumouchel of West Bend wants $5,000 or three computers, and a lifetime supply of free Internet service from Charter Communications to settle what he says will be a small claims suit.

Dumouchel blames Charter for his TV addiction, his wife's 50-pound weight gain and his children's being "lazy channel surfers," according to a Fond du Lac police report.

(Yeah, there's no way HE could be responsible for his being a lazy slob!! -Brent)

Charter employees called police to the local office at 165 Knight's Way the evening of Dec. 23 after Dumouchel showed up with a small claims complaint, reportedly intimidated an employee and made "low-level threats" to employees' safety, according to a police report.

The report states Dumouchel gave an employee five minutes to get a supervisor to talk to him or their next contact would be "in the ocean with the sharks."

According to the report, Dumouchel told Charter employees he plans to sue because his cable connection remained intact four years after he tried to get it canceled.

The result was that he and his family got free cable from August of 1999 to Dec. 23, 2003.

"I believe that the reason I smoke and drink every day and my wife is overweight is because we watched TV every day for the last four years," Dumouchel stated in a written complaint against the company, included in a Fond du Lac police report.

(Those evil cable TV people, forcing him to watch free TV! They should be put in jail for life!!  With no cable TV, either!  -Brent)

"But the reason I am suing Charter is they did not let me make a decision as to what was best for myself and my family and (they have been) keeping cable (coming) into my home for four years after I asked them to turn it off."

(And of course it was impossible for him to turn the TV off.  -Brent)


According to the police report, Dumouchel called Charter to stop his cable service in August of 1999 and was taken off the billing but not the cable service.

In a written statement, he said he put the family TV in the basement in 1999 after he had called to get cable disconnected, but soon thereafter, his wife had moved it back and hooked up the cable connection, and it still worked.

He stated he "made a deal" with her that "she could watch TV as long as the cable worked."

He then went back to Charter and asked that they disconnect his service, which they reportedly never did.

He stated that he called Charter several times to get the service disconnected for good because he felt it was addictive, according to the report.

Charter's director of government and public relations for eastern Wisconsin, John Miller, says he doesn't take the threat of a lawsuit seriously.

"Even though we consider our services to be a very powerful entertainment product, I don't think it's reached a medical level yet where it could be proved to be addictive," Miller said.

"In our society, any kind of legal action shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone," he added.

Wisconsin Circuit Court records show no civil lawsuit papers filed in Dumouchel's name.

http://www.wisinfo.com/thereporter/news/archive/local_14044768.shtml

;)  I'll let John Cleese say it, since he's so good at it:

http://www.deltabravo.net/test/apology.wav

[A new report offers hope to grandparents, the often forgotten victims in bitter divorce cases.]

A  new report offers hope to grandparents, the often forgotten victims in bitter divorce cases.
By Carol Nader and Ian Munro.

Dian Underwood was almost cut off from her grandson, Blayne, now 10, after his father and mother separated when he was only seven weeks old. For many grandparents on a child's paternal side, that would have been the end of the relationship. The links between a child and the family of its non-custodial parent are often broken after divorce. But Underwood was determined this would not happen to her.

[img src=http://www.theage.com.au/ffxImage/urlpicture_id_1072908911272_2004/01/02/dian_underwood,0.jpg]

"I took myself to court and represented myself and sought one week a year," she says. "If I took any more, I would have taken away the time from my son."

A seven-year slanging match in the Family Court and $120,000 in legal fees later - of which Underwood paid half - Blayne's mother agreed it was best he live with his father, and Underwood could see him whenever she liked. But, by then, her own 36-year marriage had ended under the strain.

"I became quite passionate to the point of obsession," she says. "I fought passionately for the acknowledgement of grandparents, for the relationship that should never have been taken away. I became so driven with it that perhaps I put that first."

The position of grandparents after the divorce of their children was highlighted this week by the report of the bi-partisan Family and Community Affairs Committee into child custody. It urged amendments to the Family Law Act, suggesting that sections of the act dealing with residence and contact orders specifically mention grandparents.

It also wants the Federal Government to devise ways to include grandparents and extended family members in family counselling and for grandparents to be considered when separated couples devise plans for parenting and contact.

Research suggests that grandparents are big losers following divorce. More than a third of mothers who had residence of their children said those children never or rarely saw their paternal grandparents, according to an Australian Institute of Family Studies report, the sole research into the topic in this country.

That research is more than 10 years old. A more recent British study, published this year, found that maternal grandparents were more likely to have close relationships and frequent contact with their grandchildren of a fractured relationship.

Trevor Bock, a family mediator at Sydney firm Michael Green Mediation, believes the majority on both sides miss out; he estimates that as many as 80 per cent of grandparents lose access to their grandchildren after their offspring's divorce. "It's heart-wrenching to the grandparents because they're part of the family," he says.

 
[img src=http://www.theage.com.au/ffxImage/urlpicture_id_1072908911274_2004/01/02/bradshaws,0.jpg]
Mavis and Doug Brayshaw with photographs of their grandchildren.
Picture: Michael Rayner
 

As one close observer of family law said this week: "Contact is hard enough between separating couples who are closest to the action. Those family dynamics then bleed through the whole family structure."

The day that Doug Brayshaw's son, Geoff, a sales manager from Rowville, had to leave his family home, Doug and Mavis Brayshaw felt estranged from their grandchildren.

Later, Geoff, his money depleted by a bitter custody battle, had to move back to his parents' house in Forest Hill, relying on them for accommodation, meals and domestic, financial and emotional support.

"It caused us a financial strain because we had to look after him and we had to look after the children too when they came every second weekend," Doug says. This continued for two years until Geoff was able to buy his own house. Then Doug saw even less of "Paige", now 17, and "Bill", 11. It was not until Paige recently chose to live with her father that Doug began to see her more frequently; he still barely sees Bill.

Says Doug: "The Family Court is an adversarial, financially draining system and it comes down to how much you can afford to pay your solicitors. Grandparents can go to blazes, they don't count, and yet it's the grandparents who have to take the brunt."

While he was aware that he could apply for more access to his grandchildren, "I got very bitter about the entire system".

Any restriction on a parent's access is also "a de facto restriction on grandparents", he says. "I would not lower myself to spend huge amounts of money to go to the Family Court to see my grandchildren little more than once a fortnight or a month."

He believes that the grandparents on the mother's side are less likely to suffer.

"Why should I, as a grandparent on the paternal side, be put through all this trouble and expense when the grandparent on the maternal side doesn't have to do anything?"

In fact, the Australian Institute of Family Studies has reported that the difficulties stand, irrespective of whether it is mothers or fathers who have primary residence - custody - of the children.

In its submission to the parliamentary committee last August, the AIFS said: "In cases where children were living with their father, the situation was reversed: children were more likely to have contact with their paternal rather than maternal grandparents."

Jill Thompson, policy director with the Council on The Ageing, says grandparents can be used as a weapon in a couple's custody skirmish.

"They can say: 'I'm not going to let you or your parents have anything to do with my children. You're out and so's your whole family'," she said.

This can be damaging to the child, who not only experiences the trauma of losing a parent but often a whole extended family. It can also lead to insecurity, says associate professor Linda Hancock, Deakin University's director of public policy.

"Grandparents are often the kids' anchor back into extended family," she said. "That helps with the kids' sense of belonging."

Often, grandparents had been closely involved with bringing up the children pre-divorce. A recent COTA report quotes statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showing that in 1997, of those households that received informal care for children aged up to 11, grandparents provided the care in two-thirds of the households - a total of 537,600.

If a mother wishes to work, cannot afford child care, or is only receiving the minimum $5 a week in child support from her ex-partner, the role of grandparents becomes even more important, says Monash University demographer, Dr Bob Birrell.

"One of the reasons why a relatively low proportion of single mothers are doing anything but part-time work is because of the cost of child care," he says.

But sometimes the role of grandparents goes even further than helping out with child care. The COTA report says ABS figures suggest there are 12,000 children aged 0-14 living with their grandparents.

There are many others, such as Phyl Doolan, who provide enormous support. She came to her daughter Louise's rescue when her marriage ended, leaving her with two children.

Phyl has also come to the financial aid of Jessica, now 14, and Jack, 7, contributing more than $60,000 for clothes, school uniforms, books and food, even at times paying Louise's rent. Says Louise: "She's always provided me with somewhere for the children and security and stability."

The 1975 Family Law Act has always made provision for grandparents to make applications for contact or residence. In 2000, the act was amended so that grandparents were specifically mentioned among those who may apply for a parenting order.

But the committee proposed that grandparents be specifically mentioned in parts of the act dealing with residence and contact orders because it believed their rights were not widely understood.

The committee said: "Recognition of (grandparents' significant) role is already explicitly set out in several sections of the Family Law Act and implied in others, and can be considered by judges in making decisions on the best interests of a child. However, this is not well known."

Even when it was known, the committee said, many grandparents were reluctant to pursue their rights for fear of making matters worse.

"Other grandparents did not act because of a belief that they should not interfere in their own children's lives. In cases where the parent was subject to abuse or domestic violence, no action was taken by grandparents out of fear of exacerbating that situation," the committee said.

"Some grandparents reported having AVOs - apprehended violence orders - (or worse, allegations of sexual abuse) taken out against them by the resident parent, which was a significant deterrent to further action. And in other cases, the stereotypes of problematic relationships between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law came into play."

Dian Underwood, who was heartened by the acknowledgement of grandparents in the committee's report, has used her experience to become a campaigner for grandparents' rights. She wants to set up a national grandparent register to allow those who have been cut off from their grandchildren to list their names in the hope that the children will one day come to find them.

She has founded GRaNS, Grandparents Rights Need Support, and has provided emotional support to many suffering the grief of their children's divorce from her home in Sydney, where she moved to be near Blayne and his father.

She says of her callers: "We support them with empowerment and courage not to give up on their grandchildren. There are stories like the case where the daughter was killed in an accident and the son-in-law alienated the maternal grandparents from the child. That's heartbreaking. You get to the point where it gets so emotionally draining."

For her, it has been worth the battle. Blayne's Christmas card to her says it all: "Dear Nan, thanks for being so special."


From: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/02/1072908904222.html

[Clinton introduced a quote from Gandhi by saying, "He ran a gas station down in St. Louis."]

You have to wonder about a politician that would say this when speaking in front of a crowd.

Hillary Clinton Regrets Gandhi Joke

Hillary Clinton Says She Regrets Joking That Gandhi Used to Run a Gas Station in St. Louis

The Associated Press

ST. LOUIS Jan. 6 — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton apologized for joking that Mahatma Gandhi used to run a gas station in St. Louis, saying it was "a lame attempt at humor."

The New York Democrat made the remark at a fund-raiser Saturday. During an event here for Senate candidate Nancy Farmer, Clinton introduced a quote from Gandhi by saying, "He ran a gas station down in St. Louis."

After laughter from many in the crowd of at least 200 subsided, the former first lady continued, "No, Mahatma Gandhi was a great leader of the 20th century." In a nod to Farmer's underdog status against Republican Sen. Kit Bond, Clinton quoted the Indian independence leader as saying: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

The director of a U.S. center devoted to Gandhi's teachings said the remarks amounted to stereotyping and were insensitive.

After being approached by The Associated Press to clarify the remarks, Clinton suggested in a statement late Monday that she never meant to fuel the stereotype often used as a comedic punch line that certain ethnic groups run America's gas stations.

"I have admired the work and life of Mahatma Gandhi and have spoken publicly about that many times," Clinton said. "I truly regret if a lame attempt at humor suggested otherwise."

Michelle Naef, administrator of the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, a Memphis, Tenn.-based organization founded in 1991 by a Gandhi grandson, credited Clinton and her husband, former President Clinton, with long having "supported the Gandhi message." But she said Saturday's remarks "could be incredibly harmful."

"I don't think she was, in any way, trying to demean Mahatma Gandhi," Naef said. "To be generous to her, I would say it was a poor attempt at humor. Perhaps I'm overly sensitive, but I find it offensive when people use stereotypes in that way."

 
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040106_1188.html

A friend sent me this:

"The big stink arising from the crocodile hunter Steve Irwin dangling his child in front of a crocodile misses the point. The real child abuse would have been if he had dangled his child in front of Michael Jackson."  ;)

Comments on an article about how Chicago is officially the "Murder Capital" of the US.

As of Wednesday, Baltimore reported 271 killings in 2003, compared with 253 in 2002. It was a 7 percent increase and the highest homicide total during the four-year tenure of Mayor Martin O'Malley, who campaigned on a pledge to reduce annual totals to 175.

Wow! Now THAT'S a campaign pledge- to reduce the number of homicides back down to only 175 a year, because 271 is just too gosh darn many. What a guy. And, not to be outdone in the Rather Obvious Moron Department, the Police Commissioner revealed a little known fact for us, explaining why there were so many more deaths than last year:

Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin P. Clark said part of the increase was due to gunmen hitting their victims with more bullets.

No shit? More bullets = more dead people. Who would have ever guessed? Apparently the bad guys have been taking target practice, because they're hitting their victims with more bullets and unbelievably, that translates into more people getting killed.

Man, I am SO glad these guys are on the job.

[VATICAN CITY (AP) - A frail Pope John Paul ushered in the Christmas holiday in a midnight mass in St. Peter's Basilica, decrying "too much blood is still being shed" in conflicts around the world.]

VATICAN CITY (AP) - A frail Pope John Paul ushered in the Christmas holiday in a midnight mass in St. Peter's Basilica, decrying "too much blood is still being shed" in conflicts around the world.

Yeah, thanks for the News Flash. I'm supposed to be in awe of this ageless wisdom and piercing insight?

Statements like this are why the pope is deemed less and less relevant every year. I mean, come on- had anyone else made this statement, they'd have been lampooned as a bit stupid to say the least, but let the pope say it and suddenly it's breaking news and worthy of reporting on. What's next- "Pope Reveals That Gravity Makes Things Fall To The Floor"?

"Lord of the Rings" is for boys ...
A New York Times critic falls for lazy gender-typing.
By Stephanie Zacharek


Dec. 22, 2003  |  In the latest entry in the "blue is for boys, pink is for girls" school of criticism, Caryn James, in a New York Times Arts & Leisure piece on Sunday, argues that the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy -- up to and including the final installment, "The Return of the King" -- is a big snooze for those of us not blessed with a Y chromosome.

James says she yawned through most of the first two movies, as well as the third: "The final entry in the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy reveals once more that what the chick flick is to men, this trilogy is to women -- or at least to a large secret society of us for whom the series is no more than a geek-fest, a technologically impressive but soulless endurance contest."

What's interesting about James' piece isn't that she dislikes Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies, which is any critic's prerogative. She thinks they're too rarely infused with human feeling. (She notes that she prefers the Jackson of "Heavenly Creatures," a nicely observed movie about two teenage girls who commit a murder.)

 
But then, why play the tired old Hollywood-marketing game of hanging a prescribed gender tag on art? Not trusting her own view of the works at hand, James has to blame the fact that she doesn't like them on her sex. It's an approach that renders serious thought about movies, and the ways we respond to them, meaningless. Why think critically, when you can just consult the imaginary focus group in your mind?

You don't have to be an advertising executive to know that soppy romances like "Under the Tuscan Sun" are marketed mainly to women, while action movies like "Bad Boys II" are sold to appeal to men. That's not to say that members of either sex can't (or don't) enjoy both types of movies. In fact, I suspect there's much more crossover than marketing specialists would like to believe.
 
But there's a danger to positing that certain types of movies are "for" audiences of either gender. That's how you get a world of "inclusionary" and "exclusionary" art, instead of art that cuts across gender lines (or, for that matter, racial lines) to speak to everyone. I have a male friend whose tastes typically run to horror movies, but he adores the television adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice" -- it's one of those things he says he could watch anytime. And there are exactly two women in Peter Weir's "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World," and one of them is a miniature painting in a locket.

What's more, there's lots of battles and gunfire -- two more elements that you might characterize as appealing to men specifically. Yet I don't see "Master and Commander" as a "men's" movie at all. Are women somehow less well-equipped to enjoy a picture that's beautifully shot, and whose story is well told, intuitively acted and marvelously paced, just because it has a masculine aura around it? Do you need to be a man to respond to "typically masculine" notions of nobility and heroism?

The same goes for the "Lord of the Rings" series, although anyone, of course, male or female, has the right to dislike it. Criticism is a personal response informed by the writer's knowledge and experience of an art form, which does mean that in some ways, women might view a work differently from the way men do. Then again, there are plenty of moviegoers, men and women alike, who think of Nancy Meyers' movies as soulless endurance contests. Personally, I'll take giant spiders any day.

13-Year-Old Indiana Girl Faces DUI Arrest

Girl Allegedly Hit Utility Pole, Knocking Out Power To Hundreds

A 13-year-old girl has been charged with drunken driving in northern Indiana.

According to police, the girl hit a utility pole, causing nearly 600 homes to lose electricity Sunday near LaPorte.

The driver also had a blood-alcohol level of .89, slightly above the legal limit, police said.

The girl's older sister said she had never driven before.

 

http://www.channelcincinnati.com/news/2723990/detail.html

Is Australia Leading Fathers' Rights Advance?

December 19, 2003
by Roger F. Gay
http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/g/gay/03/gay121903.htm

DadsOnTheAir.com is about to bring an amazing story to the internet in the form of a book on recent political developments in Australia.

In mid-June 2003, Australian Prime Minister John Howard announced his intent to re-examine the issue of joint-custody through a special committee, making it clear that he did not want delay or typical bureaucratic and partisan politics.

"We are asking the committee to report to the parliament by 31 December. There is no point giving it two or three years. I think that six months, given the intensity and amount of public interest in this matter, is an appropriate period of time."

"I encourage the committee not to see its remit as a license to recommend large increases in the expenditure of taxpayers' money but rather to look at the structure of these arrangements. I cannot think of anything that is more important to millions of Australians than current custody arrangements. This issue is properly the concern of the national parliament, and I hope it brings forth the genuine bipartisan involvement of the opposition."

The story of that inquiry is, perhaps surprisingly, quite a page turner. Professional journalist and DadsOnTheAir.com radio host John Stapleton teamed up with Geoffrey Greene from the Shared Parenting Council of Australia to cover everything from the initial announcement,  press reactions, and political maneuvers to the flood of discontent with current custody and child support policy expressed by parents throughout the country.

To allow readers an early preview the book, a draft of a chapter entitled "The Weight of Evidence: Individuals Before the Inquiry" (http://www.dadsontheair.com/book/preview.pdf) is available (PDF format) at the DadsOnTheAir.com website. Additional chapters will be available in the future.

"The Weight of the Evidence" provides a direct look into the public meetings held by the committee, as parent after parent, fathers, mothers, and grandmothers take to the microphone to tell their stories and call for justice. For one who has spent years studying, analyzing, and writing about the problems of the new system, it felt like the cavalry had arrived.

Roger F. Gay

Blind Eyes and Deaf Ears

December 23, 2003
by Richard L. Davis


Fundamental feminists believe that women are the victims of domestic violence because the patriarchy has caused men in general to be sexist misogynists. They believe men use violence against women to oppress and subjugate all women. And there are no empirical facts, scientific data, academic studies, college text books, or scholarly treaties that can make them change their mind.  They believe that they are absolutely right, everyone else is absolutely wrong. They are proud of the beliefs they hold and they listen to no one to the contrary.

Casting reason and logic to the winds, the majority of domestic violence advocates have accepted and adopted this fundamental feminist ideological belief. They "believe," because it is what "they see" because of the histories of their own abuse or their passion for their avocation, that domestic violence "is" violence against women. They have come to believe that the violence women suffer from is singularly or primarily caused by patriarchal sexism and the power and control that men want to exhibit over women.

Holding these myopic fundamental feminist ideologies causes many domestic violence advocates, who honestly attempt to view domestic violence through an unbiased lens, to have preconceived perception of what reality is supposed to be. That reality is that "men are offenders and women their victims."

The fundamental feminist philosophy does not allow these advocates to accept the reality of male victims. Their assumption of what is supposed to be real creates their reality. If men are victims and women offenders, the foundation of fundamental feminism will crumble. Monotheism demands and requires only one God. The fundamental feminist domestic violence philosophy demands and requires only one victim (female) and one offender (male).  

Esta Soler is the president and founder of what she has titled the, Family Violence Prevention Fund //www.endabuse.org. How and why she thinks her organization really is concerned with family violence is beyond me. She and her organization are classic examples of fundamental feminism.

Soler writes in, Promoting Prevention, Targeting Teens: An Emerging Agenda to Reduce Domestic Violence (PPTT) http://endabuse.org/field/PromotingPrevention1003.pdf

that, "Our greatest hope is that this document will inform, enlighten and inspire those of us who work – today and in the future – to build a society in which all women and children can live free of violence." SOLER CAN NOT SEE MEN AS VICTIMS

She is unable to see men as victims of intimate partner abuse because as a fundamental feminist she views intimate partner violence as demonic men/angelic women. And now she wants to blame men and the patriarchy for teen dating violence.

How can she title her organization Family [emphasis added] Violence Prevention Fund when her organization erases and excludes any mention of men as victims or women as offenders? How is it that our public policy makers can not see the overt bias this organization has against men? Is there not a single member of either the Federal House of Representatives or Senate that has a clue?

The author of the PPTT, Ann Rosewater, notes that there is a Massachusetts study that reports about one in five female public high school students has experienced physical and/or sexual dating violence. The study she refers to is the 1999 Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey http://www.doe.mass.edu/hssss/yrbs99/letter.html . She makes no mention of Massachusetts public school boys.

This Massachusetts survey documents that 18 percent of females and 7 percent of males report they were hurt physically or sexually by a date or someone they were going out with. Also 16 percent of females and 6 percent of males report that someone had sexual contact with them against their will. Rosewater is either unconcerned or unaware that public high school boys can be victims. It appears that is not the only data she ignores or is unaware of.

Rosewater writes in the typical fundamental feminist stereotypical manner, that boys act masculine and tough and girls are of course passive and are "good girls." The author also notes that the Safe Dates intervention program serving young teens in North Carolina is an excellent program. Rosewater must not be aware that Safe Dates does not agree with her "bad boys – good girls" theory which appears to be a knockoff of fundamental feminisms "demonic men/angelic women."  

Rosewater must be unaware that the founder of the Safe Dates intervention program Professor Vangie Foshee documents that adolescent "good girls" perpetrate as much "dating violence" as the "bad boys." Perhaps Soler and Rosewater are not aware that a central philosophy of Safe Dates is that when you work with adolescents you must consider girls and boys as equal offenders.

Foshee documents that studies consistently show that girls and boys perpetrate equal levels of nonsexual violence, even when controlling for self-defense and the seriousness of the abuse. One must assume this behavior is by the "good girls" is not sexist or misogynist's driven.

And of course there is no mention of the most common physical assault in our home - spanking. Studies document that women spank their children more often than men. Nor is there any mention that more women physically assault their children than men. Do Soler and Rosewater really think that these physically assaults of children by women have nothing to do with family violence?  

Fundamental feminism and organizations similar to the Family Violence Prevention Fund do not allow for the truth to be told. I understand the agenda of people like Soler. She is more concerned with women's rights than victim's rights and so she manipulates the truth.  

However, what I do not understand is how or why so may professionals and our public policy makers do not know or do not want to see that these "demonic men – angelic women" domestic violence agencies are manipulating them?

It is impossible for Soler to want to build a society in which all women, men and children can live free of violence, because she truly believes that men are demonic and women angelic. However, where are our public policy makers who we have elected to represent all of us, regardless of gender?

Is there not a single public policy maker who has read any of the findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS) http://www.ncjrs.org/pdffiles1/nij/183781.pdf. Those findings document that 40% of women and 53.8% of men report they were physically assaulted by a parent, stepparent, or other adult caretaker as a child. NVAWS estimates that 1.9 million women and 3.2 million men are physically assaulted annually. The NVAWS documents the annual rate of intimate partner assaults was 44.2 per 1,000 women and 31.5 per 1,000 men.

The National Research Council (NRC), Advancing the Federal Research Agenda on Violence Against Women, in its report to Congress has concluded that there is no evidence that documents violence between intimates is dramatically different from violence in general http://books.nap.edu/catalog/10849.html.  

The NRC report to congress concludes that while there are some distinctions in the context and consequences of the violence, the patterns of behavior that cause the violence are little different from violence in general.

The NRC report to congress concludes that much of the violence women perpetrate can not and should not be dismissed as defensive. The majority of the perpetrators of domestic violence have histories of violence and behavioral problems both inside and outside of intimate relationships.

What information is it that the members of congress seem to be missing that allows them to continue to be manipulated by these fundamental feminist organizations? Is there not a single person in congress that has read the evidence presented to them from the studies they voted to fund?

How can it be that an organization that it is supposedly concerned with FAMILY violence continues to proffer its "demonic men/angelic women" philosophy and each and every member of congress continues to swallow it hook, line and sinker?

Richard L. Davis



[font size=-2]Richard L. Davis served in the United States Marine Corps from 1960 to 1964. He is a retired lieutenant from the Brockton, Massachusetts police department. He has a graduate degree in criminal justice from Anna Maria College and another in liberal arts from Harvard University. He has a BA from Bridgewater State College in History and he minored in secondary education. He is a member of the International Honor Society of Historians and an instructor of Criminology, Group Violence and Terrorism, Criminal Justice and Domestic Violence at Quincy College in Plymouth, MA.

He is a past president of the Community Center for Non-Violence in New Bedford, Massachusetts and the vice president for Family Nonviolence, Inc. //www.familynonviolence.com in Fairhaven, MA. He is an independent consultant for criminal justice agencies concerning policies, procedures, and programs concerning domestic violence. He is the author of Domestic Violence: Facts and Fallacies by Praeger publishers and has written numerous articles for newspapers, journals, and magazines concerning the issue of domestic violence. He has columns concerning domestic violence at //www.policeone.com, and //www.nycop.com, is a distance learner instructor in Introduction to Criminal Justice and Domestic Violence for the Online Police Academy and has a website at //www.policewriter.com.  

He and Kim Eyer have a domestic violence website The Cop and the Survivor at http://www.rhiannon3.net/cs/. He lives in Plymouth, Massachusetts with his wife and the two youngest of five children. He experienced domestic violence professionally for 21 years as a police officer and personally as a child and as an adult. In his retirement he continues to use his education, experience, and training to help the children, women, and men who have had to endure violence from those who profess to love them. He may be reached at [email protected]. [/font]

[parts in bold]

Read the parts in bold.

Fears, abuse accompany proliferation of Internet maps

By May Wong, The Associated Press Dec 18 2003 9:02PM

Serial killer Maury Travis used an online mapping service to show a newspaper reporter where he dumped a body. A former Las Vegas exotic dancer convicted of stalking and harassing her ex-lover posted a map on the Web with directions to the married man's home.

Internet mapping services are powerful and simple: Type a phone number into Google or other sites for a map with door-to-door directions. Finding someone has never been easier.

Now those resources are provoking a backlash. Spooked people worried about stalkers or worse are striking their particulars from phone and Internet listings.

Count Sonjia Kenya among them.

The 30-year-old is no stranger to the Internet but was stunned recently to learn how easy it is to go online and get directions to her front door. All it takes is her phone number.

"I was appalled and petrified as a single woman living in New York," Kenya said. She vows never again to give her phone number to potential suitors.

(Ooooh, yes, all those scary men, tracking her down (as if there was no other way to do it, like by her NAME! This woman is an ignorant chickensh*t who has apparently swallowed all of the "men are bad" feminazi hype. Oooh, scary, scary.... )

Many home addresses are attainable through a variety of public records and telephone listings. As well, reverse directories that let someone look up an address by phone number have been available at libraries or for sale commercially for years.

But many Internet sites that gather that kind of data now make it possible for fast, do-it-yourself desktop sleuthing, some for free and some for a fee.

Search engine provider Google Inc. added a phone number-map lookup feature more than two years ago.

There's also FindPeople.com, WhitePages.com and Switchboard.com, among others. If the sites don't have a direct link to a map, users can go on their own to such free sites as Yahoo! Maps, MapQuest, or Microsoft Corp.'s MapPoint. Tens of millions of people use those mapping services each month to help them get places.

Navigation Technologies Corp., which supplies the digital roadmaps used by those Web sites, has seen revenue more than double in three years, to $165.8 million in 2002. It is expected to top $200 million this year.

The Internet features are convenient tools for everyone, whether to look up a long lost friend or relative _ or with malicious intent.

Earlier this month, Steven Sutcliffe of Manchester, N.H., who had been fired by Global Crossing Ltd., was convicted of identity theft and use of the Internet to threaten company executives. He had created a Web site that included employees' Social Security numbers and maps to some of their homes. Sutcliffe, who represented himself during the final weeks of trial, had told the jury he "was just publishing information."

An animal rights group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, has posted on its Web site point-and-click map listings, including the home addresses of executives and affiliates of England's Huntingdon Life Sciences Ltd. The tactic is legal under free-speech laws but has coincided with a rise in protests outside the homes of people connected to Huntingdon, prompting dozens of firms to sever their ties with the research lab.

By all accounts, however, the popularity of Internet maps has more to do with benefits than sinister uses.

Online maps and driving directions have become a must-have for business Web sites as more consumers treat the Internet as an information appliance, said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

"For a lot of people now, especially those with broadband connections, the first place they go to for information is online," Rainie said. "But people are still warming up to the idea that lots of information about them is online."

In a 2002 survey, Pew found that one in four Internet users have typed their own names into a search engine to see what information about them is on the Web. And a quarter of those people were surprised by how much data about them was online, Rainie said.

People who want to make their phone and address data less accessible on Internet directories should ask their local phone company to keep their information out of both the local phone book and 411 directory assistance.

But doing so doesn't guarantee erasure across the Internet because databases cull other public records, too.

Privacy concerns have led a "small number" of people to request removal from the Google phone number-mapping feature, said Google spokesman David Krane. He would not say how many have done so.

After Kenya got an e-mail alerting her to the feature, she immediately filled out the Google form to get delisted.

But then Kenya turned around and used the same tool and other online features to check on a man who had asked her out.

"I'm upset that it intrudes my privacy," said Kenya. "But at the same time, I'm trying to get as much information as I can from the Internet."

(And here we come to the "hypocrite" part of the program, where Kenya takes the Gold Medal in being two-faced and hypocritical. What a sorry piece of shit. It's okay for HER to use this service on OTHERS, but it  "intrudes on HER privacy" when someone else does it! I repeat: What a sorry piece of shit this woman is.)

[img src=http://members.roadfly.org/jeroen57/1_4_32.gif]

[Politician Accused of Drug Dealing]

Politician Accused of Drug Dealing

EAST ORANGE, NJ-December 17, 2003 — The FBI has arrested a city political figure in New Jersey on charges she sold crack cocaine for a street gang.

A cooperating federal witness bought 169 vials of crack from Sophia Merritt two weeks after she was elected to the Democratic committee in June 2002, according to a court document filed by the FBI. She was 18 at the time.

Several weeks later, Merritt was seen in a car with more than a pound of cocaine, the filing said.

"She was a full-time narcotics dealer," Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Agnifilo told The Star-Ledger of Newark.

Merritt sold drugs for the Double ii Bloods, authorities said.

She and her running mate, DeWayne Ellison, are among over 100 unsalaried Essex County or local party committee members. Two represent each of the 55 districts in East Orange.

They were on a slate with Rep. Donald Payne of Newark and Essex County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo.

DiVincenzo's campaign committee paid for Merritt's election literature. He told the newspaper, "I do not even know this woman. No comment." Payne also said he had never met Merritt.

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)


Last Updated: Dec 17, 2003

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/print_12172003_nw_politiciandrugs.html

The Conservative Cookie Rebellion

December 17, 2003
by Wendy McElroy

Want to buy a cookie? If you are a white male, that'll be $1; for white females, 75 cents; blacks, 25 cents. The price structure is the message.
Through Affirmative Action Bake Sales, conservative groups on campuses across America are satirically and peacefully spotlighting the injustice of AA programs that penalize or benefit students based solely on gender and race. The cookie rebels are being slammed by such a backlash that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) -- dreaded by many university administrators -- just shot "an opening salvo" (http://www.thefire.org/pr.php?doc=bake_sale_121103.html) in the rebels' defense.

Thor Halvorssen, CEO of FIRE, declared in a press release last Friday: "Parody and political satire are not illegal in this country. College administrators appear to be under the mistaken impression that protesting affirmative action is not covered by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Freedom of speech is a right enjoyed equally and fully by both supporters and opponents of affirmative action."

What are the AA bake sales, and why do they engender such furor?

The sales are intended to spark discussion, not profits. They are in the same genre as guerrilla theater (http://www.diggers.org/guerrilla_theater.htm) -- an effective counterculture tactic usually associated with the Left -- through which societal assumptions are challenged by acting out scenarios. To the amazed query, "Are you allowed to do this?" one cookie rebel responded, "Admissions officers do it every day." By shifting the context from university policy to baked goods, the assumptions of affirmative action policies are not only challenged as sexist and racist but also revealed as nonsense.

The cookie rebels are doing the one thing political correctness cannot bear: revealing its absurdity and laughing in its face. They are not merely speaking truth to power; they are chuckling at it.

To regain the moral indignation they prize so highly, the politically correct must demonize the sale of baked goods. Thus, at Indiana University one student filed an official complaint (http://scott.sstibbs.com/tibbs15.html), saying that the cookie sale would "create a climate of hostility against students of color and women and can easily turn violent." (The fact that those students were the ones given a price break didn't seem to occur to the irony-starved critic who equated a buyer's discount with a threat of violence.)

To its credit, Indiana University chose to protect the freedom of speech for both sides of the affirmative action issue; it allowed the bake sale to proceed. Other universities have made the opposite choice.

The College Republicans (http://www.crnc.org/default1.asp) at the University of Washington sponsored an affirmative action bake sale on Oct. 7. CR President Jason Chambers reported, "Approximately 150 students were gathered around our booth discussing the issue [AA] by about 12:30 when our booth was attacked by leftist students who disagreed with our stance on affirmative action." (http://www.crnc.org/default1.asp) The Leftists threw cookies to the ground, tore down the display and physically attacked one vendor.

When the leftists began making threats, one of the cookie rebels had called the police because he feared the discussion -- hitherto civil -- might turn violent. Chambers explained, "Unfortunately, rather than step in and arrest our attackers, the police stood by while the University said we, the peaceful ones, had to shut down because WE were creating an unsafe environment. ... Our protests that the CRs were peacefully demonstrating while the leftists got violent fell upon deaf ears."

The university allowed a handful of violent students to decide which political views could or could not be expressed on campus. This is called a "heckler's veto" (http://www.rbs2.com/heckler.htm); it is the last resort of those who cannot win an argument through facts or reason.

Halvorssen commented, "Subsequently, in a frightening betrayal of their fiduciary duty and their obligations to the Bill of Rights, UW's Board of Regents released an open letter condemning the College Republicans for being 'hurtful' while failing to mention the counter-demonstrators' disruption of the College Republicans' peaceful expression of their political views on a matter of pressing public concern."

The University of Washington is not alone.

The University of California-Irvine shut down its bake sale as discriminatory. http://www.irvinereview.org/news5nov03.htm

Northwestern University ordered students to cease selling cookies or face the police. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1014757/posts?page=1

Southern Methodist University closed the bake sale after 45 minutes because it created an "unsafe" environment. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98263,00.html

William and Mary officials -- claiming to be "shocked and appalled" -- also cut off the cookies. http://dogstreetjournal.com/story.php?aid=1080

Clearly, universities don't like the affirmative action bake sales. One reason: The sales, like that at Indiana University (http://idsnews.com/story.php?id=19533), often feature petitions "to ban the collection of racial data, particularly in the admissions and hiring processes."

But most of all, the politically correct do not like being publicly mocked and revealed as ridiculous.

FIRE is performing the valuable task of shining a bright light on the viciousness with which the PC respond to mockery. Its campaign "will include mailings to alumni, parents, university donors, and state legislators."

Meanwhile the most effective thing the rest of us can do is to keep laughing.

Boss Tweed -- that symbol of political corruption from 19th century New York -- used to rail against cartoonists who parodied him without pause. Tweed knew he could politically survive anything except being the brunt of jokes. As with Tweed, so too with AA. That's the way the cookie and policy crumble.

Wendy McElroy

Shouldn't Men Have a Choice, Too?
By Glenn Sacks
 
Jennifer was crushed when she was told that a baby was on the way. She wants to have children, but the right way--after she has found the right person and is married. But in Jennifer's country, she has no choice. "Jenn" cannot give the child up for adoption, and she cannot terminate the pregnancy.  It is her burden to bear, for the next two decades, like it or not.

What country is it which compels a person to have a child they don't want? Afghanistan? Saudi Arabia?

No, it's the United States--not for Jenn, but for Ken.

Ken Johnson, a 10 year veteran of the Seattle Fire Department, wanted to be a father, but with the right woman, and at the right time.  Three years ago he and his wife separated after six years of marriage, and each began to date. During this time, according to court documents filed in Snohomish County, Washington, Ken had a brief affair with "Cathy," which resulted in a pregnancy. Ken's legal complaint alleges that he begged Cathy to put the child up for adoption or to terminate the pregnancy, but Cathy refused.  Now Ken and his wife, who reconciled two and a half years ago, can't start a family of their own because almost half of Ken's net income from the Seattle Fire Department goes to support the child he didn't want to have. He says:

"People tell me that Cathy should have the choice whether to keep the child or not because it's her body so it's her choice.  I agree.  But what about my body? I make my living rushing into burning buildings.  I put my life and my safety on the line every time I go to work, and now I'm on the hook for 18 years.  With the child support demands on me, there's no way I'll ever be able to quit. What about my choice?"

Johnson is part of a growing movement of men who bristle at being "coerced fathers," and who have enlisted in a "Choice for Men" movement whose goals are every bit as legitimate as the goals of the women's reproductive rights movement.  They note that one million American women legally walk away from motherhood every year by either adoption, abortion, or abandonment, and demand that men, like women, be given reproductive options.

They point out that, unlike women, men have no reliable contraception available to them, since the failure rate of condoms is substantial, and vasectomies are generally only worthwhile for older men who have already married and had children. And they emphasize that, with long backlogs of stable, two-parent families looking for babies to adopt, there is no reason for any child born out of wedlock to a "coerced father" to be without a good home.

The Choice for Men movement seeks to give "coerced fathers" the right to relinquish their parental rights and responsibilities within a month of learning of a pregnancy, just as mothers do when they choose to give their children up for adoption.  These men would be obligated to provide legitimate financial compensation to cover natal medical expenses, the mother's loss of income during pregnancy, etc.  The right would only apply to pregnancies which occurred outside of marriage.

Some of those who fought for women's reproductive choices agree with choice for men. Karen DeCrow, former president of the National Organization for Women, writes:

"If a woman makes a unilateral decision to bring a pregnancy to term, and the biological father does not, and cannot, share in this decision, he should not be liable for 21 years of support ... autonomous women making independent decisions about their lives should not expect men to finance their choice."

To date, courts have refused to consider fathers' reproductive rights even in the most extreme cases, including: when child support is demanded from men who were as young as 12 when they were statutorily raped by older women; when women have taken the semen from a used condom and inserted it in themselves, including from condoms used only in oral sex; and when women concealed the pregnancy from the man (denying him the right to be a father) and then sued for back and current child support eight or ten years later.

"It doesn't make sense to me," Ken's wife Patti says. "The courts force my husband and I to support a child he never agreed to,  but make it financially impossible for him to have a child with the woman he loves and married."
 
http://www.glennsacks.com/shouldnt_men_have.htm