I have been dealing (and blogging) on myths, and how to enforce them on a populace, when they aren’t inherently acceptable (or sensible) to that populace, it’s going to take WAR.

I’d been looking up “iconoclasm” and its relationship to Charlemagne. Charlemagne can be called “the father of Europe” in one sense, and in 800, he became “The Holy Roman Empire.”

A few posts ago — I believe on Independence, Fatherhood and Debt, I talked about some early American debates on which brand of Christianity the “founding fathers” really held. It wasn’t the mainstream kind. Well, Back up, say, 1,000 years and here’s Europe duking it out over this and that.

The site is “Long Waves of Time.” I found this page informative, and it’s certainly relevant now:

The alienation of the European people from their native cultures was accelerated during the times of Charlemagne and presaged what happened to the native people of the Americas and their indigenous cultures following the voyages of Columbus.

My point being, the mindset is habit-forming. Perhaps a change of theology and imagery, led by women, who are tired of seeing their kids chopped up, and their friends, or go off to war, might be able to change the culture. But we will have to boycott violent systems, and indoctrinating systems. It won’t be easy.

Charlemagne’s crusade against ‘heathens‘ took place in the course of his Thirty Years’ War (774-804) during which most of the indigenous cultures of Europe disappeared. The violence and atrocities of Charlemagne’s Thirty Years’ War include the executions of thousands who refused to convert to Christianity and resulted in deaths of about a half and in some regions close to two thirds of the pre-war population. During Charlemagne’s Thirty Years’ War, people who refused to be converted were executed. These executions took place in recurring waves, reaching its peak in 782 when Charlemagne executed in a single day over 4,000 Saxons who refused to convert to Christianity. During his campaigns against Saxony, in his conversations transcribed by his biographer Eginhard, Charlemagne often repeated that

‘Saxony must be Christianized, or wiped out.’

Carolingian Reformation

At the early years of the Carolingian Age, the lucid writings of Venerable Bedes (672-735) and his followers provide insight into the general obscurity of these times. Venerable Bedes (672-735) wrote on various topics, such as history (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), orthography, grammar, and theology. Bede also composed a summary of the works of Roman naturalists. Bedes legacy was continued by Alcuin (c.735-804), the intellectual successor of Bede, who established a school at Aix-la-Chapelle with the classical curriculum of the medieval education: the seven liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Alcuins students, such as Rhabanus Maurus, known for his poetry and De arte grammatica, carried Bedes legacy into the interior of Europe.

Charlemagne (r. 774-814)

The Carolingian Reformation proper commences with the ascent of Charlemagne (r. 774-814) who established the Holy Roman Empire in 800. The atmosphere of Charlemagnes times was told by Emmanuel Roidis in his 1866 novel Pope Joan. In 1960, the Roidis’ book was made into a movie by Lawrence Durrell. Joan was a female Pope who ruled the church between the pontificates of Leo IV (847-855) and Benedict III (855-858). Her name was expurgated from the Vatican records and the resulting gap was filled by the extension of the actual reigns of the adjacent popes. Joan studied in Athens and after her arrival to Rome she disguised herself as a male to get a job as a papal notary. After the death of Leo IV she was elected Pope. During a papal procession, she gave birth to a child. Her enraged entourage stoned both Joan and her newborn child to death.

{{and they even started putting a hole in the chair, so future popes could be gender-verified..}}

Historians of religious bent credit Charlemagne with great political, religious, and humanitarian vision. Other historians describe Charlemagne as religious fanatic. Bernard Bachrac characterizes Charlemagne as

‘a gluttonous and superstitious illiterate, or semiliterate,
who had a considerable capacity for brutality.
His accomplishments were due mostly to the ruthlessness
with which he treated any opponents.’

During the times of Charlemagne, the Byzantine Empire was rocked by the Great Iconoclasm Controversy. The Old Testament forbids making images (thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image), however, the New Testament does not reiterate this prohibition. In Greek, eikono-klasmos means image-breaking. This controversy between Iconoclasts and Iconolaters was among the early manifestations of the Old-New Testament doctrinal differences that later came into prominence during the Protestant Reformation. Charlemagne got involved when the Byzantine Empress Irene asked the hand of Charlemagnes daughter for her son. Charlemagne at first agreed, but when he learned that Irene does not support the Iconoclasts, he broke the engagement.

Saxony, 782

The alienation of the European people from their native cultures was accelerated during the times of Charlemagne and presaged what happened to the native people of the Americas and their indigenous cultures following the voyages of Columbus. Charlemagne’s crusade against ‘heathens‘ took place in the course of his Thirty Years’ War (774-804) during which most of the indigenous cultures of Europe disappeared. The violence and atrocities of Charlemagne’s Thirty Years’ War include the executions of thousands who refused to convert to Christianity and resulted in deaths of about a half and in some regions close to two thirds of the pre-war population. During Charlemagne’s Thirty Years’ War, people who refused to be converted were executed. These executions took place in recurring waves, reaching its peak in 782 when Charlemagne executed in a single day over 4,000 Saxons who refused to convert to Christianity. During his campaigns against Saxony, in his conversations transcribed by his biographer Eginhard, Charlemagne often repeated that

‘Saxony must be Christianized, or wiped out.’

During Charlemagne’s Thirty Year’s War, most of the Western Europe was converted to Christianity. Charlemagne, who signed documents as Carolus, Rex and Sacerdot, the King and the Priest, maintained a close collusion of the secular and ecclesiastical powers. Charlemagne was crowned by the Pope Leo III as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 and was canonized in 1165. The end of the Charlemagnes Empire can be characterized by the Cadaver Synod (896), the bizarre trial of Pope Formosus.

{{apparently there was some reasoning for it at the time. Good grief!!}}

The frequency of warfare during this period was high. Charlemagne’s empire rested almost entirely on the force and after his death and a prolonged civil war, the empire was divided (887) among his heirs into three areas, roughly corresponding to present France, Germany, and Italy, marking the end of this epoch.

And we know they’ve been free from war ever since . . . . . .

MY POINT IS, LOOK BACK! THINK THIS COULDn’T HAPPEN AGAIN, OR HASN’T?

BESIDES THERE ARE FAST (SWORD, BOMB) And slow (STARVATION, DISEASE) WAYS TO EXTRACT OBEDIENCE FOR SURVIVORS. BOTH HAVE THE SAME END RESULT.

Ready to review the 7-lesson schoolteacher, from John Taylor Gatto?

The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher
                          by John Taylor Gatto
                      New Society Publishers, 1992

      Call me Mr. Gatto, please.  Twenty-six years ago,
{{Do the math...If you can...}}
 having nothing
better to do at the time, I tried my hand at schoolteaching.  The
license I hold certifies that I am an instructor of English language and
English literature, but that isn't what I do at all.  I don't teach
English, I teach school -- and I win awards doing it.

      Teaching means different things in different places, but seven
lessons are universally taught Harlem to Hollywood Hills.  They
constitute a national curriculum you pay more for in more ways than you
can imagine, so you might as well know what it is.  You are at liberty,
of course, to regard these lessons any way you like, but believe me when
I say I intend no irony in this presentation.  These are the things I
teach, these are the things you pay me to teach.  Make of them what you
will:

LESSON 1 – CONFUSION:

The first lesson I teach is confusion.
Everything I teach is out of context...  I teach the unrelating of
everything.  I teach disconnections.  I teach too much: the orbiting of
planets, the law of large numbers, slavery, adjectives, architectural
drawing, dance, gymnasium, choral singing, assemblies, surprise guests,
fire drills, computer languages, parent's nights, staff-development
days, pull-out programs, guidance with strangers you may never see
again, standardized tests, age-segregation unlike anything seen in the
outside world...  what do any of these things have to do with each
other?
...

LESSON 2 – CLASS POSITION:

The second lesson I teach is your class position.  I teach that
you must stay in class where you belong.  I don't know who decides that
my kids belong there but that's not my business.  The children are
numbered so that if any get away they can be returned to the right
class.  Over the years the variety of ways children are numbered has
increased dramatically, until it is hard to see the human being plainly
under the burden of numbers he carries.  Numbering children is a big and
very profitable business, though what the strategy is designed to
accomplish is elusive.  I don't even know why parents would allow it to
be done to their kid without a fight.

      In any case, again, that's not my business.  My job is to make
them like it, being locked in together with children who bear numbers
like their own.  Or at the least endure it like good sports.  If I do my
job well, the kids can't even imagine themselves somewhere else because
I've shown how to envy and fear the better classes and how to have
contempt for the dumb classes.  Under this efficient discipline the
class mostly polices itself into good marching order.  That's the real
lesson of any rigged competition like school.  You come to know your
place.

LESSON 3 – INDIFFERENCE

The third lesson I teach kids is indifference.  I teach children
not to care about anything too much, even though they want to make it
appear that they do.  How I do this is very subtle.  I do it by
demanding that they become totally involved in my lessons, jumping up
and down in their seats with anticipation, competing vigorously with
each other for my favor.  It's heartwarming when they do that, it
impresses everyone, even me.  When I'm at my best I plan lessons very
carefully in order to produce this show of enthusiasm.  But when the
bell rings I insist that they stop whatever it is that we've been
working on and proceed quickly to the next work station.  They must turn
on and off like a light switch.  Nothing important is ever finished in
my class, nor in any other class I know of.  Students never have a
complete experience except on the installment plan.

      Indeed, the lesson of the bells is that no work is worth
finishing, so why care too deeply about anything?  Years of bells will
condition all but the strongest to a world that can no longer offer
important work to do.  Bells are the secret logic of schooltime; their
argument is inexorable.  Bells destroy the past and future, converting
every interval into a sameness, as an abstract map makes every living
mountain and river the same even though they are not.  Bells inoculate
each undertaking with indifference.

LESSON 4 – EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY

The fourth lesson I teach is emotional dependency.  By stars and
red checks, smiles and frowns, prizes, honors and disgraces I teach you
to surrender your will to the predestined chain of command.  Rights may
be granted or withheld by any authority, without appeal because rights
do not exist inside a school, not even the right of free speech, the
Supreme Court has so ruled, unless school authorities say they do.  As a
schoolteacher I intervene in many personal decisions, issuing a Pass for
those I deem legitimate, or initiating a disciplinary confrontation for
behavior that threatens my control.  Individuality is constantly trying
to assert itself among children and teenagers so my judgments come thick
and fast.  Individuality is a contradiction of class theory, a curse to
all systems of classification.

LESSON 5 – INTELLECTUAL DEPENDENCY

     The fifth lesson I teach is intellectual dependency.  Good people
wait for a teacher to tell them what to do.  It is the most important
lesson, that we must wait for other people, better trained than
ourselves, to make the meanings of our lives.  The expert makes all the
important choices; only I can determine what you must study, or rather,
only the people who pay me can make those decisions which I enforce.  If
I'm told that evolution is fact instead of a theory I transmit that as
ordered, punishing deviants who resist what I have been to think.

      This power to control what children will think lets me separate
successful students from failures very easily.  Successful children do
the thinking I appoint them with a minimum of resistance and decent show
of enthusiasm.  Of the millions of things of value to study, I decide
what few we have time for, or it is decided by my faceless employer.
The choices are his, why should I argue?  Curiosity has no important
place in my work, only conformity.

      Bad kids fight this, of course, even though they lack the concepts
to know what they are fighting, struggling to make decisions for
themselves about what they will learn and when they will learn it.  How
can we allow that and survive as schoolteachers?  Fortunately there are
procedures to break the will of those who resist; it is more difficult,
naturally, if the kid has respectable parents who come to his aid, but
that happens less and less in spite of the bad reputation of schools.
Nobody in the middle class I ever met actually believes that their kid's
school is one of the bad ones.  Not a single parent in 26 years of
teaching.  That's amazing and probably the best testimony to what
happens to families when mother and father have been well-schooled
themselves, learning the seven lessons.

      Good people wait for an expert to tell them what to do.  It is
hardly an exaggeration to say that our entire economy depends upon this
lesson being learned.  Think of what would fall apart if kids weren't
trained to be dependent:

{{NOTE -- you see now why I'm posting this?}}}

LESSON 6 – PROVISIONAL SELF-ESTEEM

     The sixth lesson I teach is provisional self-esteem.  If you've
ever tried to wrestle a kid into line whose parents have convinced him
to believe they'll love him in spite of anything, you know how
impossible it is to make self-confident spirits conform.  Our world
wouldn't survive a flood of confident people very long so I teach that
your self-respect should depend on expert opinion.  My kids are
constantly evaluated and judged.  A monthly report, impressive in its
precision, is sent into students' homes to signal approval or to mark
exactly down to a single percentage point how dissatisfied with their
children parents should be.  The ecology of good schooling depends upon
perpetuating dissatisfaction just as much as commercial economy depends
on the same fertilizer.  Although some people might be surprised how
little time or reflection goes into making up these mathematical
records, the cumulative weight of the objective-seeming documents
establishes a profile of defect which compels a child to arrive at
certain decisions about himself and his future based on the casual
judgment of strangers.

      Self-evaluation, the staple of every major philosophical system
that ever appeared on the planet, is never a factor in these things.
The lesson of report cards, grades, and tests is that children should
not trust themselves or their parents, but need to rely on the
evaluation of certified officials.  People need to be told what they are
worth.

AND last, 

LESSON 7 – YOU CAN’T HIDE

      The seventh lesson I teach is that you can't hide.  I teach
children they are always watched by keeping each student under constant
surveillance as do my colleagues.  There are no private spaces for
children, there is no private time.  Class change lasts 300 seconds to
keep promiscuous fraternization at low levels.  

Students are encouraged to tattle on each other, even to tattle on their parents.  

Of course I
encourage parents to file their own child's waywardness, too.  A family
trained to snitch on each other isn't likely to be able to conceal any
dangerous secrets.  I assign a type of extended schooling called
"homework", too, so that the surveillance travels into private
households, where students might otherwise use free time to learn
something unauthorized from a father or mother, or by apprenticing to
some wise person in the neighborhood.  Disloyalty to the idea of
schooling is a Devil always ready to find work for idle hands.  The
meaning of constant surveillance and denial of privacy is that no one
can be trusted, that privacy is not legitimate.  Surveillance is an
ancient urgency among certain influential thinkers, a central
prescription set down Republic, in City of God, in Institutes of the
Christian Religion, in New Atlantis, in Leviathan and many other places.
All these childless men who wrote these books discovered the same thing:
children must be closely watched if you want to keep a society under
tight central control.  Children will follow a private drummer if you
can't get them into a uniformed marching band.

{{ENDQUOTE, AND THE LESSON TITLES WERE MY ADDITION}}}

THESE 7 LESSONS WERE FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN, SO PERHAPS I SHOULD ADD THE EXTENDED ADULT “LESSON 8” HERE:

LESSON 8 – ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE

2 years after Mr. Gatto wrote (or spoke) this, some significant actions happened nationwide. One, the Violence Against Women Act passed, 2 (or the other way round), the National Fatherhood Initiative formed, thereafter transforming the character of a major U.S. Executive Dept. agency.

1992-26 years = since 1966. He was describing a school system as he began to work in it 50 years ago.

It will take time to undo what is actually more than a century of such school lessons, and to individually and personally REVERSE all the bad lessons taught in them, which are still being echoed in other institutions — MOST of them — until til now now.

I hope this will illustrate why I am writing about the religion/government issue. We need to start drawing our own conclusions and writing our own theologie and social contracts.

WHY do you think a few years ago, some Los Angeles judges almost shut down homeschooling for several thousand children (I believe the # was 66,000 at the time)? As reported here:

California Judge Orders Homeschoolers into Government Education

Posted on February 29, 2008. Filed under: Culture,Education Idiocy,Nanny State,Socialism/Communism |

Unbelievable! Am I living in a communist country? I’m really starting to get scared about where we are headed in the US. We HAVE to fight it!!

Judge orders homeschoolers into government education
Court: Family’s religious beliefs ‘no evidence’ of 1st Amendment violation

Posted: February 29, 2008
By Bob Unruh
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

A California court has ruled that several children in one homeschool family must be enrolled in a public school or “legally qualified” private school, and must attend, sending ripples of shock into the nation’s homeschooling advocates as the family reviews its options for appeal.

“We agree … ‘the educational program of the State of California was designed to promote the general welfare of all the people and was not designed to accommodate the personal ideas of any individual in the field of education.’”
The words echo the ideas of officials from Germany, where homeschooling has been outlawed since 1938 under a law adopted when Adolf Hitler decided he wanted the state, and no one else, to control the minds of the nation’s youth.
Wolfgang Drautz, consul general for the Federal Republic of Germany, has said “school teaches not only knowledge but also social conduct, encourages dialogue among people of different beliefs and cultures, and helps students to become responsible citizens.”
Specifically, the appeals court said, the trial court had found that “keeping the children at home deprived them of situations where (1) they could interact with people outside the family, (2) there are people who could provide help if something is amiss in the children’s lives, and (3) they could develop emotionally in a broader world than the parents’ ‘cloistered’ setting.”
The appeals ruling said California law requires “persons between the ages of six and 18″ to be in school, “the public full-time day school,” with exemptions being allowed for those in a “private full-time day school” or those “instructed by a tutor who holds a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught.”

(note: unless the code has changed since I knew it, the phrase “valid state teaching credential” also had a phrase on someone “capable of teaching.” It may have been misquoted to further restrict who can teach, or it may have changed in the interim. BGut the author caught the similarity to Germanic education. )

The pretense is that if they were in school, abuse would not happen. Baloney. Abuse happens, kids get raped and bullied and abused at school. the “cloistered at home” may or may not have been the case with that family. Many schools have metal detectors and security issues also, they’re a different form of “cloistered.” Kids have been shot and killed in schools (Columbine, etc.) and terrorized under threats of it (google “lockdown.”)

HERE’s a similar case in New York, that (as article notes) sounds like a scene out of “Planet of the Apes.” It dates “back” to 2010

Homeschoolers Arrested in New York: Slavery Returns to Amerika

//
// Kurt Nimmo

In a move designed to send a message to parents, a Montgomery County, New York, couple were arrested and ticketed for homeschooling their children and failing to register their them with the school district.

“Richard Cressy, 47, and Margie Cressy, 41, both of the town of Glen, never registered their four children or their home-schooling curriculum with the local school district, said the Sheriff’s Office,” reports WRGB, a CBS affiliate in Albany, New York. “The Superintendent of the Fonda-Fultonville Central School District confirmed the four children, ranging in age from 8 to 14, had not been registered with the school district for the last seven years.”

The couple may lose custody of their children. The case has been turned over to the Montgomery County District Attorney and the Child Protective Unit.

On his radio show today, Alex Jones said the arrest and demand that parents turn their offspring over to the state is like a scene out of Planet of the Apes. In the cult classic, apes hunt humans and intern them in a slave gulag. Police and the CPS are acting like apes on the hunt. Jones pointed out that there is no law in New York criminalizing homeschooling and the arrest was predicated on a color of law regulation.

Local and state governments around the country have moved to criminalize homeschooling and force children to attend dangerous public schools. In 2008 in California, an appeals court ruled that parents do not have a constitutional right to home-school their children.

Earlier this year, a German couple asked for asylum in the United States after the German government ruled that homeschooling their children was illegal. Uwe Romeike and his family moved to Tennessee after the state threatened to fine him and take away his children. Romeike, an evangelical Christian, objects to German school textbooks containing language and ideas that conflict with his family’s values

Provisions in the California Education Code require “persons between the ages of six and eighteen” to be in “public full-time day school,” or a “private full-time day school” or “instructed by a tutor who holds a valid state teaching credential for the grade being taught.” The 2nd Appellate Court in Los Angeles argued that “keeping the children at home deprived them of situations where they could interact with people outside the family.” In other words, that court ruled that parents have no right to decide who their children interact with socially and that decision will be left to the state and bureaucrats.

The ruling dramatically affects more than 200,000 homeschooled children in California.

The California educational system is notorious for its pro-homosexual curriculum. Children attending California government schools are taught explicitly to avoid “discriminatory attitudes and practices” toward homosexuals in accordance with state laws that fund revised curriculum and unspecified “tolerance” programs, writes Julie Foster.

In addition to “tolerance” programs, public education emphasizes sex eduction (teaching children how to be promiscuous) and suicide and death education.

A study conducted in 2002 revealed that public schools are infested with drugs. Half of all teens — and 60 percent of high school teens — report that drugs are used, kept, or sold at their schools. Students at these schools are three times more likely to smoke, drink, or use illicit drugs than students whose schools are substance-free, according to the study.

According to officials in New York and California, parents have no right to protect their children from drugs or shelter them from sexual and social brainwashing contrary to their values.

As noted by Michael Farris, chairman and general counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association, judges around the country are responding to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). “In the 2002 case of Beharry v. Reno, one federal court said that even though the convention was never ratified, it still has an impact on American law,” Farris explained on the LifeSiteNews website. “The fact that virtually every other nation in the world has adopted it has made it part of customary international law, and it means that it should be considered part of American jurisprudence.”

{{Pause to note, I am no fan of HSLDA or Mr. Farris; he has ignored and/or dropped the issue of wife-beating by Christian husbands as if it didn’t exist, and in general, of such Christian venues don’t pick it up, they shouldn’t be supported. They don’t want to clean out their own closets. However, that doesn’t mean the government one is any cleaner. It isn’t. This is how dogmatic doctrinairians fight each other. I say, let mothers have a say at cleaning up this mess. The FIRST thing we would do is Just Say No to boxing up our own kids from the time they are, mabye 3, til 18, and (if any young, black males live longer), thereafter in work cubicles or prison, whichever comes first. And then we are running around from cubicle to preschool to afterschool, to church, to mosque, to . . . .to . . . . (I forgot, I just ran out of breath….)…

The CRC was adopted by the United Nations in 1989 but not ratified by Congress. If passed, it “would have a negative impact on domestic law and practice in the United States. Article VI of our Constitution makes treaties – and remember, conventions are viewed as treaties – ‘the supreme law of the land.’ The CRC would be treated as superior to laws in every state regarding the parent-child relationship. This would include issues regarding education, health care, family discipline, the child’s role in family decision-making, and a host of other subjects,” writes Michael Smith for The Washington Times.

Many believe under Obama the treaty will eventually be signed and legally binding for millions of parents in the United States.

Article 29 of the CRC limits the right of parents and others to educate children by requiring that all such schools support both the charter and principles of the United Nations and a list of specific values and ideals (for instance, the “principle” of world government, the demonstrably bogus climate change agenda, population reduction, in short the entire globalist program).

“Every conceivable sphere of human activity is being analyzed and then planned for so that it will come under the ultimate control of the United Nations. It is becoming a world legislature, world court, world department of education, world welfare agency, world planning center for industry, science and commerce, world finance agency, world police force, and world anything else anyone might want — or might not want,” wrote Ezra Taft Benson in An Enemy Hath Done This.

The Copenhagen summit on climate change revealed that the United Nations is a front organization for the global elite and its transparent humanist facade will be done away with after world government is established. The United Nations, by and large, is a debating club for leaders and dictators of impoverished third world nations.

Charlotte Iserbyt, who served as Senior Policy Adviser in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan administration, has documented how public education is designed to dumb down children and prepare them for “socialism,” that it is to say a world government dictated by an elite who are not “socialist” in the commonly held sense of the word. For the elite, socialism is the perfect control mechanism.

When beliefs collide – –

Language is not precise, LANGUAGE is itself a tapestry of symbols which hopefully point to some common experiences, making communication possible. Collections of symbols are possible either through telling stories, and these are more vivid when our places in it, and PARTICULARLY the place of women versus men, are expressed in images, symbols, and myths that access the collective consciousness as expressed in art, architecture, dance, stories, and sculpture, music, (etc.) passed down through the centuries.

There’s practically none as pervasive as the image of the Snake or Serpent as the “bad guy.”

And in associating that serpent with the woman, Eve.  Bad serpent, bad Eve, bad Adam, a good God-Father is going to establish consequences and throw them out of the Garden for consulting another source of wisdom, for disobedience, and for failing to trust and submit.

That hierarchical pattern is bred into almost every oppressive government or faith.  It’s used in wars between Islam and Judaism, and Christianity.  Varieties of Christianity (and varieties within Catholicism, another breed entirely, almost) also war with each other.  Disgusted, some regimes attempt to eliminate “religion” but the entire concept of dogma, indoctrination, and enforced submission is what I call religion to start with.

I’ve had a lifetime full, and am ready to take a look at some other options to built-in destruction through being right all the time.

You should be too, unless you are truly independently wealthy and maybe have some assets not tied up in a paycheck, or for that matter in $$, or any currency tied to the $$.  Because we are talking about What Led to the Fatherhood Indoctrination (idiocy).  Til cloning and despite artificial insemination, it takes something from a man and something from a woman to make another human being.  And I don’t think a great replacement for breastmilk has been invented yet (in fact, substitutes have definitely contributed to problems, you can’t invent a better start to life than mother’s milk, unless it’s laced with other lethal chemicals, or too many stress hormones from, say, being in a war zone….).

Today, I have lost approximately 3,000 words of writing, and this is the scaled-back version, absent scripture references, commentary, and several initial images from art and mythology.

BUT (for what it’s worth) below is my narrative of CHANGE, and progressive shedding of old ideas that simply didn’t work in this life or for me, or my family, or my associates.

I am a Christian, and except for their treatment of women in general, I would be a feminist libertarian.  I’m a feminist because  common sense says there has to be antidote to the ongoing slaughter of women and a children for the “crime” of attempting to stay alive by separating from an abusive relationship.  THAT’s a Lose/Lose scenario for most of society, but there are most definitely some sectors of society that don’t care, because they profit from it.

It’s nearly impossible to get a coherent and proofread, thorough post out in a c ontext where til recently I didn’t have internet access except laboriously so.  This current laptop, great as it is, has its drawbacks (such as losing work…), yet I continue reading in these fields and networking with others going “through it.”  My conclusion seem to differ from mainstream, and my viewpoint as a mother, AND I have a B.Th., and extensive exposure to religious viewpoints, plus being raised, I’ll call it agnostic church attender, there’s a lot in there.  Unlike many Protestants, I actually respect Catholicism, for a number of reasons, but regardless of which viewpoint you take, the primary destruction seems to revolve around the role of women.

This narration, it’s to show the symbolic shedding of old myths as they prove fallible, and doing this is part of growing up.  I also see the inherent resistance to this in the systems I slithered through on the way to losing almost everything I consider valuable, except physical life and a bit of hope.

There is a “Defining the world-2” upcoming.  If I have to be subjected to even an awareness that the House (or Representatives) Ways & Means Committee is going to lend its ear to a whole panorama of reasons why things should continue ad nauseam as is to indoctrinate young men into how to grow up, after a public school system (in most cases) failed to incorporate the concept, and young mothers cannot choose, and in short, the experimentation is to continue until someone “gets it right” (and the kids who aged out of the system are now having their own kids), then I can put MY theories and anecdotal evidence, weaving in culture, religion, and some history & politics, up on the web.

MY NARRATION

I never expected a simple marriage to a Bible kinda guy would lead me (years later) to re-examine the entire concept of monotheism versus paganism. I’ve been “in the book” since I was an adult, and in a nontraditional enough way that looked at the history of the texts (i.e.., what got in, what was excluded), appreciated the art, language and music in it (particularly Psalms, which were probably sung originally, and often as the Catholics do still). My work put me around the eclectic varieties of faith and atheism, always seeking the common ground and how we could (whatever the task) work to elevate the excellence of whatever task was at hand, or to bridge the differences of semantics to some common project or understanding.

There s a whole lot of beauty and knowledge out there, and you CANNOT have a flat-screen, cartoon God or life with success, not in this century.

Or so I thought.

At least people of faith have their thoughts organized around a text (or so I thought). Atheists can call people of faith “stupid” (and do — see last post) and people of faith can, with their Bible, believe, “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God!” We can all handle this IF the social contract includes that law as a boundary. Among the Ten Commandments are several that the U.S. (and state) Penal Codes reflect directly — Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not bear false witness (perjury).

Or so I thought.

But, hey — after being yelled at, assaulted, put down, humiliated, degraded (in front of children), forced to beg sometimes for necessities (transportation, clothes at times) during the marriage, having bank account and credit shut down, having access to even WORK (getting there, getting back) be restricted, or whether the money I earned there could be even spent for personal necessities, having zero joint bank accounts (entire marriage), having the most valuable aspects of ME shut down because I as a PERSOn was not welcome in this marriage; having to repeatedly start something, and then either forced to stop it, or suffer retaliation for having succeeded, however minor the success, and all this gathering momentum year after year — and all of this being in the name of “head of the household” and having all of perhaps 2 total Bible verses (to justify this) quoted at me the entire time (and neither one, in context, does), I got out, turning to the “secular world,” concluding this was just a jerk with an inferiority complex bolstered by the worst (not the best) of religion, and a good dose of SECULAR (legal) help would make the difference.

“He was undereducated, he had a troubled past, he had mental health issues”. . I knew that these were not valid excuses, and (in order to survive) it didn’t matter why, it only mattered that this must stop (in our particular marriage, weapons were increasingly prominent towards the end, there were talks of suicide and fantasies of one or both of us dying. This was before I knew anything about “lethality assessments.” It wasn’t at all that technical, it was simply, I MUST get OUT! !!!

NOT for LONG. The next arena to take on was immediate family. I’d felt that lack of education was a factor, plus the particular religious group (see that “grasping” for reason? In life, we need some “WHY” to organize our WHAT WE DO’s and plan a future.”) They were educated, and they were not religious. Some of them had witnessed some of the worst of it. I had a restraining order, I had gotten outside of the faith communities (already realized while IN the situation that they were worse than useless — they were literally dangerous in the coverup, minimizing and trivializing situations that almost ended in blood. My relatives should’ve been on my side.

WRONG AGAIN. One or more of them was immediately opposed to the restraining order, educated and secular as they were (NB the one most adamantly opposed was male, and not a parent). Being busy rebuilding (work, especially) and repairing home and my own health, restoring relationships in the profession that had been targeted for shutdown the entire marriage, I put it on back burner, but made the internal changes: My family, not just the faith community, was more comfortable with me in abuse than out of it, change was NOT welcome, but a threat to the family dynamics. This was like a family heavily invested in keeping an alcoholic or drug addict on drugs.

Like a snake writhing out of its skin (see where this is heading?), I let that one go. In such such situations, time and money are short, and one cannot build a new business and life on shaky foundations. I let them go emotionally and mentally. In fact, I literally told them to get lost, get out, get a life, respect my boundaries.

They didn’t.

I found literature (a certain year), I believe by Lenore Walker, explaining how using the same abusive Power-Over dynamics on a woman leaving abuse was the exact opposite of what was needed. [[Note: the professional world STILL doesn’t get this one..]], mailed it to them, and went about my business.

Meanwhile, they went behind my back and about trying to stuff my wriggling, fresh, growing new self back into that old shell, that old dead format. I set boundaries, which were ignored. I was just about to play the legal card again, getting an anti-harassment order on a certain relative (the emotional blackmail was escalating, and the arguments behind it credulous. I knew the individual had no basis for believing the factually frivolous claims, which made them more frightening — how could such a person simply LIE at me against my will, especially having done nothing to stop or even verbally protest the original violence, which was severe, ongoing, and escalating. Serious injury did happen, although at one level, trashing the work history was worse, the economic issues.

Still, I had hope that with BOUNDARIES that some judge would give me, I could move on. I had internally filed, labeled, and changed where I put “faith community” and “family dynamic” and was with my rational mind going for the legal system’s help — after all, it’d helped me out the first time, right?

No, Wrong.

I went to renew the restraining order — and he filed for divorce and custody. [I know now that he was counseled to do this by his attorney. Some men may be savvy enough to figure this out, but mine wasn’t. Family court trawls for cases, and gets them in part by very poorly written restraining order / visitation orders, which come back because of teh built-in problems of the order itself. ..Current literature focuses almost exclusively on “the manipulative batterer” who supposedly outsmarts the courts, and the judges just don’t “see” the manipulation. That’s hogwash — the courts welcome it, the system breeds this, it keeps the game going.]

The case bounced into the family law system, and he asked for everything. I knew he didn’t even want the everything he asked for, couldn’t care for the kids himself, didn’t have steady enough work to support them. He had yet to even acknowledge hitting me, so I knew there was not going to be any “going back.” I still thought that there was some “reason” and I could get my life as a person, incorporating “mother,” obviously. I had already gotten my work life back, and the kids (despite all this) were doing very well with their schooling, in fact amazingly so (“amazing” what can happen when violence and the chaos that comes with it is thrown out of a home..People can function in their strengths, not in defense mode. Relationships within the home AND with outsiders are more honest. Nothing to cover up…)

He did not get everything — not custody, not me pay him child support. But what he DID get was threefold:

• He got the restraining order renewal derailed, and
• He got us in front of a mediator (separate this time), which was critical.
• He got to derail — completely (lots of job loss around this hearing, at a time I was prospering, freelance, self-employed) – my life and change the balance back towards giving orders through the courts. this time, no family member sat in on the hearing, and no one from the family violence center that had helped me initially file a CIVIL restraining order (when a criminal one would’ve been more appropriate).

I changed again. I saw this mediator sit back and look at me like we were in a seance and looking at me could substitute for fact-finding. This was close to the truth, it eventually surfaced. rules of court were violated. Evidence submitted by him but not served in advance to me was on his desk and being considered. Photographic evidence (that many of the claims on the pleading were fraudulent) was with me, and turned down. I didn’t yet know the rules of court, I learned them later. But I knew the man I was sitting in front of was neither impartial nor did he give a crap about our kids, or respect me, although I probably was as educated (if not more) than him and a mother.

On the way back from mediation, literally shaking from the encounter (our kids had been brought in also, 10 minutes each. They read him like a book. He didn’t read them at all…) I stopped in a library and there, on display, was Lundy Bancroft’s book “Why does he DO that? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men.”

Being at this time a mother, with custody and a life I valued, I was in need of explanation of HOW could this BE? (cf. Mary, the mother of Jesus, getting an announcement by the angel Gabriel, she was going to have a baby, although without intercourse. Go figure. The things Id just read, signed by my ex, had no more factual fathers in reality, but something Fabulous (pun intended — i.e., fables) was indeed conceived at this moment in the belly of the family court system, and in part in a mediator’s office.)

That was the summer I started really reading in the field of domestic violence. Mr. Bancroft’s book represented THE single male person I’d yet encountered who actually stated in public and in print that it was indeed wrong, to abuse a woman, and having worked with one of the first men’s batterer’s programs long ago, he was telling it like it is, including minimization, rationalization, and how sometimes the man is able to turn HER family against her (which I’d just experienced).

I have since wriggled out of THAT delimited view (and blogged on it). Though Mr. Bancroft is right, he is writing to professionals and for professionals, mostly. His book “The Batterer as Parent,” co-authored with (Peter Jaffe? Jay Silverman) is even cited on the county court system website, and is excellent. It clearly states that the relationship with the NONbattering parent should be supported, and watch out for undermining that parent’s authority, and watch out for kidnapping.

So What? No one’s really acting on it, that I can see….And by listening to this, the cognitive dissonance increases. Women accept the experts instead of their abusers…we just switched masters of information and spin. I believe Mr. Bancroft’s motives are a lot more pure, but it’s still the same process – RECEIVING information about US rather than EXPRESSING the TRUTHS about us

Now that this kidnapping in our case (a few short years later) has actually happened, I have to conclude that this book didn’t make a difference in custody decisions in family courts, that I can tell. Mr. Bancroft is still conferencing, selling books and writing, as far as I know. He has started an organization helping women heal emotionally from ongoing legal abuse and devastation of losing contact with their children through the courts, which understandably will not run out of business any time soon. Women in my situation are unemployed, or their wages are garnished to below sustainable housing, and CERTAINLY below the ability to fight back in court.

I don’t CARE “Why He Does That” and I most certainly don’t want to crawl back inside the mind of an angry or controlling man (and there’s more than one in my life presently, despite attempts to ignore, cut off, change phone #s, and getting outsiders to tell them to stop. I doubt a court order would, it didn’t the first several times…). I already know what a Batterer is like As A Parent. Not much different than he was as a spouse — control freak, alternately neglectful, and unable to conceive of the children except as his satellite, or me as something other than “his wife,” although I never went back or let him stay or sleep in any residence since separation, ever.

We must ALWAYS continue to revise and re-frame our paradigms and understand the limitations of our own professional helpers, and our own culture. I will do this the rest of my life while the mind is functioning. Such considerations develop me as a person.

The IMAGERY for women doing this, renewing their lives periodically through shed skin (kind of reminds one almost of the menses) is the image of the snake. Kind of like nature, it renews itself seasonally, and without making a bid deal about it.

By contrast, institutions designed by men interfere with both nature and life, and attempt to encase it in concrete. They attempt to freeze-frame truth, write it down, dogmatize it, and inject it directly or (through the general ambience) onto large populations to get this thing “organized” and down to a science. Domestic violence is now a “field.” Fatherhood has “practitioners.” Psychology categorizes the aberrant, and with time and LOTS of money, someday, it will all be filed and No Child Will be Left Behind. For every function, there is an organization to address it, so the general populace need not worry, leave it to the experts.

Oh???

DESTRUCTION INHERENT IN OVERDEFINITION.

NOW — I’m simply relating where it’s at now — I’m ready to re-evaluate the concept of Monotheism, the accuracy and reliability of this scripture that’s been my sourcebook of symbols, proverbs, directives, source of art, literature and understanding for centuries in the Western and Eastern worlds, and at the hearat of supposedly U.S. and Europe’s governments.

I don’t expect to abandon my faith, but deepen it. I no longer read the Bible as “mainlining thoughts from God,” although it resonates with me. I often look at it as from an unseen author who wrote or narrated this explanation of how life is. There is a sense in which truth will always resonate.

For example, the family law courts are “full of it” and will continue to be so. They are doing what they were designed to do — keep women in their place, but do it with a pretense of rationality and veneer of law. When we go in there seeking justice and look some of these court professionals in the face, read what they wrote, and see what happens, WE KNOW BETTER.

They are what they are. And they are where batterers run for solace and cover, and get it. They are where child molesters can continue to get access to children they have molested (not that all couples going through there have this, but we know many do) and they are where professions can be made on discussing the issues without solving them. Where calls to reform will produce books to be sold, and make the names of the writers. Like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, KISS, and any other superstar businesses, there is always collateral business. We have entirely forgotten that “ANY PR [public relations] is GOOD PR.”

They are where a man can steal kids through the court in an illegal manner (and have it justified) but a woman who does so will be more apt to go to jail for it.

They are where problems created BY government practices can generate more funding to supposedly correct those practices, with less and less accountability, thereby continuing to subjugate and enslave not just the litigants (talk about a waste of lives, talents, energies and time!), but anyone who helps fund it. AND, if you pay federal income taxes, you help fund it.

I’m sorry to say it this blunt, but if you send tithes or charity to a church, particularly I’ll say a Protestant church — you are endorsing this. It doesn’t “count,” it doesn’t balance out that perhaps your church even has programs for the homeless. How’d some of those people GET homeless? Even when it doesn’t always involve domestic violence (although it’s been already identified as a primary cause of homelessness for women & children), still, it’s a waste of taxpayer money. The taxpayers delegate the problems to the government that aren’t being handled by it, anyhow.

We have let too many people with other agenda label and structure our world, and have failed to properly audit the cultural air we are breathing. It will fall hardest on the poorest, but it’s going to take down the middle as well, FINANCIALLY.

If (since) Judaism, Christianity, and Islam ALL degrade women because they are women, and they are primary in our culture, it’s time to take another look at how this happened and restructure our myths, PRIMARILY that people are logical and detached.

I already posted on the Pit of Despair (experimenting on monkeys by torturing them, as thbe scientist worked out his own depression on the animals), the Rosenhan experiment (where even trained psychiatrists couldn’t tell a real patient from a fake one, and once the test was exposed, they then saw a “pseudopatient” when looking at a real one. I have lived through more historical revisionism than I can stomach. Apparently most of my life didn’t happen, and my children have been trained and coached in this (while being totally separated from them).

Psychology is closer to a religion than a science, for the simple reason it’s not legal to experiment on people. This is done, but it’s still not legal. The legalization of this has been codified, practically, into the family law venue, but at its heart is the attempt to demonize women for protesting abuse. It’s origins are in Freud, and a lot of things we say are unacceptable, but we accept, if you think about it.

Well,, I’m willing to think about this issue between Eve and the Snake, and how although the “nonbelievers” say they don’t endorse it, they, like me, live in a world which has been essentially structured on certain myths, and in these myths, these stories, ALWAYS individuals, men and women, NEVER GROW UP. while primarily it’s women who supposedly know, this habit of thinking, this cultural air, always has SOME sector of people who are not as fully “developed” as us, or as perceptive, and need to be trained and drilled in the right way to grow up and think like those running the place.

This IS “The Road to Serfdom” and has been travelled before.

The Road to Serfdom is a book written by the Austrian-born economist and philosopher Friedrich von Hayek between 1940–1943, in which he “warned of the danger of tyranny that inevitably results from government control of economic decision-making through central planning,“^[1] and in which he argues that the abandonment of individualism, liberalism, and freedom inevitably leads to socialist or fascist oppression and tyranny and the serfdom of the individual. Significantly, Hayek challenged the general view among British academics that fascism was a capitalist reaction against socialism, instead arguing that fascism and socialism had common roots in central economic planning and the power of the state over the individual.

The Road to Serfdom is among the most influential and popular expositions of classical liberalism and libertarianism and remains a popular and influential work in contemporary discourse, selling over two million copies, and remaining a best-seller.^[2][3]

In addition to looking at these economics, which libertarians are so prone to do (in fact, I see that Glen Beck has been promoting this book), I am also realizing it’s time – for me at least — to challenge the demeaning and collectively devastating imagery of women that procedes from the theology of the Bible. I’ve looked at “the Great Scramble” (dividing up of Africa by European powers). We seem to vaguely acknowledge, now even in a popular movie, “Hotel Rwanda” that the genocide in Rwanda had plenty of outside help, from European powers creating an artificially incited distinction between Hutu and Tutsi, then acknowledging it too late to stop the genocide.

Is it possible that the gender wars in the courts are similar in basis? And the gender wars in life have not helped men, or women. I would LIKE to address this, being of middle age myself, and having been stunned and astonished at what passes for “education” and “law” in this country.

WIKIPEDIA ON THIS BOOK (note, I just got it and am reading it. ):

John Maynard Keynes said of it: “In my opinion it is a grand book…Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement.”^[10]

. . .Your greatest danger is the probable practical failure of the application of your philosophy in the United States.” ^[11] George Orwell responded with both praise and criticism, stating, “in the negative part of Professor Hayek’s thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often — at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough — that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of.” Yet he also warned, “[A] return to ‘free’ competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the state.”^[12] Hayek’s work was influential enough to warrant mention during the 1945 UK general election, when according to Harold Macmillan, Winston Churchill was “fortified in his apprehensions [of a Labour government] by reading Professor Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom“^[13] when he warned in an election broadcast in 1945 that a socialist system would “have to fall back on some form of Gestapo.”

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FEW, if ANY of the analyses one can read all over the web, and institutes, organizations, etc., talking about “the problems” have even a historical or an economic analyses of the problem. They can talk legal, they can talk psychological, they can talk gender, they can talk domestic violence, or child abuse, or father’s rights, but very seldom will they talk MONEY. Yet money is primarily what it’s about.

And few also talk about how this system is virtually a pathway to slavery for people in the country. Both parents, and children, are in “need” of education. Custody evaluators are in need of “education” Judges “just don’t understand. EVERYONE needs to be indoctrinated at everyone’s expense. They supposedly need this more than they need to have those unalienable rights, or due process, or any of the things described in the Bill of Rights.

HOW is that not a church? And who better than to confront the dogma in these issues than some of the people who have been treated like dogs in the process? While the rest of the pack is kept in basic ignorance, or a tightly won set of spin that’s so accepted, it’s enculturated.

U.S., U.S. CHRISTIANS v. Third World (Latin America, here) Christians, AND WAR AGAINST THE POOR, AND WOMEN:

Collections of symbolism indicate the religion, and we’d best learn to deal with some varieties of it. Or deal with upcoming Armageddon, whether we believe in it or not, enough people DO who could help make it happen.

There’s also the long-term, high-pressured, ongoing expensive trauma I describe in these pages on the family court system, but I am coming to understand it through a number of analogies. Only watching this happen, personally, and then witnessing others also go through similar process, could’ve alerted me to the larger, pervasive issues that cannot be continually quarantined. They aren’t even limited to the United States — neither bad policy through family court organizations (AFCC comes to mind), nor the financial impact of the increasing debt hitting the perpetually in distress sectors.

The term “LOW INTENSITY CONFLICT,” I know about this personally. The phrase “Financial Low Intensity Conflict” (“FLIC”) , I read in a book by Susan George about the Debt Crisis. Continual low-intensity conflict is still conflict, and is one of the worst aspects of the “cycle” of domestic violence. Because peace without a settlement that is mutually respected, is not peace. There is practically no peace available until someone is annihilated in this world view, and I’m talking about the world view that insists that men, any men, must dominate women, or they aren’t fully men.

Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Progressivism, “expertism” kind of blends together when you or your kids or associates are the target, and taking the repeated “hits.” All of the above “isms” can play both sides of the fence, some being more overtly destructive than others.

I looked up “Low Intensity Conflict” and got this, re: El Salvador, murder of Jesuit priests:

War Against the Poor: Low-Intensity Conflict and Christian Faith by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer holds a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York and has lived in Central America off and on since 1982. He is author of Hunger for Justice and The Politics of Compassion, both available from Orbis Books. Published in 1990 by Orbis Books, Maryknoll, New York 10545. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.

Postscript

The murder of Jesuit priests in El Salvador, the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the invasion of Panama, the “war on drugs,” and changing East/West relations add urgent weight to our need to confront the U.S. strategy of “low-intensity conflict” (LIC).

Please bear with the change of “scope” of subject and read on. War is war, and it’s everywhere, and will be reflected in cultures of war also. The general concept is, making the target population (or person, religion, or gender, or political ideal) the ‘OTHER,’ which justifies the takeover, and suspending whatever internal social standards (among the “Uses”) might apply.

The collapse of undemocratic regimes in Eastern Europe and improved East/ West relations, themselves hopeful signs, have potentially disastrous implications for Third World peoples.

• U.S. leaders began redefining the enemy as the organized poor in the Third World long before the recent changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Improving East/West relations will accelerate the trend of redirecting resources from the “defense of Europe” into new LIC strategies of Third World intervention. A recent document approved in December, 1989 by the Army’s chief of staff, General Carl Vuono, entitled “Military Operations in Low-Intensity Conflict,” describes the army’s new aggressive plans. A Newhouse News Service article states: “The U.S. Army, refocusing its attention away from Europe, is preparing for an aggressive new role in the Third World that ranges from non-military ‘nation-building’ in friendly countries to fostering sabotage and insurrection in ‘oppressive’ regimes. . . . The Army expects to become involved in the Third World ‘to a greater degree’ than ever before. . . .”

• Improving East/West relations increases the likelihood of an East/ West alliance against the South. Third World Christians, calling for the conversion of Christians in North America, have noted the danger: “Ironically, just when there is talk of more peaceful coexistence between East and West, our countries in the South experience increased hostile attacks from the West.”¹⁰

• The U.S. is desperately searching for enemies. The “threat of international communism,” which served as a cover for the defense of the U.S. empire, is being replaced with a new ideological garment. Enemies are now being defined as “terrorists” or in terms of “communist threats” that are regional (Cuba) or local (El Salvador, the Philippines). However, the most important ideological tool in the post-Cold War period is the “war on drugs.”

The “war on drugs” is serving as a cover for U.S. militarization in defense of empire. A letter from Catholic religious workers in Bolivia dated October 6, 1989 states:

We recognize the tremendous problem of the international drug trade and drug abuse. . . . But we join our voices with those Bolivians who say that the solution to this widespread, international problem is not sending military troops to production centers. . . . So why is the United States sending U.S. troops to Bolivia to “combat” drugs? Our analysis and that of many Bolivians is that the drug problem, a truly critical problem here and in the United States, is serving as a pretext for wider U.S. military presence and control on the continent of South America.

The parallel being, within the U.S. the violence against women / fatherhood wars is producing an unbelievably repressive system, administratively obscure and impoverishing. The “spin” is unbelievable, and the consequence — this system, I sometimes jokingly call the “Family Court Archipelago.” There are some indications that it has involvement in trafficking of children. CPS gets there too late, police get there too late, but the general theme will be everyone must be supervised, monitored, counseled (“therapy” i.e., reprogramming), and at times drugs recommended. We ARE the world’s largest per capita jailor, already, and these jails are disproprotionately full of young, black men. WHY?

Recently, a prominent organization (Family Violence Prevention Fund) was coming out on the side FOR the gun ban in Chicago, and guns represent personal self-defense, when understood and used legally, rather than feared and treated like poison. I have faced down more than one situation involving a gun, and it wasn’t with a stranger. But the other attrition is long-term trauma, and as they say here, “low intensity conflict. . . ” More from this particular site:

Repressing Democracy in the name of Democracy

George Will, celebrating the death of Marxism and chastising the “anti-Americanism” of progressive churches, declared that “Reagan’s way is affirmed again.” Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post noted with great pride that the United States is “in fact, more hegemonic in the world in 1990 than in 1950.” This of course is only a sampling. The tragedy is that Central America has become an equivalent of Tiannamen Square for the United States, in which the U.S. government and media collaborate to repress democracy in the name of democracy.

Finally, recent events underscore our spiritual crisis. The Latin American Council of Churches sent the following letter to Christians in the United States after the murder of the Jesuits:

How long? How long will the Christians and people of the United States have to contemplate the incongruity of its government . . . as it supports with over a million dollars a day another government that represses, kills bishops, religious workers, children, men and women, violates human rights, closes itself to dialogue and obstructs the pastoral task of the churches? . . . How long? In the name of the God of Justice, in the name of Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace, in the name of the Spirit of all truth: stop now!

The U.S. invasion of Panama prompted another letter challenging our racism and our nationalistic idols:

Now with Panama invaded, we Latin American Christians feel indignant when we hear the count on North American victims of an operation that was planned with evil intentions and hypocrisy, and yet nothing is said about the hundreds or thousands of Afro-Indo-Latin American lives . . . destroyed physically or psychologically by such an abominable adventure, which is a repetition of past crimes in Santo Domingo, Grenada, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador . . . etc., in an endless list. We ask ourselves, then: How long will the Christian churches in the U.S. continue to tolerate, and in some cases even justify, these actions that not only violate the most basic human rights, but also the right that the weakest or smallest countries have to make their own decisions and to write their own history.¹⁶

Jon Sobrino, a Jesuit whose life was saved because he was visiting Thailand when his brother Jesuits were murdered in El Salvador, recently told Sojourners magazine: “You cannot be a believer in God today in this world if you do not take oppression seriously. . . . What is at stake here is faith and humanity. . . . I don’t know how you can be a human being on this planet today if this growing oppression and poverty is not your central Issue.”¹⁷ As Christians living in the United States, what is at stake in our confrontation with “low-intensity conflict” is the very essence and integrity of our faith and our claim to be human beings.

— — Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer

March 15, 1990

We have got to be willing to re-evaluate and balance our theology and practice, rather than sitting complacently by while “expertise” is injected into us, our kids, ourselves, our institutions, and that includes religious ones. I have been astounded to watch (last decade, decade before) the atrocities and entrapment in my own home (and I’ve heard of worse) being “respected” because a male (perpetrating them) was there. He couldn’t have gotten away with this if someone else had protested. But they “respected” that “castle.”

Then, once I got “out,” the spin began, and revisionist history. Boy THAT gets you thinking. All I felt I needed was financial independence, and that was where the long-term and intense war took place, while the mouths were preaching something else. Unlike many women, I actually had the skill set and some of the contacts (amazingly), so other ways were devised to prevent me from controlling my own infrastructure. I watched this unfold with amazement.

I have been thinking about the Bible’s figurative language in forming the world, stating truths through systems of stories and symbols. People are symbolic and religious in nature, I don’t think this is going away soon. And however “rational” we are thought to be, rationalism being desirable in certain societies, i.e., a “rationally planned society,” there is the emotional edge.

Clearly, there’s SOMETHING about SERPENTS. WHY is a spiritual evil called “the serpent”? WHY, from the beginning (“Genesis”) was it so necessary to establish Adam as first, wise, talking directly to God, and not deceived, like Eve, by that nasty Serpent?

What was so evil and nasty about a certain animal species? It must have been the symbolism attached to it.

Why is the snake used as a symbol of evil?

Explained in the above site:

It was an important image in ancient pagan religions. The goddess Astarte, who represented the fertility of nature, was often portrayed with snakes. People saw the dead skins shed by snakes, and assumed that the snake had in some way died but then come alive again. They saw the seasons of the year following the same pattern: in winter all things died, but in spring Nature mysteriously sprang back to life. So the image of a snake was used in fertility rituals, especially those relating to the seasonal cycles.

To the Hebrew people, the snake was shorthand for polytheism and paganism, the natural enemy of Jahweh and monotheism.

You can’t stray far in Old or New Testaments without running into the paganism debate. Paul mocks the Athenians “whom you ignorantly worship, him I declare: God that made the world “winked” at your ignorance, but now commands everyone acknowledge Jesus Christ, because he’s appointed a day in which the world is going to be judged by him, and the assurance is the resurrection from the dead.

Giving life has always been a pre-occupation of religion. Most religions deal out the opposite, but women have been giving birth, forever. As far as I know….

One author (not Biblical) wrote, War was what men did while women were giving birth, raising children, developing agriculture and in general making life more civilized. Men, given technology, are going to figure out how to blow something up (case in point, look at history!).

Even the Prince of Peace is going to establish peace ONLY after everything is blown up and a new heavens and new earth made. Guess who is going to rule THEN? They crucified him (whoever did), and what goes around comes around. EVERY KNEE SHALL BOW AND CONFESS JESUS LORD.

ALL religions require submission and confession, and have a variety of ways of obtaining this. First, voluntary is best. Thereafter, force will do . . . .

VOLUNTARY submission is a social contract, or an individual contract. It has its place. I’m just getting a little tired of the theme, after all these years. So, I’m also willing to look (again) at the paganism debate, if it will make a significant difference in the world, especially the world I hope my children will outlive me in (and I plan to live a long time).

And along those lines, I have to address the innate hostility (overall, despite some significant departures) the whole Book, and the People of the Book, has towards women, symbolically.

I mean, in some places offspring, whether male or female, are referred to as “seed.” we’ve all had some anatomy by now, and (hopefully) know that even an ovum is larger than a sperm, and genetic inheritance comes from two parents, not just one (pre-cloning, that is). Sorry, but that’s insulting.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

BECAUSE WE NEED BOTH MEN AND WOMEN, FUNCTIONAL AND RESPECTED, IN THIS WORLD. AND A STRICT DEFINITION OF THEIR ROLES, TAKEN TO EXTREMES, LEADS TO DEATH. LIFE TAKES BOTH MEN AND WOMEN TO START, BUT IT COMES THROUGH US, SO TO SPEAK. SO WHY ARE WE SO “BAD” AND/OR (ALTERNATELY) “INVISIBLE.”??

THERE IS NO QUESTION THIS CONTINUES TO THE PRESENT — at least in my mind.

NOT ONLY ARE THERE THROWAWAY KIDS, BUT NOW THERE ARE THROWAWAY ADULT WOMEN. I’ve seen it, I’ve lived it, and I’m very concerned for my daughters that they don’t see this, that their experience of this world has been war in the home, war after separation, and themselves as commodities. They watched their mother get thrown away on pretexts, are not fully informed of HOW this was done (i.e., the extent of the corruption in the courts, and the particular lies in our court case).

The “deification” of fatherhood and the elimination of “motherhood” is no laughing matter.

The wars over land and tribal issues between at least three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity (sic) and Islam are literally worldwide in scope and impact. There have been centuries of wars and bloodshed over which books get in that Bible, who represents God. Men have been burned at the stake and lived their lives as fugitives for simply translating it into the common language. I THINK it’s relevant. All women should understand this affects them, when a President doesn’t even mention women in his inaugural speech, and when he is pushing a “religion” defining health, defining education, defining “welfare” and defining healthy marriages, childhood, and fatherhood — off on the rest of us.

It’s important, if life is “war” (I believe this is a male paradigm, but I might be wrong), it’s important to pick one’s battles wisely. For example, Pacific Justice Institute, making a name for itself in my area like lots of others, hasn’t said a thing [on the alerts I get] about the people dying in the streets, women’s issues, or the a bysmal failure of justice within church communities. They have taken on defending rights of parents versus schools, cities trying to invoke the name of Jesus in public prayers (defending), and now some artwork making fun of religious people in the Sacramento Law Library.

For Immediate Release: Thursday, July 15, 2010
Contact: President Brad Dacus (916) 857-6900

Law Library Promotes Artist Who Calls Religious People “Stupid”

Sacramento, CA – The Pacific Justice Institute is calling for the removal of a painting from the Sacramento Public Law Library that defaces a Bible and is accompanied by a statement saying that religious faith makes people stupid.

PJI is sending a demand letter to the Board of the Sacramento County Law Library, a majority of whose members are local judges, demanding that the painting Moral Values be immediately removed. The painting, by San Francisco attorney-artist Jeri Wyrick, depicts a large Bible with a label on it that states “WARNING: MAY IMPAIR JUDGMENT.” PJI was alerted about the painting by a local attorney, James Temple. In response to a public records request from PJI, the Library Director disclosed a statement from the artist calling people of faith “stupid.” The statement reads, “Moral Values is based upon exit polls taken at the time of the 2004 Presidential Election, where people who voted for George W. Bush said their main concern about America’s future was not terrorism, the war in Iraq or the economy, but moral values – i.e., gay people being allowed to marry. I came to the conclusion that there must be something about religious faith which renders people stupid.” Moral Values does not stand alone in the exhibit as a work that mocks religion.

PJI is a nonprofit, as follows:

Pacific Justice Institute is a non-profit 501(c)(3) legal defense organization specializing in the defense of religious freedom, parental rights, and other civil liberties. Pacific Justice Institute works diligently, without charge, to provide their clients with all the legal support they need. Pacific Justice Institute’s strategy is to coordinate and oversee large numbers of concurrent court actions through a network of over 1,000 affiliate attorneys nationwide. And, according to former US Attorney General Edwin Meese, “The Institute fills a critical need for those whose civil liberties are threatened.” “Through our dedicated attorneys and supporters, we defend the rights of countless individuals, families and churches… without charge.”

=======================

Last year, they announced opening an office in the SF Bay Area, probably as a conservative incision into an area perceived to be very hostile to civil liberties. I have a feeling this doesn’t include such civil liberties issues as it relates to discrimination on basis of color, GENDER, or sexual orientation, particularly the last one… I think public schools is one area of interest:

Pacific Justice Institute Launches Office in San Francisco Bay Area

City:

Oakland, CA

Date:

08/17/2009

Pacific Justice Institute announced today that it has opened an office to serve the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The office is located in downtown Oakland, 10 minutes from San Francisco and Berkeley.

With increased litigation and other needs for representation in the region, PJI attorneys have been traveling to the Bay Area on a weekly basis for some time. “The San Francisco region is without a doubt one of the most hostile places in the country toward religious liberties and values,” noted Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute. “But with growing challenges come greater opportunities. We are thrilled to have a new way to serve the courageous faith community in the Bay Area, and also to provide resources for our many affiliate attorneys in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and nearby cities.” In addition to the new office, PJI continues to maintain offices staffed by full-time attorneys in Sacramento and Southern California.

The Bay Area office, on the edge of Oakland’s Chinatown, will be headed by PJI Chief Counsel Kevin Snider. With this opening, PJI will become the only public interest legal organization in the Bay Area specializing in meeting the needs of churches, parents and people of faith. “The hostility and intimidation towards this protected class has created a general environment of fear and intimidation,” said Snider, referring to the longtime legal designation of religion as a fundamental, legally protected class. “We want people of faith in the Bay Area to know that they are not alone,” he continued.

(small font unintentional, below)…

I think they have been fairly silent during the Oscar Grant issue, when a young black man was shot, to death, in the back, while lying on the ground and surrounded by BART officers. I guess that area was covered by someone else.

I also have been through repeated personal hell, during marriage, and during divorce proceedings, along several civil liberties issues. I noticed plenty of “church” women in the domestic violence support groups. They got to the support groups after failing to find help, or protection, in the churches. In at least one case, the batterer was a deacon or a pastor.

My civil rights were repeatedly violated, and around school issues, in the family law venue. PJI doesn’t take this on, naturally. I note that the words “individuals” and “parents” is definitely gender neutral, but I have a feeling which way the cookie might crumble when it came to representing a woman against a man as to system violation of civil rights in court, police, and parenting matters. I think you get my point.

I do take issue with taking public funds to do so. . . .

BUT, the mocking of religion in a law library, while I can’t say I disagree with the issues they take with it, well, MOCKING RELIGION IS AN HONORABLE TRADITION, PRACTICED (according to the Christian sacred text, a.k.a., the Bible) REPEATEDLY BY GOD (sic), PROPHETS, and JESUS ….

HERE are a few samples:

(of course, told from point of view of the faithful):

I Kings 18 . . . Elijah (major prophet) mocks the prophets of Baal because their prayers weren’t being answered. This has been commemorated in an oratorio by Mendelssohn, called (surprisingly) “Elijah.” Governments have been equating themselves with “God” forever, and it takes repeated sarcasm, criticism, and sometimes civil protests by prophets and others to keep them in line. Most governments do not take kindly to being mocked, nor do most religions.

And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many; and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under. 26And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made. 27And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked. 28And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. 29And it came to pass, when midday was past, and they prophesied until the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that there was neither voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded.

A minor point or two — in context, the prophets he mocked “ate at Jezebels’ (queen’s) table.”

Well, nowadays, there are plenty of people eating at the Federal Table, and I’m not referring primarily to the TANF sector, but those whose livelihood is prophesying about, well things like “female-headed households” and “fatherless children.” Yeah, we have to be able to mock.

As this account goes, after they were done cutting themselves, they got cut, too — by Elijah (i.e, beheaded). Being a prophet was dangerous in those times. In these times, I think the main “danger” of the fed-at-the-government table prophets is either job loss, or mass indignation, when/if the general public wakes up and finds out WHAT the smart people were researching with their money.

The real smart factor was compiling and automating collection of million$$ and billions$$ centrally to be dispensed without adequate oversight, and rearrange how government works, and WHO it Is; figuring out a way to get paid to study other people, and this is called, primarily, the income tax. Entire professions spring up from manufactured dysfunction.

(I’ll leave it to you to figure out whether I’m referring to “public education” systems, court systems, or the social sciences in that last sentence….)

Here’s Jesus calling some leaders “dumb,” in so many words. (Matthew 16: ERV)

And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and tempting him asked him to shew them a sign from heaven. 2 But he answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the heaven is red. 3 And in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the heaven is red and lowring. Ye know how to discern the face of the heaven; but ye cannot discern the signs of the times. 4 An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of Jonah. And he left them, and departed.

i.e., they weren’t real perceptive. Other places, he called them ‘blind leaders of the blind,” and a lot of other insulting names. Caveat emptor — eventually, this habit of refusing to join, endorse, and in general, refusal to blend in, shut up, and in general persisting in self-confidence, speaking, teaching, atttracting followers (probably the real “crime”) and breaking traditions, (though not law), and failure to mainstream himself, led to crucifixion.

—

I realize this isn’t the full historical or cultural context, or certainly political, but my point is to draw parallels with today. When you can’t change things, you CAN mock them.

When that mocking, however, goes nationwide, is officially endorsed, and profiles people according to some superficial characteristic, for example, where they worship or WHAT they worship, it is tending towards genocide. Study Rwanda, Study Hitler, Study any genocide or prejudice. First, the target has to be dehumanized, because in all of us (let’s hope most, at least) there is still a vestige of recognition of conscience that that “target” person is at least PART-human, which part has to be silenced.

PJI is right — that artwork in the public law library IS inappropriate. A point could be made that there is a quality of “stupidity” in religious people, and there is a character involved in believing the impossible or improbable to be true. HOWEVER, religious people in no way have cornered the market on gullibility or stupidity.

TAKE FOR EXAMPLE, STUDYING

“TRANSITION TO FATHERHOOD at CORNELL”

=================

I fail to see where this falls into the role of government, but it’s a large enough grant:

TAGGS Abstract Details

Title	Transition to Fatherhood
Award Number	P01HD045610
Project Start/End	10-MAR-2005 / 28-FEB-2010
Abstract	DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Policy makers and others are concerned that many young men today are only loosely attached to their children and their children’s mothers. This concern has been fueled by rising rates of non-marital childbearing, delays in the age of marriage, increases in the share of children being raised in female-headed families, and the failure of some biological fathers to provide economic support to their children. The aim of this proposal is to form a multi-disciplinary team of research collaborators who will meet on a regular basis to plan and conduct coordinated analyses on topics relating to the transition to fatherhood using multiple data sets. The four projects included in this proposal address the following related issues: 1. What are the economic, policy, psychological, and sociological factors that influence the timing of biological fatherhood and the circumstances under which fatherhood occurs? What is the role of men in the timing and circumstances of sexual initiation, contraceptive use, pregnancy, and childbearing? 2. What is the relationship between the transition to biological fatherhood and other transitions to adulthood, such as marriage, educational completion, and entry into the workforce? 3. What are the determinants of responsible fathering, and, in particular, what is the role of family process within and across generations? 4. What are the social, economic, policy, relationship and individual factors associated with men having additional births after they have already become fathers, and what factors lead men to have additional births, with more than one partner? Each project will conduct parallel analyses across multiple data sets, and similar data sets will be used across many of the projects. The data sets used in the four projects include National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and 1979; Add Health; National Survey of Adolescent Males; National Survey of Family Growth; Fragile Families; Early Head Start; Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort; National Survey of Families and Households; Panel Study of Income Dynamics-CDS. Our strategy will enable us to obtain a much fuller understanding of the factors that influence the transition to fatherhood. We also propose two infrastructure cores: (A) Administration and Dissemination and (B) Data Management and Methodology.
Thesaurus
PI Name/Title	H E PETERS
PI eMail
Institution	CORNELL UNIVERSITY ITHACA 120 Day Hall ITHACA, NY 14853
Department
Fiscal Year	2009
ICD	NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF CHILD HEALTH AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
IRG	ZHD1

Award Funding Details

FY	Recipient	Budget Year of Support	Award Code	Agency	Action Issue Date	Amount This Action
2005	CORNELL UNIVERSITY	1	000	NIH	03-08-2005	$ 992,602
Fiscal Year 2005 Total:						$ 992,602

FY	Recipient	Budget Year of Support	Award Code	Agency	Action Issue Date	Amount This Action
2006	CORNELL UNIVERSITY	2	000	NIH	07-01-2006	$ 917,129
2006	CORNELL UNIVERSITY	2	001	NIH	09-28-2006	$ 64,887
Fiscal Year 2006 Total:						$ 982,016

FY	Recipient	Budget Year of Support	Award Code	Agency	Action Issue Date	Amount This Action
2007	CORNELL UNIVERSITY	3	000	NIH	03-13-2007	$ 967,400
2007	CORNELL UNIVERSITY	3	001	NIH	05-21-2007	$ 85,631
Fiscal Year 2007 Total:						$ 1,053,031

FY	Recipient	Budget Year of Support	Award Code	Agency	Action Issue Date	Amount This Action
2008	CORNELL UNIVERSITY	4	000	NIH	02-26-2008	$ 936,396
Fiscal Year 2008 Total:						$ 936,396

FY	Recipient	Budget Year of Support	Award Code	Agency	Action Issue Date	Amount This Action
2009	CORNELL UNIVERSITY	4	000	NIH	12-04-2008	$ 0
2009	CORNELL UNIVERSITY	5	001	NIH	02-02-2009	$ 824,700
2009	CORNELL UNIVERSITY	5	002	NIH	06-18-2009	$ 91,633
Fiscal Year 2009 Total:						$ 916,333

FY	Recipient	Budget Year of Support	Award Code	Agency	Action Issue Date	Amount This Action
2010	CORNELL UNIVERSITY	5	000	NIH	11-09-2009	$ 0
Fiscal Year 2010 Total:						$ 0

Total of all awards:

$ 4,880,378

What concerns me about this (just a drop in the bucket of this fascination of studying the life span, sexual habits, and emotional makeup of the human male) is that when HUMAN BEINGS become SUBJECT MATTER and the SUBJECT OF STUDIES THE REST OF US FUND, THROUGH TAXES, WE ARE PAYING “OURSELVES” TO TEACH SUPPOSED EXPERTS AND ‘MASTERS” HOW TO MANAGE US.

This is why it’s important — really important — to continue mocking some of the language found in these studies on “fatherhood” and transitioning to it. It’s NOT a laughing matter, not at that price tag, and this price tag includes throwaway children.

I mean, GOOD GRIEF — do we NEED to know all this?

If so, WHY?

Experiments are always being done on people in institutional settings without their informed consent. Like it or not, there are people whose lives are NOT “live and let live” but “how to rule the world,” and it’s no laughin matter. The assumption being that ONE set of wisdom is important, and ANOTHER is devalued. One sector of society is important and another is devalued — or the value can be exploited by studying their motivations, psyches, sexual habits, household income, and more.

There is a conflict of interest with the U.S. Constitution as it stands (and the Bill of Rights, etc.) and the global monetary system, the INTRINSIC compounding debt system of the U.S. $$ once it went off the gold standard, and so forth.

These are called ‘silent wars.” The war between men and women (and it IS an ideological war, there are casualties, there is propaganda, there is hostage-taking, there is economic supply “war” and there is most definitely an ongoing “spin.”) sometimes pales by comparison when costs are evaluated.

As I looked (with dismay) at the people submitting justification for “MORE FATHERHOOD FUNDING” and Obama’s INNOVATION (on the same old story), I wondered where intelligence went, and common sense.

We are no longer in an age where people can afford to learn only what goes in their niche. The key to understanding HOW LIFE WORKS is intelligent understanding of symbols, operating paradigms, and telling a fool from a wise person, and: more important: An Honest one from a deceitful one.

I hoped that the “Rosenhan Experiment” link (recent post) would be read and would show the relatively intelligent how stupid we all really are, and how gullible, in our own times.

The U.S. government is indeed trafficking in human beings, whatever they may say about wanting to stop it. The HHS department ONLY came into being in 1991 — that tells us something.

I’ve blogged about “The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed” (on women: re: HRT) and about the poor black woman whose stem cells were harvested for research, but (after she died) her relatives were not told, nor were they offered a share in the profits.

A recent passing acquaintance told me enthusiastically about a new area of experimentation, in the sky, called “chemtrails.”

(The photo is of a CON(densation) trail, not a “CHEM” trail.

The United States Air Force has stated that the theory is a hoax which “has been investigated and refuted by many established and accredited universities, scientific organizations, and major media publications”.^[8] The British Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has stated that chemtrails “are not scientifically recognised phenomena”.^[6] The Canadian Leader of the Government in the House of Commons has stated that “The term ‘chemtrails’ is a popularized expression, and there is no scientific evidence to support their existence.”^[9]

The term chemtrail is derived from “chemical trail” in the similar fashion that contrail is an abbreviation for condensation trail. It does not refer to common forms of aerial spraying such as crop dusting, cloud seeding or aerial firefighting. The term specifically refers to aerial trails allegedly caused by the systematic high-altitude release of chemical substances not found in ordinary contrails, resulting in the appearance of supposedly uncharacteristic sky tracks. Believers of this theory speculate that the purpose of the chemical release may be for global dimming, population control, weather control, or biowarfare and claim that these trails are causing respiratory illnesses and other health problems.^{[2][3][10][11]}

=Here’s another site on it called RENSE.COM

Chemtrails DataPage

I’m not following up on that topic. It seems clear enough to me that the PROFIT motive often interferes with PROBLEMSOLVING.  I’ve had enough experience with children and schools over the years to know that kids don’t come out either violent, or stupid; these are conditions that are made, not typically inherited.

Moreover, human beings are one piece, and no matter how segmented a culture becomes, by whichever profile, one of the MOST dangerous practices, and I’m talking WHITE-collar crime, is when the “masters of society” have detached themselves from those they rule.  This is why superstructures have to continually be dismantled, mocked, and their basic operating systems understood.

Common sense says that if we believe that a “THINK TANK” is going to solve “OUR” issues, then we have just dumped our thinking into a container, and delegated it to someone else.

Thinking, reasoning, and deciding is a PRocess, and has to stay context sensitive.  IN a society, there has to be enough of a common social contract understood that there isn’t chaos.

But the empire of “health and human services” in particularly is just that — an “empire.”

It has no clothes on.  The arguments are facetious, and I believe that if enough people stopped actually debating the ridiculous, we might also just be able to stop sacrificing money, and pouring blood — and as sites like DASTARDLY DADs and the headlines show, blood does flow from the idolizing of a specific family arrangement, regardless of characters of who’s in it — we might be able to stop the process before DoomsDay.

Also be aware of people so intent on directing the conversation, and framing the debate.  When this is seen (and the “mainstreaming” and “collaboration” of domestic violence advocates and fatherhood practitioners is now old news.  It’s a done deal, and it’s obvious if you look at the conferences, the websites, and the common themes in the different groups), understand, like Jesus did, that while they may perceive certain details, they have missed “the sign of the times.”

And walk away.  Life is short.  Time is finite — use it well.

One of the signs of the times is argumentation over everything, and fogetting which arguments are most important.  Pick your Proverbs and live by them, adjust as necessary en route.

KNOW a fool when you run across one, and if possible, walk away.  That foolishness will tear your life up worse than a bear, says Proverbs.  In the realm of domestic violence, the bottom line is life itself (i.e., it can tturn lethal).  But also, the quality of life while alive — and whatever it takes to NOT live in fear is ESSENTIAL.  While religion talks about resurrection (or reincarnation) the point is, to make best use of the time — while still breathing.  In this way, it can be “redeemed.”  In the long run, none of us controls the world, nor should we try to.  We should control ourselves and our own responsibilities, part of which is not giving those who ARE trying to run it (into the ground, along with us and our kids or mates) too long a leash with which to do it.

And — case in point, the Cornell study is just one — part of that lease is your tax money.  No world rulers want to totally tear up the place — where would they live?  They would much prefer to set in systems to gradually but pervasively humble people til they can’t protest, and leave the goods intact.

PART of SMARTS is accepting that such people exist in this world, and get over the idea that everyone is as altruistic as you may be.

Gandhi’s model was to win over people without violence.  INTRINSIC in this model was self-reliance, including refusing to buy salt (the march to the ocean), and weavingone’s own  clothes, not adopting a lifestyle and clothing style that was foreign to him, imported from England.

We might want to consider this again (ladies . . . . Moms . . . . . ).  Can you manage WITHOUT that child support system?  If so, do – it’s a trap.

Expect a fight. Entrenched interests – religions, nationwide educational systems that dumb down a populace and set them at each other instead of whoever wishes the failures to continue — and tax systems, ALL have a history.

So does the concept of Money.  And the concept of “job” (Just Over Broke).  Some jobs pay well, but take a toll personally and as to family, which isn’t worth it.

Sometimes, the Obvious cannot be rephrased, only exposed.

There’s nothing at all “innovative” about these programs except for the reasoning that keeps them going, going, gone, while so many other social services are gone, gone gone (and so are some human beings subjected to them).

On June 10th, a hearing was announced. I was alerted and put out the word to noncustodial mothers I knew, whose input, naturally, wasn’t sought and without a SINGLE “technical assistance grant” from the U.S. Dept of Anything, we blogged this, and got a few words in edgewise in the brief window, less than a week, this hearing was announced.

June 17th, the hearing was held. The same day, the wife of a city worker in North Carolina called 911, again, “On June 17 at 4:30 p.m., Devinee House called 911 and told a dispatcher that her husband had changed the locks on the doors of the home.”

This was a nuclear family, homeowners, the father working for the City and a good guy, hey said. There was no known alcohol or violence in the home. They were married and homeowners. They had four children together, 2, 7, 8 and 15. Dad was employed:

William House worked for the city of Raleigh in the inspections department, where he made sure heating and air conditioning units installed throughout the city met local and state codes. He was known as “Billy” by colleagues, said Larry Strickland, the city’s inspections director, who called House a “good employee.”

I’m going to hazard a guess, by the photos, this was a Caucasian, middle class family. Not exactly the profile that would justify the fatherhood programming and funding, which began being aimed at welfare mothers, particularly African-American ones. So here we go, another week “in the life.”

Johnston County Sheriff’s Officers gather outside a house at 640 Castleberry Road near Clayton. A father, mother and their 15-year-old son are all dead this morning in an apparent double murder-suicide.

She was trying to separate. Result? Dad, Mom, and a 15 year old boy GONE. This happened YESTERDAY!

Meanwhile, business as usual in Washington, D.C., announcing on-line an upcoming hearing about why millions more should be allocated to keep the government in the business of relationship improvement:

[phrase copied from “house.gov” link titled: McDermott Announces Hearing to Review Responsible Fatherhood Programs June 10, 2010.]

“In view of the limited time available to hear witnesses, oral testimony at this hearing will be from invited witnesses only. However, any individual or organization not scheduled to appear may submit a written statement for consideration by the Subcommittee and for inclusion in the record of the hearing.”

As we can see (from the Hearings Witness list) no female’s statements were taken.

Not exactly surprising . . . The ostensible goal, after all, is to get Dads back with their children, Moms back in the workforce, and Early Childhood Development Scholars back into Head Start to report on the little ones.

Many females I know are busy attending a different sort of hearings, hearings where what they are saying is typically NOT heard, and these take place in the family law venue. These hearing sare multiplying even faster than SOME of us can have more babies to replace the throwaway ones. They are helping in this manner reduce both JOBLESSNESS (for those in government or working in professions which get clientele from traumatized families and court referrals), and also the POPULATION CRISIS, as sometimes they result in family wipeouts.

And “throwaway kids” is not always a figure of speech. A recent incident in Oakland, California, had a young man doing exactly that to his 18 month old daughter:

Oakland man arrested after throwing baby into traffic
By Harry Harris and Sean Maher
Staff writers
Posted: 07/11/2010 10:31:55 AM PDT
Updated: 07/12/2010 08:43:33 AM PDT

http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_15491654?source%253Dmost_emailed.26978592730A3B8C7F471EACE0DA4EF2.html

OAKLAND — A 21-year-old man was arrested Saturday after he threw his daughter into oncoming traffic and then attacked witnesses and police who were trying to subdue him, authorities said.

The 18-month-old girl was not badly injured.

The wheels of an oncoming Volkswagen Jetta did not touch her, but she was burned and scraped by the car’s undercarriage, police said.

The suspect, John Taylor, was stunned with a Taser and suffered minor injuries. Police did not release the girl’s name but said she lives with her mother in an East Bay city.

She was visiting her father Saturday, and they had been at a friend’s house. Police were still unsure Sunday afternoon why Taylor acted as he did.

{{I can’t locate it, but a TV camera caught his brother saying, they’d been in foster homes, growing up; many times kids in these situations are also “inappropriately medicated.” Makes you think…}}

That little girl couldn’t have predicted that she would go airborne, but here’s a case where a six-year-old boy accurately predicted that his Daddy was going to kill his Mommy. A protective order was involved (and violated). Naturally, it was “assumed” that the Daddy, having been confronted, would respect a piece of paper more than he respected his wife, or child.

This one produced a young, fatherless boy in the end, too. (Murder/suicide. To me, it sounds like an honor killing as well…) Should he be invited to stand before the House Ways and Means Committee, as a young adult, to give oral testimony, in a few years? (I imagine these programs WILL continue, as they are ideologically-based, and not “evidence-based”)

This in effect gives those who are paying attention about a week to get together a submission in the proper format, as the hearing took place June 17, 2010, only one week later.

The “background” statement (on this page announcing the Hearing) reads:

BACKGROUND:

Up to $50 million in Federal funds per year is now available in competitive grants to States, territories, Indian tribes, and public and non-profit community organizations to operate Responsible Fatherhood Initiatives. The program is designed to promote responsible fatherhood through: parenting activities, fostering the economic stability of fathers, marriage promotion, and collaborating with non-profit fatherhood promotion organizations to develop and advance media campaigns to encourage parental involvement. Funding for the program expires on September 30, 2010.

President Obama included a proposal in his FY2011 budget to redirect funds from the current Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Programs into a new Fatherhood, Marriage, and Families Innovation Fund. The new program would provide competitive grants to States to develop, implement, and evaluate comprehensive responsible fatherhood programs and comprehensive family demonstrations that improve child well-being by improving the outcomes for families experiencing severe barriers to self-sufficiency. The proposal would provide $500 million in FY2011 and $150 million per year for FY2012 through FY2015.

In announcing the hearing, Chairman McDermott stated, “I look forward to hearing how Responsible Fatherhood Initiatives have helped men play a bigger role in the lives of their children, and how the program might be built upon to improve the overall well-being of vulnerable children and their families.”

FOCUS OF THE HEARING:

The hearing will focus on the effectiveness of Responsible Fatherhood Programs in improving the relationship between non-custodial parents and their children, as well as their ability to provide financial support.

Far better to “focus on the effectiveness” than to “report the abysmal failures” of these programs. They are resulting in a population so traumatized, and ADHD, lest we FOCUS ON THE ADHD GOVERNMENT THAT “forgot” what Governments are for.

IMPROVING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS? Or SECURING THEIR RIGHTS?

JUNE 17 — OPENING STATEMENTS, WITNESS STATEMENTS 1 , and 2, and STATEMENTS FOR THE RECORD.

This gives the impression of some sort of due process or legal procedure: Hearings, witness statements, testimony, etc. Can we talk, “conflict of interest?”

A glance at the list of people / organizations able to get their submissions in on time, and in the proper format, includes several individual names (some of who can be seen on my blogroll — as soon as I heard about this hearing, I publicized it) and are probably Moms who lost their kids to abusers, or at least through these programs’ effect. Some of them are overtly fatherhood groups (and as such, are receiving funding from the programs, or have been given a “leg up” by the existence of the HHS, NFI, etc. coalition which dates back at least a decade.

This is a typed out list of Statements for the Record:

American Humane Association
Illinois Council on Responsible Fatherhood
PAIRS Foundation
American Mothers Political Party
AngelFury.org
Anita Barnes
Dr. Alan Hawkins, Brigham Young University
California Healthy Marriages Coalition 1
California Healthy Marriages Coalition 2
Center for Family Policy & Practice
Center for Urban Families
Child Find of America Inc.
Community Endeavors Foundation
COPES, Inc.
Families in Crisis, Inc.
Fatherhood and Marriage Leadership Institute
Gail Lakritz
Goodwill – Easter Seals Minnesota
Greg Eckenrode
Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Health Policy Institute
Linder Battershall
Male Empowerment Network Inc.
Mariz Zwiefka
Mothers of Lost Children – Indianapolis
National Fatherhood Initiative
National African American Drug Policy Coalition I
National Alliance for Family Court Justice
National Center for Fathering
Nurturing Father’s Program
Nurturing Father’s Program, Study 1
Ohio Practitioners Network for Fathers and Families
Dr. Philip Cowan, Supporting Father Involvement Project
Randi James
Relationship Research Foundation, Inc.
Renovando Familias
Rights for Mothers Group
Ruth Whipple
Sacramento Healthy Marriages Project
Technical College System of Georgia-Fatherhood Program
Teen-Aid, Inc.
Texas Coalition for Healthy Families
Dr. Jennifer Baker, The School of Professional Psychology at Forest Institute
VA EQUAL Parents
VOW Family Champions
Warren County Center for the Family
YouandMe.We
ICF International
Northwest Family Services
The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy
Patty Howell, California Healthy Marriages Coalition

You see that last organization, California Healthy Marriage Coalition? I see (offhand) 3 entries above from this group, and well they might — they received one of the largest grants around in 2006, to reproduce themselves. Target population?

(Don’t laugh, I mean, these grants recipients take their business seriously; after all, it’s serious $$) — it’s practically the entire population of the State of California, those that made it to age 15 (which — see top of post — the son of one family didn’t make it PAST, though he lived in a nuclear, white (I’m guessing), homeowner, suburban family with a working father. So, theoretically, his resident father could’ve taught him about fatherhood and not becoming prematurely sexually active outside of marriage (i.e., “abstinence”), using drugs, beating on women, or such high-risk behaviors. Only problem, it appears that his Dad killed this young man, and his mother, and the father himself.

THIS POST (mine, August 2009) has charts, and interactive links to some of the organizations submitting statements, above. I see on there is the School of Professional Psychology at the Forest Institute, too. Click on links, and see what their projects were, and how much they received. This is a for-profit business, and these grants are part of the profit.
Maybe some of the economic pressures on these families who are killing each other off might be relieved if an alternate use could be put to federal funding besides “studying” them. The role of Big Brother as Family Counselor is simply a transfer of wealth scheme.

I know women MADE homeless through these programs. I went chasing around for a damn TELEPHONE (after unemployment failed to come, though it was promised). I found instead a sea of red tape. Foundations fund nonprofits (and are inbred with government) and individuals without the right connections (in my case, I was hoping for a simple INTERNET connection. . . . in a timely fashion.) had best get in line. They will be screened, fingerprinted, photographed, monitored, and threatened with serious fraud if they fail to report properly and on time what they did with what’s left of any government benefits that somehow trickled down to you and were actually consumed. They will NOT be invited to testify at hearings unless their profile fits the purpose of the hearings. When it comes to fatherhood, were mothers invited to testify?

Another group (I see submitted a statement above) actually changed its original name, which held the word “FATHERS” to be less overtly “Fatherhood” friendly and replaced it with the word “families.” I may have blogged them already, or it may still be lingering here as a draft:

Center for Family Policy & Practice

Ever wonder why the little word “for” gets a big letter “F” in the logo?

“Center For Family Policy & Practice – – CFFPP, naturally.

They’re about FAMILIES. Families including MOTHERS? Well, here’s the current home page, part of it:

Listen to Co-Director Jacquelyn Boggess discuss the Fatherhood, Marriage, and Family Innovation Fund on WORT Radio. (Skip forward 30 minutes [about halfway] in the program to hear her interview.) Play or Download President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships: Report of Recommendations: In the radio interview, Ms. Boggess references the sections on Fatherhood and Healthy Families (p. 27) and Reform of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (p. 117).
	Fatherhood Programs and Healthy Marriage Funding (2009)

Here’s the prior incarnation, same site, same letters in the name

Search Results

CFFPP: Center for Family Policy and Practice

President Releases 2011 Budget; Increases HHS Funding While Freezing Spending for Most Domestic Programs,

Mass Incarceration and Its Effect of Racial Control Explored in New Book.

The Rosenhan experiment was a famous experiment into the validity of psychiatric diagnosis conducted by psychologist David Rosenhan in 1973. It was published in the journal Science under the title “On being sane in insane places.”[1] The study is considered an important and influential criticism of psychiatric diagnosis.[2]
Rosenhan’s study was done in two parts. The first part involved the use of healthy associates or “pseudopatients” who briefly simulated auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals in five different states in various locations in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff that they felt fine and had not experienced any more hallucinations. Hospital staff failed to detect a single pseudopatient, and instead believed that all of the pseudopatients exhibited symptoms of ongoing mental illness. Several were confined for months. All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and agree to take antipsychotic drugs as a condition of their release.
The second part involved asking staff at a psychiatric hospital to detect non-existent “fake” patients. The staff falsely identified large numbers of genuine patients as impostors.
The study concluded, “It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals” and also illustrated the dangers of depersonalization and labeling in psychiatric institutions. It suggested that the use of community mental health facilities which concentrated on specific problems and behaviors rather than psychiatric labels might be a solution and recommended education to make psychiatric workers more aware of the social psychology of their facilities. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
Rosenhan experiment

Are we SURE we want our Health and Human Services to be Psychology-Driven?  I already blogged on Wade  Horn:

Wade F. Horn is an American psychologist who received unanimous confirmation (under President George W. Bush) in 2001 as the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families. Before his resignation on April 1, 2007, he oversaw the function of the Administration For Children and Families, an agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services. He also served under President George H. W. Bush as Commissioner of Children, Youth, and Families within the Administration For Children and Families.

Horn represents a key advocate for the re-envisioning and re-vising of the Federal Head Start program. A key proponent for family involvement in education, Horn served as president of the National Fatherhood Initiative. Horn is also a strong advocate for “abstinence education.”

He received his Ph.D. in 1981 from Southern Illinois University. He served as an assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University and was an affiliate scholar at the right-wing think tank, The Hudson Institute.

Secretary Leavitt praised Wade Horn for his leadership, citing his actions to “significantly improved the lives of vulnerable children and strengthened the American family as he led the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) for the past six years.”

He continued, “Under Wade’s leadership, we passed and implemented the next chapter of welfare reform, launched the first-ever healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood grants, began outreach to victims of human trafficking, helped increase the number of adoptions in America, connected children of prisoners with mentors, and created a strong partnership with faith-based organizations.”

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And I think I mentioned “Wade Horn Cashes Out..”

AllGov – Department of Health and Human Services – Administration …

Wade Horn cashes out: Former Department of Health and Human services official signs on as a consultant with Deloitte Consulting LLP after questions are …
http://www.allgov.com/…/Administration_for_Children_and_Families_ – Cached

WHO IS ACF?

The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is a “principal operating division” of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).ACF oversees and finances social and economic programs for vulnerable children and families, designed to “help them and develop toward a more independent, self-reliant life.” Targeted groups include Native Americans, persons with developmental disabilities, refugees and legalized aliens. Programs are carried out by state, county, city and tribal governments, as well as public and private local agencies. Critics argue that ACF, a relatively new administration, has been deployed as a forum to push the Bush Administration’s more conservative initiatives – funneling money to (discredited) abstinence-only programs and marriage promotion grants.

WHEN DID ACF START? 1991

The Department of Health and Human Services created the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) as a principal operating division in 1991. The new Administration merged employees and functions of the Family Support Administration (FSA) and the Office of Human Development Services (OHDS).

How about WADE HORN? 1994, NFI founded.

(review:  1991, ACF started.  1994, NFI founded and VAWA passed.  )

Wade Horn

Before joining the ACF as Secretary in July 2001, Wade Horn founded and ran the conservative National Fatherhood Initiative in 1994 with funding from the Religious Right. At ACF he oversaw a mélange of programs highly palatable to the religious right and social conservatives – most notably abstinence-only education (he extended chastity strategy to adults) but also harmful and discriminatory welfare reform and the promotion of (exclusively heterosexual) marriage and traditional values as a means/in place of social and economic development – even suggesting that Headstart should be limited to children of married couples. He awarded his organization, the National Fatherhood Initiative, with a “capacities-building” grant of just under a million dollars from…

 

And then he began working as Secretary for  HHS/ACF 2001-2007

Under former Secretary Wade Horn (2001-2007) in particular, the ACF promoted policies that appear to pander to the religious right and socially conservative elements – like marriage promotion for poor women as an anti-poverty strategy, reduced access to higher education for welfare recipients (due to a “work-first” mandate), a willfully ignorant chastity strategy for both youth and (more on site, above..)

In 1995 President Clinton is all “fatherhood” also, as was Gore.  At this time, as we know, Congress, like the U.S. population is* around 50% female.  *(yeah, right)

I told you, Mythology, Theology, Psychology, Constitution Goodbye…  Justice good bye.  Due process, Good bye.  Out-come based litigation, hello.  Therapeutic Jurisprudence, Hello.  Hello also renowed (psychologist) Warren Farrell, reformed feminist and, well, see his Penthouse article.  Welcome, Gardner-theology. . . . .

So, this ROSENHAN experiment is, well, comic relief. 

The Professional Mental Health Experts (not even psychologists, who are driving the HHS and federal funding programs, but Psychiatrists, who are trained to dispense medication for mental health problems) can’t tell pseudopatients from real ones, then (when told they were fooled) go on to call real ones Pseudo.  The volunteers had considerable trouble getting OUT once committed incognito for purposes of these 1973 controlled experiments in mental health diagnoses!

PseudoPatients fool Mental Health Experts, then can’t get out… (1973, Rosenhan Experiment)

Responsible Fatherhood and (ir)Responsible Social Policy — MY informal findings… (my blog of 03/26/2010, a sort of free-for all, covering Is Psychology Science, Center for Policy Research, a bit of Warren Farrell, the artificial womb, and a few other topics. 

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How I Post.  It goes like this:

Ponder, Input, Publish (alas, sometimes), Printout (hardcopy), Proofread, and Push forward.  The idea is like scattering seed, and if some take root, good.  Polishing?  Won’t happen.

ALSO (in my defense), I do not have my own computers, and struggle with sometimes the paste function.  Recently, don’t even have time to Tag.  For example, the other day, I double-pasted Susan George’s full bio.  Oh well, you can read it twice!  Today, other ideas to post.  The effect is cumulative, I hope.

Today’s post is a conglomerate.  But the theme I’ve been working is about the DOMINATOR (Masculine) vs. DOMINATED (Feminine) view of the world, and how some of the most famous people in history took another point of view.

I am fascinated by language, particularly when certain words are drilled into our consciences by repetition and others disappear from discussion, even when the realities remain.  For example, the invisible mother.

Life, in effect, is a process of eating & drinking, digesting & breathing (after which, it stops…), (mating, sometimes), and making choices within available choices to continue doing this, and if possible make some sense of it, and extract some meaning from the process.

SYMBOLS affect CONSCIOUSNESS, which impacts ACTION.

Of the individuals whose lives have SIGNIFICANTLY changed the world, most were re-framing existing myths or systems of belief.  I believe the human mind works through symbols (which are more vivid and call up more imagery than words alone). 

I’m going to consider JESUS (who may have been, for what we know, raised primarily by his mother) as his life has been a model for other nonviolent reformers, among them Gandhi.  Gandhi AND Jesus’ life was also among the models for Martin Luther King, Jr.  Leaving fixing violence exclusively to men seems to me an oxymoron.  I have also brought up in some posts this book:  “Let Justice Roll Down” by John Perkins.

He was born in 1930, Mississippi, and (like the three above figures) was not an ivory tower elite.  He dealt with the gap between theory and practice in black/white Christianity, and the spiritual/social gap as well.  The story is worth reading in his words, not mine.  SOme day, I will publish quotes.

Jesus was a master of the distilling truth into short pithy sayings:

“I am the way, the truth, and the life:  No man cometh to the Father but by me.”

Hence, he wasn’t “the man” but, technically speaking, “the man in the middle” — a mediator. 

“I am the bread of life.”

“I am the good shepherd.”

“I am the door to the sheep.”

Another thing he did was CONDENSE “all the law and the prophets” into only two commandments:

(Matthew 22:40ff, ERV)

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, 36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? 37 And he said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second like unto it is this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hangeth [depends] the whole law, and the prophets.

and it goes on, narrating:

 41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, 42 saying, What think ye of the Christ? whose son is he? They say unto him, The son of David. 43 He saith unto them, How then doth David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying,

44 The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, Till I put thine enemies underneath thy feet?

45 If David then calleth him Lord, how is he his son? 46 And no one was able to answer him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.

Besides answering a question with a question, which the prepared answers didn’t handle, this shows that Jesus at least had been thinking about the topic from more than one angle.  The word “Christ” in essence means “anointed” and refers to holy spirit, FYI.

Bear with me one more little excerpt:  Just preceding this, there were more questions about marriage, although hypothetical ones.  This shows you about where in the mix the wellbeing of women, and consideration of them was, in the general conversations (Granted, Matthew itself is a narration..):

On that day there came to him Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection: and they asked him, 24 saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. 25 Now there were with us seven brethren: and the first married and deceased, and having no seed left his wife unto his brother; 26 in like manner the second also, and the third, unto the seventh. 27 And after them all the woman died. 28 In the resurrection therefore whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her.

First of all, this group (according to the text) didn’t even believe in the resurrection, so what did they care?  Second, the example of one woman being passed from man to man isn’t really that far from reality today, and shows you how ludicrous the discussion had become.  Another example in John 8, includes a woman caught in adultery; again, the point wasn’t the woman, but to nail Jesus.  Something about him just rubbed them the wrong way, upset the status quo.

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Now lest you think I take myself too seriously, here are two more references to a comic (also, alas, deceased) who ALSO boiled down the 10 commandments to only two, in a memorable way:

George Carlin The Ten Commandments Broken Down 6 min – Oct 14, 2009 Uploaded by mistacoz www.youtube.com   And here he is talking about too much STUFF in our lives, and the dilemma it poses, in cluding boxes to STUFF our STUFF INTO, and decisions about how to move, and how much STUFF to bring along, depending, of course, on what neighbors would think of us…

George Carlin Talks About “Stuff“ 5 min – May 1, 2007 Uploaded by CappyNJ www.youtube.com

Now let’s talk about STUFFING MYTHS where they belong, which acknowledged as such.  One of these is that the U.S. Government’s job is to fix us, rather than protect our unalienable rights, and that legislators’ jobs are to discover the best myths to inflict on the rest of us without informed consent. 

Among these are the one I keep harping on:  Fatherhood and Marriage.  I mean, listen to the language! 

Even on the basis of language, it should be curtailed, let alone on the basis of cost, goals, and ridiculous assumptions….  This isn’t even good literature, like the Constitution is…It is not the product of sound thinking….

Here, an article says maybe marriage is NOT a “panacea” for poverty.  Of course, this will continue to be studied while tinkering with the formula, just as the tinkering (or ‘academic makerover’) continues, expensively, with the school systems.

http://www.womensenews.org/story/economyeconomic-policy/100706/marriage-loses-ground-anti-poverty-panacea

Marriage Loses Ground as Anti-Poverty Panacea
By Julia Marsh
WeNews correspondent

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

The Bush administration pushed marriage as a panacea for fighting poverty but a recent government study confirms the view of skeptics who say money problems must be solved first, since they destroy and destabilize relationships.

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Marriage Idea Gained Momentum

The idea that marriage could alleviate poverty among single mothers gained momentum following a major redesign of welfare in 1996 that imposed new work requirements and time limits on the duration of a woman’s government child support.

The major outcome of that was a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, a block grant to states that mainly aided single, female heads of households. The new law stipulated that some TANF funds could be used to “encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families.”

In 2002 President Bush elevated the importance of marriage as a tool to reduce poverty when he launched the Healthy Marriage Initiative, which Congress supported with $150 million in annual grants for marriage and fatherhood programs from 2006 to 2010.

The project failed “to yield better outcomes for participants,” the Administration for Children and Families said in a press statement accompanying the report. In the wake of the findings, it said it endorses the “more comprehensive approach” of a $500 million Fatherhood, Marriage and Families Innovation Fund from President Obama’s 2011 budget.

  The Fatherhood Innovation Fund will have marriage and relationship components, but will also provide resources for mental health and domestic violence.

Government sources could not immediately confirm that total funding for marriage promotion would actually decrease under Obama’s expanded approach.

This is half the story, or less.

Julia Marsh is a Washington-based correspondent covering domestic and foreign affairs for a Japanese newspaper.
For more information:
The U.S. Administration for Children and Families report:
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/pdfs/family_support/BSF_impact_execsumm.pdf
The Fatherhood, Marriage, and Families Innovation Fund:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/pubs/2010/Innovation_Fund_One_Pager.html
What is Marriage Promotion? Legal Momentum:
http://www.legalmomentum.org/our-work/sfr/what-is-marriage-promotion.html

I was on the way here, and thinking again about John Taylor Gatto’s “Dumbing Us Down” in combination with the inane statement “No Child Left Behind” (where are they going?  Who is leading?  What’s behind and what’s ahead?), and so forth, as I myself continue UNDOING the devastation of “success” in the U.S. Public Education system and reflecting on the valuable lessons I learned outside it, and trying to also spring my children, when able to. 

The local Libertarians (“LewRockwell.com”) had a neatly summarized article, fronting Mr. Gatto’s books, and adding (probably unconsciously) some subliminal comments blaming absent fathers, and a photo targeting our current President.  One of many reasons I don’t identify STRICTLY with the so-called “libertarians” (liberty for WHOm?).  MOre on that later.

Anyhow, the phone rang, the internet froze, then shut down, and another search found this article, this time BY Gatto, on Schooling.

I think in light of the $150million/year of taxes being spent, supposedly, to promote Marriage, Fatherhood, and mandate parenting classes on adolescent and above-level people (including some that ought to know how to behave by now) (if the educational system failed the FIRST time round, why should “WE, the people” pay them again to use the same approach — and it IS a similar approach, carrot & stick and patronizing — to teach kids they removed from homes (in support of a jobs base) to learn in herds, and then failing to excel in that environment, by and large?

What they don’t realize is that teaching and learning ARE about relationships.  They are NOT values-neutral, and it is virtually impossible to extract (OR “inject”) religion into a situation without assigning it a value called “peripheral” or “Relative.”  It’s a recipe for war among parents…

Plenty of other things, it seems, ARE getting injected around school grounds, or imbibed, and peripheral activities sometimes make the headlines.

THE relationship, primary, being taught in schools, this guy (Gatto) at least identified about 20 years ago, at least, and he is not the only one.

The Kansas City School District, one of the largest urban areas, is reversing the age-segregation into ability groupings, i.e., going AGAINST the trend of lockstep (goosestepping) education. 

I know I seem to be rambling here but the destination is clear — there’s a relationship between Dumb and in Debt, and the way to keep most people there is to keep them illiterate of what some of the “litterati” are doing.

And the way to smarten up is to Detach.

(it’s the manner, I’ll get around to the point eventually, for the more persistent readers…  After all, don’t some famous rivers do the same thing?  It adds to their beauty…  Enjoy the ride..)

So here’s Gatto on Against School.

which appeared in the September 2003 issue.

. . .

We have, for example, the great H. L. Mencken, who wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not

I HOPE I JUST GOT YOUR ATTENTION ENOUGH TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE!

If the principles of an endeavor are understood, and they can be practiced, most kids (trust me) can “get it.”  This has been repeatedly proved in different circumstances.  Here’s another reference to how FAST kids can learn when not boxed up, sorted like fruit, dumbed down, labeled, and sent off the manufacturing line to their womb-to-tomb assigned place in life.

John Mighton, JUMP Math’s founder, wrote The Myth of Ability: Nurturing Mathematical Talent in Every Child in 2003.  It explores his work and teaching approach, as well as the development of the JUMP Math program.

http://jumpmath.org/about

Math is a numeracy program started in 1998 by mathematician, author and award-winning playwright John Mighton. We are a federally registered charitable organization based in Toronto, Canada. 

JUMP Math believes that all children can be led to think mathematically, and that with even a modest amount of attention every child will flourish. By demonstrating that even children who are failing math or who are labeled as slow learners can excel at math, we hope to dispel the myths that currently prevail. We offer educators and parents complete and balanced materials as well as training to help them reach all students

JUMP stands for “Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies.”

There are several core beliefs at the foundation of the JUMP Math philosophy:

• New intellectual abilities can emerge suddenly in even the most challenged student from a series of small advances, just as a chemical solution can change colour with the addition of a single drop of reagent. More than any other subject, math is a tool for adding, in a methodical and effective way, the drops of knowledge that will transform a student.
• This non-linear potential can only be nurtured if students are confident and attentive.  Teachers must pay attention to the psychology of the classroom to make sure that everyone is included, involved and participating, and supported with responsive instruction, praise and encouragement.  Children who don’t believe they can succeed will never do so. The JUMP program starts with a confidence building exercise that has demonstrably changed children’s perceptions of their abilities. 
• By adopting the methods and principles of JUMP, schools can teach mathematics to a higher standard, without leaving students behind, and in a cost-effective manner.
• There will always be differences between students, but we don’t need to exaggerate or highlight them by setting up unnecessary hierarchies.  By using materials and methods that minimize differences, teachers can cover more of the curriculum and can narrow or close the wide gap in student performance that exists in most classrooms.
• Teachers will only succeed in helping all levels of student when they know how to determine what their students know, how to reduce concepts into the most basic elements of perception and understanding, and how to extend ideas in a way that is engaging while taking into account the student’s readiness to move forward.

Here’s another book I recommend (and have read) — the site is the review, not the book:

Uncovering the “Secrets” of High Poverty, High Success Schools

There is no question that economic deprivation clearly has an adverse impact on student achievement, as the effects of poverty, poor housing, inadequate medical care and many other factors are reflected in lower achievement by poor students.Nevertheless case studies of successful high poverty schools demonstrate time and again that effective teaching and leadership also have a profound and positive impact on student learning.  The “secrets” of these successful schools are never to be found in proprietary programs (Haycock, 1999).  Rather, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests the consistent themes that emerge repeatedly.  These themes come down to teaching and leadership variables that cannot be sold by vendors nor purchased by schools.  ** They can, however, be practiced and implemented by committed leaders.  This article summarizes some of these key ideas.

So HOW, and WHY, was the American public either so stressed, so frightened, or so hoodwinked into believing that these things COULD be sold? 

The Feds are CONSTANTLY reforming the schools, and demanding more blood ($$) from people who can’t afford it to experiment:  We “promise” we’ll make it better this time (quack, quack, quack….  If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, perhaps you’d better “duck.”)

Here’s $20 million for Columbus Ohio:

Feds award $20 million to reform 7 city schools

Saturday, June 19, 2010  02:50 AM

By Jennifer Smith Richards

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH 

Seven troubled schools in Columbus will get an academic makeover this summer using more than $20 million in federal money.Some will adopt new pay-for-performance plans for teachers or shrink class sizes. Some will open twilight and Saturday programs for students who need different school hours. Most will hire coaches and specialists to help teachers improve and consultants to help make community connections.All will work tirelessly to turn the schools around, said Superintendent Gene Harris.”We will be rolling out things this fall that we haven’t done before,” she said. “We’ll be providing support for schools that we haven’t provided as effectively as we think we need to. We’ll be extending the day in ways we haven’t been able to do before.”Eleven school districts and three charter schools statewide were awarded part of a federal school improvement grant worth $95 million that was announced yesterday. More than 200 had applied. Locally, awards will go toward reform initiatives in 42 schools total and are split over the next three school years.

 To win the grant, schools had to pick one of four reform methods: replace the principal and at least half the staff, close the school and reopen it as a charter school, close the school and send students to a better one, or “transform” the school by training teachers, involving the community and studying student data.

$20 million is what Jayce Dugard and her daughters (California) were awarded for a screwup of what were probably public school graduates Phillip & Nancy Garrido.  $20 Million to reform schools, $20 million to settle a lost childhood (and cover further exposure of screwups on the part of those who were supposedly monitoring a convicted rapist and convicted kidnapper…), and a paltry — was it $150 million?  To start over and try to teach us how to be better parents.

Is that REALLY what all those funds are for?

 REALLY?

FIXING SCHOOLS IN KANSAS CITY

Here’s KANSAS CITY’s version of the same idea:

Forget grade levels, KC schools try something new

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Forget about students spending one year in each grade, with the entire class learning the same skills at the same time. Districts from Alaska to Maine are taking a different route.

Instead of simply moving kids from one grade to the next as they get older, schools are grouping students by ability. Once they master a subject, they move up a level. This practice has been around for decades, but was generally used on a smaller scale, in individual grades, subjects or schools.

{{NO, actually, this practice has been around for centuries, if not longer.  It predates the school system we now think of as “ours” but which is only “ours” as to who is paying for it.  Rather than actually admit that the model failed, and we are going back to someone else’s model, this is introduced as “new and improved.”  Well, if I knock you down to the ground, and give you a hand(out) HALFWAY back up, I suppose that could be called “improved” but not in any “net” sense of the word. …  A whole lot of context and history is missing.}}

Now, in the latest effort to transform the bedraggled Kansas City, Mo. schools, the district is about to become what reform experts say is the largest one to try the approach. Starting this fall officials will begin switching 17,000 students to the new system to turnaround trailing schools and increase abysmal tests scores.

“The current system of public education in this country is not working” said Superintendent John Covington. “It’s an outdated, industrial, agrarian kind of model that lends itself to still allowing students to progress through school based on the amount of time they sit in a chair rather than whether or not they have truly mastered the competencies and skills.”

{{My kids could’ve told him this, by observation, before they were 10, probably… He is admitting the obvious, now that it’s obvious}}

Here’s how the reform works:

Students—often of varying ages—work at their own pace, meeting with teachers to decide what part of the curriculum to tackle. Teachers still instruct students as a group if it’s needed, but often students are working individually

This is the philosophy, at least one of them, behind homeschooling.  But if PARENTS do and fund it, they are right-wing religious idiots who JUST MIGHT be another cultist and dropout from this welfare society.

One of my long-term projects is to do a survey of EVERY PARENT IN THE U.S. CONGRESS & HOUSE OF REPS.  Some of them are young enough, I think, to have children probably still in high school, or just out of it. 

I wonder how many of these children attended the local public schools, or were they parochial (probably a  step up at least academically)?  Of course there are security issues, but are they advocating ONLY public education for everyone ELSE”s children as avidly as they are advocating Monogamy (a father, any kind of father — or give him to us — no, forget that, we’ve got programs to go get him — and we’ll fix it! — in every child’s life?) for OTHER folk.  Pay US and we’ll show you (not by example of course — let’s not get TOO zealous) how marriage is really done right. 

Google “Hot Mike Duvall” on this blog for a clue…

HOW THEY DO IT IN ST. LOUIS 

A Professor of Political Science who had been honored as a distinguished teacher at his university, Martin Rochester became deeply involved in public education as a result of his children’s misadventures in the classroom. Like most parents, he wanted to make a difference. Like them, his way of trying to contribute was to become a dogged volunteer in his children’s classrooms and his Parent-Teacher Organization. But what he found, in addition to overbearing administrators and overworked teachers, was a system which had contempt for the most fundamental elements of traditional schooling (ability-grouping, grades, homework, rigor, discipline, etc.), allowed nonacademic diversions to crowd out academic study, and subordinated a commitment to excellence to an obsession with “equity.” Rochester gradually evolved from concerned parent to informed critic. As he relates in “Class Warfare,” he became a familiar presence in front of local school boards and with the state education bureaucracy as well, and was finally asked to testify before the Missouri legislature on what he had discovered.

“Class Warfare” is a fascinating personal story of trying to fight through the education establishment maze, a story repeated every year by millions of parents looking for what’s best for their children in an era of stagnant test scores, classroom chaos, and bizarre educational theorizing. But this book is also a shrewd critique of why our schools fail. Taking the reader on a field trip that begins with his own upper-middle class suburban school district in St. Louis and then moves on to inner-city locales and some of the best private schools around the country, Martin Rochester shows how “pack pedagogy” has steamrolled parent resistance in promoting disasters such as whole-language, fuzzy math, multiple intelligences theory, teacher-as-coach, the therapeutic classroom, and all the other fads found in today’s schools. Rochester concludes that all children are being victimized, not only the most gifted, but also, more cynically, “average” students and those lower achieving kids whose supposed needs are now driving the entire curriculum.

Combining the eyewitness testimony of a parent with the perceptive analysis of a professional educator, “Class Warfare” provides an unusual glimpse into the malaise that afflicts our schools and a sensible prescription for how thing can get better.

About the Author
J. Martin Rochester is The Curators’ Distinguished Teaching Professor of Political Science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is the author of five books on international politics, and has written widely on the subject of education in periodicals such as “Phi Delta Kappan” and “Education Week.” He is a recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching at UM-St. Louis.

 And he smartened up QUICK about the suburban schools when it was his own son involved.  A chapter in there relates the resistance to a sensible math curriculum, and a protest of recognized mathematicians to the adoption of another one.  He talks about how this style cheats students in what are called “good” schools, also. 

READ IT!

NOTE:  My link to the Dr. Laura.com page should NOT be associated with my endorsement of anything else on the site.  ANyone that looks like this, for real, I have serious question abouts, even in a posed picture.

@@@

 One of the most serious indicators that we have significant DEBT problems which result from DUMBNESS problems is that we pay legislators to have conversations like this:

Today, I have about 30 minutes to put something profitable up.  I don’t think a treatise on religion, independence, or HOW (in particular) the U.S. Government is presently squandering taxpayer funding. 

Let’s keep it simpler, and understand some principles that are NOT (and INTENTIONALLY not) often taught — or emphasized — in the sinkhole/jobs bank that is the U.S. Public Education system.

First of all, get that “pie in the sky” (and getting a piece of it) out of your head, and begin to understand that “money” is a created being, and like water, has a life cycle.  It FLOWS. 

Evaporation, condensation (form of clouds) and precipitation back to the ocean, rivers flow into the ocean, and more evaporation etc.  (For now, let’s not look at the BP oil contribution to that process). ….

After a year of free time (no contact with my kids, right?  Lots of thinking time as I no longer have a car, and waiting for buses isn’t exactly “down” time for problemsolving….), I’ve come to accept the income tax system as a form of water. The Federal idea (at least being promoted to the general populace) is that the big PIE in the SKY (ever seen a pie chart?  scroll down on my last post for one)….  will precipitate blessings onto us, which is one reason we should keep the system going.  Find the right “nonprofit” or “agency” to “serve” you, and your family will be OK.

I “bought” this too for a while, until I looked closer.

Not described is the “glass umbrella” which spreads them, and this “glass umbrella” effectively clouds the truths about where those funds go and how they are used.   

Compound Interest …
The 8th Wonder!

 http://www.greekshares.com/8th.php

Overall, the power of compounding can make assets grow much faster.

Money goes to Money …

Certainly!

Because compound interest is a really marvellous invention. – Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) called it the 8th Wonder – It can work for you, or against you. When you invest it works for you. When you borrow it works against you!

You can become financially secure by winning the lottery. The surer way is to save money, invest it and …

Let it compound!

=============

This all sounds very nice. . . . .  Now let’s talk about global debt and how it works AGAINST those who pay taxes.  And how the US Currency is itself a compounding debt program.  And how the Global, Export-based economy affects 3rd world self-sufficiency by articifially supporting / deleting support from regimes according to their compliance with this scheme.

I determined to educate myself on this simply by watching how first individual abuse (in the marriage) utilized this principal from the START — control cash flow of your woman (and impregnate her, making it harder to leave) and control her access to GET to work, regularly.  EVERYTHING goes through you, and is interpreted through you back to the world, as the head of the household.  Failure to do this well is failing to “be a man.” 

This lesson is so drilled into us we don’t even realize it, and I believe accounts for the hierarchical society we live in.  For an example of the “missing woman”, a recent comment on my blog came from two (male) authors describing their families. 

One of them named his two sons (and their school background and professions), described his HOUSE, where he lived with his (unnamed, nondescript) “wife and daughter.”  For some reason, the comment was on my post about “Waterboarding” and I believe I addressed some of this (or at least investigated his site) as an in-line edit to that comment.

That is, however, nothing, compared to our Congressmen these days, who like to meet without women present and discuss us, and the major crisis in the world and families because fathers are absent.  Naturally, women are not informed in a very timely fashion about these things (though they are posted) and our input is not part of the testimony. 

=======

I have been re-reading a book written in the 1980s (I have lots of books around, it’s a habit, eclectic reading….) “A Fate Worse than Debt:  The world financial crisis and the poor.”  It makes sense to me, and describes (PRE-VAWA, PRE-NFI) the MATH behind Third World Starvation.  At only 300 pages, I recommend reading.  Among other things (again, think, 1980s) it details how spiraling debt payments, basically from South to North, can trash a country.  Zaire in particular, being supported by the US is notably corrupt.

When we understand the basic principle of “COLONIZATION” (which I have been gradually raising in posts here) and how it relates to the United States even existing, and put this together with the concept that ANY colonist is NOT going to want its colonies self-sufficient, or fully-aware of their worth as laborers to their owners, we are getting closer to reality.

The other two areas that need understanding, I am sure, is that PRINCIPLES have to make SENSE or you have MYTHOLOGY.  The Mythology that corporate or powerful elitist legislators, judges, governors or governments are going to fix what’s going on at street level is I believe a myth.  Rather, the assets flow from the poorest to the increasingly centralized “Fed” conglomorate (Legislative, Executive and Judiciary increasingly blurred) and then delegate to middlemen (nonprofit grants recipients, agencies) and so forth to handle the masses. 

Constant destabilization always enriches those pulling the strings.  Changing this requires intelligent NONcompliance, NONviolent if possible, and like those who signed the US Declaration of Independence, some are going to be hurt, or financially devastated, possibly die, and voices silenced.

Then again, that’s ALREADY happening.  So let’s educate ourselves on these topics, OK?

The United States $$ is NOT “bona fide” money (it’s not backed by real gold or real assets) and it’s being purchased BY the U.S. (that means “US,” except those who can beat the tax system, as the wealthy usually can) and “we” are in perpetual compounding interest debt to the Federal Reserve Board.  Things have not ALWAYS been this way, a lot happened in the 1900s! 

I’m surprised to find this not as common knowledge as I thought.  I’ve known it for a few decades, but when it really hit home was when DV eradicated my right to employment as I knew it, and leaving DV (that’s “domestic violence”) clearly upset an entrenched family, religious and social economic system.  I didn’t have a man in the home, and it did NOT matter if the children were doing well, we were prospering, (and he had regular contact with them), my independence threatened the system, apparently..  I was shocked.  So I started a fact-hunt through the system, backed by personal acquaintance with a lot of it.  Because life is never a guarantee (especially in these situations), I blog for a trail of bread crumbs, and for my daughters, should they run across it later in life, as I have been prevented from giving them (almost anything!) in the past several years.

http://www.tni.org/

This paste is the biography of Susan George, clearly of some privilege and wealth, but I believe her books are passing on her understanding to another generation.  Below that, I contrast with the bio of Erin Pizzey, also raised in wealth and privilege (that doesn’t mean necessarily without abuse…), who is the heroine of the father’s rights movement, because she turned.

SUSAN GEORGE (June 29, 1934-) Social scientist; activist; writer

When the political scientist Susan George accepted an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, in Madrid, Spain, on April 25, 2007, she was characteristically forthright about her disdain for the political establishment, saying, as quoted on the Transnational Institute (TNI) Web site, “I believe that the forces of wealth, power and control are invariably at the root of any problem of social and political economy. The job of the responsible social scientist is first to uncover these forces, second to write about them clearly, without jargon, in order to give ordinary people the right tools for action; and finally–recognising that scholarly neutrality is an illusion–to take an advocacy position in favour of the disadvantaged, the underdogs, the victims of injustice. This is what I think the tools of scholarship are for and this is how I have tried in my own work to use them.”

Throughout her career, George has been a strident antiwar activist as well as a powerful voice against acts of corporate greed. At a time when women were not often allowed places of power in any organizational hierarchy, George established herself as a leader in the antihunger movement and legitimized her scholarship in the eyes of skeptics by obtaining an advanced degree from the Sorbonne as well as a doctorate from the University of Paris, in her adopted country of France. The author of 10 books, including How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger, Ill Fares the Land, and The Debt Boomerang, George is regarded as a preeminent political and economic thinker and activist for human rights.

George was born Susan Vance Akers on June 29, 1934 in Akron, Ohio. She was the only child of Edith and Walter Akers, Episcopalians whose families had been in America for many generations; George’s ancestors arrived in Massachusetts in 1632. George’s father was an insurance broker, and her mother was a homemaker and a member of the Junior League.

Though born during the Great Depression, George was raised in a privileged environment; she had a nursemaid and took dance classes, music lessons, and, at a YMCA, swimming lessons. After attending a public, co-educational primary school, she went on to enroll at all-girls private preparatory academy. She told Current Biography that single-sex schooling “made me not a feminist. It was normal that women do whatever anybody did. Women were the sports experts. Women were the brains. You weren’t in competition with men. You weren’t expected to shut up–on the contrary! Even in my era, I never felt that I was particularly put down as a woman ever.” George’s father encouraged all her interests, including those outside the realm of traditional femininity, such as science and baseball. When Walter Akers went to serve in World War II, his daughter assisted in planting a victory garden.

As a young student, George was a voracious reader and always ranked first in her class. Around the age of 12, she began to develop a strong passion for the culture, language, and people of France. As a teenager she chose to attend Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts, specifically in order to participate in the junior-year-abroad program in France. In Paris during the 1954-55 academic year, she took courses at Sciences Po, a school specializing in social sciences. During that time, at the age of 20, she met a successful French lawyer, Charles-Henry George. In 1956, after obtaining her B.A. degree in government studies and French, she married George, 12 years her senior; she made France her permanent residence that year, but she did not obtain French citizenship until 1994. She told Current Biography that in her early years in France she felt homesick “for my women friends, probably, but not for America, per se. I’d made my choice.” The couple soon started a family. Once her three children were in school full-time, George attended the Sorbonne, obtaining the French equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1967.

George became a political activist in response to France’s war in Algeria and U.S. involvement in Vietnam. She told Current Biography, “Vietnam broke my loyal little still-American heart. The atrocities, the [U.S.] government’s lies, the betrayal of the country’s ideals, all this cried out for justice.” In 1967 George joined the Paris-American Committee to Stop War. In 1969 she became the assistant to the director of a nongovernmental organization (NGO), the American Centre for Students and Artists, for which she frequently organized antiwar events. (Her activities did not escape the attention of the FBI or the CIA; years later, taking advantage of the Freedom of Information Act, she discovered hundreds of pages of information about herself that had been obtained through surveillance.)

George told Current Biography that the Vietnam War “was this sort of gateway to understanding what America could be, which is to say something quite negative, which I had not understood at all when I lived there. I had accepted the usual propaganda.” In 1971 she began working with the Front Solidarite Indochine, a group that organized antiwar lectures and protests in France. Her participation in their activities forced her to overcome her fear of public speaking. She also began volunteering as a translator for American, Cambodian, and Laotian antiwar activists. When the Paris-American Committee to Stop War was forcibly dismantled by the French government (which, according to George, acted at the request of the U.S. government), George collaborated with the directors of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., to form a new NGO devoted to social justice–the Transnational Institute, which opened its doors in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1973. George remains a fellow at TNI and also serves as its board chair.

After the Chilean president Salvador Allende was overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup in September 1973, George helped Chilean political refugees to settle in France. In 1974 she enrolled in a doctoral program in political science at the School of Higher Social Science Studies at the University of Paris, completing her degree in 1978 and receiving highest honors. Meanwhile, in 1974 she traveled to the World Food Conference in Rome, Italy, where she was enraged by the corporate agribusiness representatives who dominated the proceedings. The World Food Conference was organized by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an agency designed to lead international efforts against famine and malnutrition; the two largest delegations at the conference were those of the United States and the agriculture industry. George felt that the FAO gave too much power to transnational agribusiness corporations. She told Current Biography, “This event was a turning point for me. . . . I was incensed at the level of official cant and the politics played with millions of hungry people’s lives.” She added that at the conference, “no one who counted took the real reasons for hunger–power and control in the wrong hands–into account.”

In 1976 Penguin published George’s first book, How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger. According to the Web site of the Transnational Institute, “Hunger is not a scourge but a scandal. This is the premise of Susan George’s classic study of world hunger. Contrary to popular opinion, malnutrition and starvation are not the result of over-population, of poor climate or lack of cultivatable land. The reason why hunger exists on such a vast scale is because world food supplies are controlled by the rich and powerful for the wealthy consumer. . . . Working with local elites, protected by the powerful West, the United States paves the way and is gradually imposing its control over the whole planet. . . . The book’s relevance, its ability to shock and its power to enrage have in no measure [diminished].” George told Current Biography that the book “launched” her when she was 42. “Everyone has the right to one enormous stroke of luck in life and this was mine. I’ve never looked back.” How the Other Half Dies was a critical and financial success. William Diebold Jr. wrote for Foreign Affairs (January 1978) that the book was “a lively analysis. . . . The prescription is for change.”

Thirty years after the book was published, George remained deeply concerned with issues of famine and food distribution. She attended the Table of Free Voices conference, held in Berlin, Germany, in September 2006 and organized by Dropping Knowledge, a German nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of international dialogue, art, and culture; as quoted on the TNI Web site, she said at the conference, “We . . . produce enough food for everyone, but most of this production is in places where people are not going hungry; and where people are going hungry, very often their farmers have been ruined by cheap imports coming from the rich countries. This has happened massively in Mexico. So, there are many more poor Mexicans than there were and many have lost their farms and these people cannot compete. Thai rice farmers have lost their land; Filipino rice farmers have lost their land.”

George published her 1978 doctoral dissertation, Les Strateges de la faim (Strategists of Hunger), in Switzerland in 1982. In the following year she published Food for Beginners, illustrated by Nigel Paige. She played an active role in organizing the World Food Assembly, a meeting held in Rome, Italy, in 1984 for the purpose of fighting famine and seeking social justice and composed of representatives of nongovernmental organizations from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. George’s book A Fate Worse than Debt appeared in 1987. In her address to the executive committee of the World Alliance of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 19, 1999, George said about her reasons for writing the book, “We identified the fact that debt [owed to wealthy lending nations by poor countries] was the biggest new contributing factor to world hunger. That is why, having worked on world hunger and with a lot of NGOs, I got involved in studying debt. I tried to make a clear explanation of how it was contributing to economic injustice, and the very real effects on human beings: hunger, misery, a much worse life for women in particular, increased crime, riots, conflict, ecological destruction. Debt was involved in all of these issues.” In “Rethinking Debt,” a paper presented at the nongovernmental organization (NGO) conference North-South Roundtable on Moving Africa into the 21st Century, held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in October 1995, George wrote, “Debt lies at the nexus of a strategic, worldwide reconfiguration of power. . . . It has accelerated transfers of wealth from the poor to the rich both within and between countries. . . . It has downgraded and diminished the importance of the State and the ability of governments to govern; as well as the overall influence and negotiating capacity of the ‘third world.’ . . . The creditors may not be open to moral arguments, but if Africans speak with one voice, they may, perhaps, convince them that their interest lies in severing the debt noose.” At the time of the book’s publication, as George told the executive committee of the World Alliance of the YMCA, further explaining her impetus for writing it, “there were . . . a good many campaigns and lots of NGOs . . . interested in this issue, but it was clear that we weren’t getting any involvement from the top people, from either governments, or the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.”

In 1990 George published Ill Fares the Land. From that year until 1995, she served on the board of the environmental conservation group Greenpeace International and of Greenpeace France. She particularly admired the organization’s ability to mobilize its many regional branches to focus on protesting one major issue at a time. In an interview with Caspar Henderson for the Web site OpenDemocracy.org (October 13, 2004), George said, “Greenpeace was quite successful with such campaigns. All its offices across the world would suspend their particular activities and join together.”

The Debt Boomerang, George’s 1992 volume, continued her analysis of the inequalities between the wealthier nations of the Northern Hemisphere and the poorer countries of the Southern Hemisphere. She told the executive committee of the World Alliance of the YMCA that she wrote the book “with the idea that if the suffering in the South was not enough to move the powers, perhaps it would help if it was explained that the debt was not just a problem for the South, but that in fact it was a boomerang and it was coming back and affecting the rich countries in a great many ways.” In Faith and Credit: the World Bank’s Secular Empire (1994), which she wrote with the anthropologist Fabrizio Sabelli, George expounded her beliefs regarding the negative impact of the World Bank on the worldwide poverty and hunger crisis. The World Bank, founded in July 1944 at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, consists of five organizations responsible for providing funds and advice to countries in order to promote economic development and eliminate poverty. Supporters of the organization argue that the World Bank conducts ethical and transparent business with countries in need of help. Critics, including George, contend that the World Bank is a corrupt institution that provides insufficient assistance to poorer countries. According to the Bretton Woods Project Web site, “With the World Bank, there are concerns about the types of development projects funded . . . Many infrastructural projects financed by the World Bank Group have social and environmental implications for the populations in the affected areas and criticism has centred around the ethical issues of funding such projects. For example, World Bank-funded construction of hydroelectric dams in various countries have resulted in the displacement of indigenous peoples of the area. There are also concerns that the World Bank working in partnership with the private sector may undermine the role of the state as the primary provider of essential goods and services, such as healthcare and education, resulting in the shortfall of such services in countries badly in need of them.” George said at the Table of Free Voices conference, “Our wealth does not depend on the Third World being poor, but we have organized everything in the North so that the Third World does remain poor. If the Third World were less poor, we would be selling them more, and we would in fact be richer.”

La Suisse aux encheres (whose title translates roughly as “Switzerland Auctioned Off”), another collaboration with Sabelli, appeared in Switzerland in 1997. Two years later George published The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the 21st Century. The book is a fictional report issued by a group of imaginary pro-capitalist, pro-globalization experts who raise the question of how to preserve capitalism forever. George explained at the Table of Free Voices conference that the book contains a scenario in which “I imagine that there is a report to be directed to Master of the Universe types who are asking pretty much that kind of question. How can we continue with this economic system without having total collapse? What must we do to make this continue to work? And the answer which is given unfortunately by this group of experts which I have invented . . . is, well, you cannot do it with eight billion people on earth as there are going to be in 2020. That’s tomorrow in historical terms. So, the long emergency has already started. And, if we try to manage the world as we are doing now with eight billion people on earth, everything is going to collapse.”

From 1999 to 2006 George served as vice president of the Association for Taxation of Financial Transactions to Aid Citizens (ATTAC France). During that period she also participated in the Helsinki Process, which she described to Current Biography as “a group established by the governments of Finland and Tanzania, with many other governments now acting as ‘Friends’ of the Process, trying to deal with the problems of globalization.” She grew increasingly critical of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the weeks before its 1999 meeting in Seattle, Washington. The World Trade Organization is responsible for negotiating and implementing new international trade agreements as well as enforcing member countries’ adherence to those agreements. Its governing body, the Ministerial Conference, meets every two years. The WTO’s advocates argue that the organization is an important intermediary between countries and is a positive force for financial growth in all nations. Detractors such as George argue that the WTO is biased in favor of wealthy countries and multinational corporations and that it harms smaller, less powerful countries. Critics see the WTO as a major force for globalization, the process by which corporations are allowed increasing flexibility with regard to global expansion as well as financial, environmental, and labor practices. The Seattle meeting of the Ministerial Conference of the WTO was disrupted by mass protests on the part of antiglobalization groups. George wrote for the London Guardian (November 24, 1999), “Without warning, the WTO has created an international court of ‘justice’ that is making law and establishing case law in which existing national laws are all ‘barriers’ to trade, and is sweeping aside all environmental, social or public health concerns.” George wrote for Le Monde diplomatique (January 2000), “The civic movement’s success in Seattle is a mystery only to those who had no part in it. . . . Trade must have no place in areas such as health, education and culture in the broadest sense of the term.” George published Remettre l’OMC a sa Place (Put the WTO in Its Place) in 2001 and, the next year, Pour ou Contre la Mondialisation Liberale, consisting of a debate with Martin Wolf of the Financial Times.

Offering a critical take on George’s work, Mark O’Brien wrote for International Socialism (Spring 2000), “The weakness of George’s analysis of the economic roots of the crisis of world capitalism leads directly to an uncertainty as to who her audience actually is. Often her writings read as an appeal to opinion formers and practitioners within government or development circles. . . . Her proposals border on an almost utopian belief in the humanitarian good sense of some elements within capitalist governments. . . . There is no sense in George’s writings of the revolutionary potential of the working classes of the Third World and of the West.”

George’s book Another World Is Possible If . . . came out in 2004. She told Henderson, “This is at the heart of my book’s argument–that Europeans must lead the world. My experience is that there are many people outside the movement who sense that there are a lot of things wrong with the world, but who are hesitant or unclear about what they are able to do. Here, my central argument is that, faced with an America that is going to be immovable . . . Europe has to lead the change. . . . So my plea to Europeans is to recognize who they are, what their achievements have been for the interests of the poor and working people over the last hundred years and say that a welfare model is possible for the entire world–and that it’s up to us in Europe to make that happen.”

In 2004 George half-heartedly supported the candidacy of U.S. senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, for president. While she had canvassed for Kerry in Pennsylvania, she wrote for OpenDemocracy.org (November 3, 2004), “we all thought [Kerry] had a very good chance, even though everyone admitted it was hard to get really enthusiastic about him. . . . The man isn’t the most charismatic ever to walk the earth. But at least he’s not a proto-fascist or a go-it-aloner, and that’s what we seem–apart from a last-minute miracle–to be stuck with now. With four years clear ahead of him and no re-election to worry about, I fear Bush and the ghastly neo-con/neo-liberals around him will now go on the rampage. They can continue with impunity their attacks on the Constitution and on hard-won freedoms; while profound economic inequalities and religious obscurantism spread throughout the country.”

George published Nou, Peuples d’Europe (We, the Peoples of Europe) in 2005. She received an honorary doctorate in civil law from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in January 2007, and in March of that year, the International Studies Association presented her with its first award for Outstanding Public Scholar at its congress in Chicago, Illinois. Also in 2007 she received an honorary doctorate in political science and sociology from the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, in Madrid. As of May 2007 George had written and was awaiting the publication of “Culture in Chains: How the Religious and Secular Right Captured America.” Publishers in Spain, Brazil, and France swiftly acquired the book. Her work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, four Scandinavian languages, Estonian, Japanese, Korean, Bengali, and Thai.

In 2002 George’s husband, Charles-Henry George, died at their country home in France. She has three adult children–Valerie, Michel, and Stephanie–and is a grandmother. George told Current Biography, “Either we achieve together a new level of human emancipation, and do so in a way that preserves the earth, or we shall leave behind us the worst future for our children that capitalism and nature can deal them. No one knows in which direction the balance will tip nor does anyone know which actions, which writings, which alliances may achieve the critical mass that leads us one way or another, backwards or forwards. I am acutely conscious of the precariousness of our moment and my four much-loved grandchildren give me added resolve to address it.”

Suggested Reading: (London) Guardian (on-line) Nov. 24, 1999; OpenDemocracy.org; Transnational Institute Wet site

Selected Books: How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger, 1976; Les Strateges de la Faim, 1982; Food for Beginners, 1983; A Fate Worse than Debt, 1987; Ill Fares the Land, 1990; The Debt Boomerang, 1992; Faith and Credit: the World Bank’s Secular Empire, 1994; La Suisse aux Encheres, 1997; The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the 21st Century, 1999; Remettre l’OMC a sa, 2001; Another World Is Possible If . . ., 2004; Nou, Peuples d’Europe, 2005

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From Current Biography (2007), © The H. W. Wilson Company, Volume 68 Number 7, July 2007, pp. 34-40.

Erin Pizzey — Founder of Modern Women’s Shelter Movement

SUSAN GEORGE (June 29, 1934-) Social scientist; activist; writerWhen the political scientist Susan George accepted an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, in Madrid, Spain, on April 25, 2007, she was characteristically forthright about her disdain for the political establishment, saying, as quoted on the Transnational Institute (TNI) Web site, “I believe that the forces of wealth, power and control are invariably at the root of any problem of social and political economy. The job of the responsible social scientist is first to uncover these forces, second to write about them clearly, without jargon, in order to give ordinary people the right tools for action; and finally–recognising that scholarly neutrality is an illusion–to take an advocacy position in favour of the disadvantaged, the underdogs, the victims of injustice. This is what I think the tools of scholarship are for and this is how I have tried in my own work to use them.”

Throughout her career, George has been a strident antiwar activist as well as a powerful voice against acts of corporate greed. At a time when women were not often allowed places of power in any organizational hierarchy, George established herself as a leader in the antihunger movement and legitimized her scholarship in the eyes of skeptics by obtaining an advanced degree from the Sorbonne as well as a doctorate from the University of Paris, in her adopted country of France. The author of 10 books, including How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger, Ill Fares the Land, and The Debt Boomerang, George is regarded as a preeminent political and economic thinker and activist for human rights.

George was born Susan Vance Akers on June 29, 1934 in Akron, Ohio. She was the only child of Edith and Walter Akers, Episcopalians whose families had been in America for many generations; George’s ancestors arrived in Massachusetts in 1632. George’s father was an insurance broker, and her mother was a homemaker and a member of the Junior League.

Though born during the Great Depression, George was raised in a privileged environment; she had a nursemaid and took dance classes, music lessons, and, at a YMCA, swimming lessons. After attending a public, co-educational primary school, she went on to enroll at all-girls private preparatory academy. She told Current Biography that single-sex schooling “made me not a feminist. It was normal that women do whatever anybody did. Women were the sports experts. Women were the brains. You weren’t in competition with men. You weren’t expected to shut up–on the contrary! Even in my era, I never felt that I was particularly put down as a woman ever.” George’s father encouraged all her interests, including those outside the realm of traditional femininity, such as science and baseball. When Walter Akers went to serve in World War II, his daughter assisted in planting a victory garden.

As a young student, George was a voracious reader and always ranked first in her class. Around the age of 12, she began to develop a strong passion for the culture, language, and people of France. As a teenager she chose to attend Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts, specifically in order to participate in the junior-year-abroad program in France. In Paris during the 1954-55 academic year, she took courses at Sciences Po, a school specializing in social sciences. During that time, at the age of 20, she met a successful French lawyer, Charles-Henry George. In 1956, after obtaining her B.A. degree in government studies and French, she married George, 12 years her senior; she made France her permanent residence that year, but she did not obtain French citizenship until 1994. She told Current Biography that in her early years in France she felt homesick “for my women friends, probably, but not for America, per se. I’d made my choice.” The couple soon started a family. Once her three children were in school full-time, George attended the Sorbonne, obtaining the French equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1967.

George became a political activist in response to France’s war in Algeria and U.S. involvement in Vietnam. She told Current Biography, “Vietnam broke my loyal little still-American heart. The atrocities, the [U.S.] government’s lies, the betrayal of the country’s ideals, all this cried out for justice.” In 1967 George joined the Paris-American Committee to Stop War. In 1969 she became the assistant to the director of a nongovernmental organization (NGO), the American Centre for Students and Artists, for which she frequently organized antiwar events. (Her activities did not escape the attention of the FBI or the CIA; years later, taking advantage of the Freedom of Information Act, she discovered hundreds of pages of information about herself that had been obtained through surveillance.)

George told Current Biography that the Vietnam War “was this sort of gateway to understanding what America could be, which is to say something quite negative, which I had not understood at all when I lived there. I had accepted the usual propaganda.” In 1971 she began working with the Front Solidarite Indochine, a group that organized antiwar lectures and protests in France. Her participation in their activities forced her to overcome her fear of public speaking. She also began volunteering as a translator for American, Cambodian, and Laotian antiwar activists. When the Paris-American Committee to Stop War was forcibly dismantled by the French government (which, according to George, acted at the request of the U.S. government), George collaborated with the directors of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., to form a new NGO devoted to social justice–the Transnational Institute, which opened its doors in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1973. George remains a fellow at TNI and also serves as its board chair.

After the Chilean president Salvador Allende was overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup in September 1973, George helped Chilean political refugees to settle in France. In 1974 she enrolled in a doctoral program in political science at the School of Higher Social Science Studies at the University of Paris, completing her degree in 1978 and receiving highest honors. Meanwhile, in 1974 she traveled to the World Food Conference in Rome, Italy, where she was enraged by the corporate agribusiness representatives who dominated the proceedings. The World Food Conference was organized by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an agency designed to lead international efforts against famine and malnutrition; the two largest delegations at the conference were those of the United States and the agriculture industry. George felt that the FAO gave too much power to transnational agribusiness corporations. She told Current Biography, “This event was a turning point for me. . . . I was incensed at the level of official cant and the politics played with millions of hungry people’s lives.” She added that at the conference, “no one who counted took the real reasons for hunger–power and control in the wrong hands–into account.”

In 1976 Penguin published George’s first book, How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger. According to the Web site of the Transnational Institute, “Hunger is not a scourge but a scandal. This is the premise of Susan George’s classic study of world hunger. Contrary to popular opinion, malnutrition and starvation are not the result of over-population, of poor climate or lack of cultivatable land. The reason why hunger exists on such a vast scale is because world food supplies are controlled by the rich and powerful for the wealthy consumer. . . . Working with local elites, protected by the powerful West, the United States paves the way and is gradually imposing its control over the whole planet. . . . The book’s relevance, its ability to shock and its power to enrage have in no measure [diminished].” George told Current Biography that the book “launched” her when she was 42. “Everyone has the right to one enormous stroke of luck in life and this was mine. I’ve never looked back.” How the Other Half Dies was a critical and financial success. William Diebold Jr. wrote for Foreign Affairs (January 1978) that the book was “a lively analysis. . . . The prescription is for change.”

Thirty years after the book was published, George remained deeply concerned with issues of famine and food distribution. She attended the Table of Free Voices conference, held in Berlin, Germany, in September 2006 and organized by Dropping Knowledge, a German nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion of international dialogue, art, and culture; as quoted on the TNI Web site, she said at the conference, “We . . . produce enough food for everyone, but most of this production is in places where people are not going hungry; and where people are going hungry, very often their farmers have been ruined by cheap imports coming from the rich countries. This has happened massively in Mexico. So, there are many more poor Mexicans than there were and many have lost their farms and these people cannot compete. Thai rice farmers have lost their land; Filipino rice farmers have lost their land.”

George published her 1978 doctoral dissertation, Les Strateges de la faim (Strategists of Hunger), in Switzerland in 1982. In the following year she published Food for Beginners, illustrated by Nigel Paige. She played an active role in organizing the World Food Assembly, a meeting held in Rome, Italy, in 1984 for the purpose of fighting famine and seeking social justice and composed of representatives of nongovernmental organizations from the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. George’s book A Fate Worse than Debt appeared in 1987. In her address to the executive committee of the World Alliance of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 19, 1999, George said about her reasons for writing the book, “We identified the fact that debt [owed to wealthy lending nations by poor countries] was the biggest new contributing factor to world hunger. That is why, having worked on world hunger and with a lot of NGOs, I got involved in studying debt. I tried to make a clear explanation of how it was contributing to economic injustice, and the very real effects on human beings: hunger, misery, a much worse life for women in particular, increased crime, riots, conflict, ecological destruction. Debt was involved in all of these issues.” In “Rethinking Debt,” a paper presented at the nongovernmental organization (NGO) conference North-South Roundtable on Moving Africa into the 21st Century, held in Johannesburg, South Africa, in October 1995, George wrote, “Debt lies at the nexus of a strategic, worldwide reconfiguration of power. . . . It has accelerated transfers of wealth from the poor to the rich both within and between countries. . . . It has downgraded and diminished the importance of the State and the ability of governments to govern; as well as the overall influence and negotiating capacity of the ‘third world.’ . . . The creditors may not be open to moral arguments, but if Africans speak with one voice, they may, perhaps, convince them that their interest lies in severing the debt noose.” At the time of the book’s publication, as George told the executive committee of the World Alliance of the YMCA, further explaining her impetus for writing it, “there were . . . a good many campaigns and lots of NGOs . . . interested in this issue, but it was clear that we weren’t getting any involvement from the top people, from either governments, or the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.”

In 1990 George published Ill Fares the Land. From that year until 1995, she served on the board of the environmental conservation group Greenpeace International and of Greenpeace France. She particularly admired the organization’s ability to mobilize its many regional branches to focus on protesting one major issue at a time. In an interview with Caspar Henderson for the Web site OpenDemocracy.org (October 13, 2004), George said, “Greenpeace was quite successful with such campaigns. All its offices across the world would suspend their particular activities and join together.”

The Debt Boomerang, George’s 1992 volume, continued her analysis of the inequalities between the wealthier nations of the Northern Hemisphere and the poorer countries of the Southern Hemisphere. She told the executive committee of the World Alliance of the YMCA that she wrote the book “with the idea that if the suffering in the South was not enough to move the powers, perhaps it would help if it was explained that the debt was not just a problem for the South, but that in fact it was a boomerang and it was coming back and affecting the rich countries in a great many ways.” In Faith and Credit: the World Bank’s Secular Empire (1994), which she wrote with the anthropologist Fabrizio Sabelli, George expounded her beliefs regarding the negative impact of the World Bank on the worldwide poverty and hunger crisis. The World Bank, founded in July 1944 at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, consists of five organizations responsible for providing funds and advice to countries in order to promote economic development and eliminate poverty. Supporters of the organization argue that the World Bank conducts ethical and transparent business with countries in need of help. Critics, including George, contend that the World Bank is a corrupt institution that provides insufficient assistance to poorer countries. According to the Bretton Woods Project Web site, “With the World Bank, there are concerns about the types of development projects funded . . . Many infrastructural projects financed by the World Bank Group have social and environmental implications for the populations in the affected areas and criticism has centred around the ethical issues of funding such projects. For example, World Bank-funded construction of hydroelectric dams in various countries have resulted in the displacement of indigenous peoples of the area. There are also concerns that the World Bank working in partnership with the private sector may undermine the role of the state as the primary provider of essential goods and services, such as healthcare and education, resulting in the shortfall of such services in countries badly in need of them.” George said at the Table of Free Voices conference, “Our wealth does not depend on the Third World being poor, but we have organized everything in the North so that the Third World does remain poor. If the Third World were less poor, we would be selling them more, and we would in fact be richer.”

La Suisse aux encheres (whose title translates roughly as “Switzerland Auctioned Off”), another collaboration with Sabelli, appeared in Switzerland in 1997. Two years later George published The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the 21st Century. The book is a fictional report issued by a group of imaginary pro-capitalist, pro-globalization experts who raise the question of how to preserve capitalism forever. George explained at the Table of Free Voices conference that the book contains a scenario in which “I imagine that there is a report to be directed to Master of the Universe types who are asking pretty much that kind of question. How can we continue with this economic system without having total collapse? What must we do to make this continue to work? And the answer which is given unfortunately by this group of experts which I have invented . . . is, well, you cannot do it with eight billion people on earth as there are going to be in 2020. That’s tomorrow in historical terms. So, the long emergency has already started. And, if we try to manage the world as we are doing now with eight billion people on earth, everything is going to collapse.”

From 1999 to 2006 George served as vice president of the Association for Taxation of Financial Transactions to Aid Citizens (ATTAC France). During that period she also participated in the Helsinki Process, which she described to Current Biography as “a group established by the governments of Finland and Tanzania, with many other governments now acting as ‘Friends’ of the Process, trying to deal with the problems of globalization.” She grew increasingly critical of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the weeks before its 1999 meeting in Seattle, Washington. The World Trade Organization is responsible for negotiating and implementing new international trade agreements as well as enforcing member countries’ adherence to those agreements. Its governing body, the Ministerial Conference, meets every two years. The WTO’s advocates argue that the organization is an important intermediary between countries and is a positive force for financial growth in all nations. Detractors such as George argue that the WTO is biased in favor of wealthy countries and multinational corporations and that it harms smaller, less powerful countries. Critics see the WTO as a major force for globalization, the process by which corporations are allowed increasing flexibility with regard to global expansion as well as financial, environmental, and labor practices. The Seattle meeting of the Ministerial Conference of the WTO was disrupted by mass protests on the part of antiglobalization groups. George wrote for the London Guardian (November 24, 1999), “Without warning, the WTO has created an international court of ‘justice’ that is making law and establishing case law in which existing national laws are all ‘barriers’ to trade, and is sweeping aside all environmental, social or public health concerns.” George wrote for Le Monde diplomatique (January 2000), “The civic movement’s success in Seattle is a mystery only to those who had no part in it. . . . Trade must have no place in areas such as health, education and culture in the broadest sense of the term.” George published Remettre l’OMC a sa Place (Put the WTO in Its Place) in 2001 and, the next year, Pour ou Contre la Mondialisation Liberale, consisting of a debate with Martin Wolf of the Financial Times.

Offering a critical take on George’s work, Mark O’Brien wrote for International Socialism (Spring 2000), “The weakness of George’s analysis of the economic roots of the crisis of world capitalism leads directly to an uncertainty as to who her audience actually is. Often her writings read as an appeal to opinion formers and practitioners within government or development circles. . . . Her proposals border on an almost utopian belief in the humanitarian good sense of some elements within capitalist governments. . . . There is no sense in George’s writings of the revolutionary potential of the working classes of the Third World and of the West.”

George’s book Another World Is Possible If . . . came out in 2004. She told Henderson, “This is at the heart of my book’s argument–that Europeans must lead the world. My experience is that there are many people outside the movement who sense that there are a lot of things wrong with the world, but who are hesitant or unclear about what they are able to do. Here, my central argument is that, faced with an America that is going to be immovable . . . Europe has to lead the change. . . . So my plea to Europeans is to recognize who they are, what their achievements have been for the interests of the poor and working people over the last hundred years and say that a welfare model is possible for the entire world–and that it’s up to us in Europe to make that happen.”

In 2004 George half-heartedly supported the candidacy of U.S. senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, for president. While she had canvassed for Kerry in Pennsylvania, she wrote for OpenDemocracy.org (November 3, 2004), “we all thought [Kerry] had a very good chance, even though everyone admitted it was hard to get really enthusiastic about him. . . . The man isn’t the most charismatic ever to walk the earth. But at least he’s not a proto-fascist or a go-it-aloner, and that’s what we seem–apart from a last-minute miracle–to be stuck with now. With four years clear ahead of him and no re-election to worry about, I fear Bush and the ghastly neo-con/neo-liberals around him will now go on the rampage. They can continue with impunity their attacks on the Constitution and on hard-won freedoms; while profound economic inequalities and religious obscurantism spread throughout the country.”

George published Nou, Peuples d’Europe (We, the Peoples of Europe) in 2005. She received an honorary doctorate in civil law from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in January 2007, and in March of that year, the International Studies Association presented her with its first award for Outstanding Public Scholar at its congress in Chicago, Illinois. Also in 2007 she received an honorary doctorate in political science and sociology from the Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia, in Madrid. As of May 2007 George had written and was awaiting the publication of “Culture in Chains: How the Religious and Secular Right Captured America.” Publishers in Spain, Brazil, and France swiftly acquired the book. Her work has been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, four Scandinavian languages, Estonian, Japanese, Korean, Bengali, and Thai.

In 2002 George’s husband, Charles-Henry George, died at their country home in France. She has three adult children–Valerie, Michel, and Stephanie–and is a grandmother. George told Current Biography, “Either we achieve together a new level of human emancipation, and do so in a way that preserves the earth, or we shall leave behind us the worst future for our children that capitalism and nature can deal them. No one knows in which direction the balance will tip nor does anyone know which actions, which writings, which alliances may achieve the critical mass that leads us one way or another, backwards or forwards. I am acutely conscious of the precariousness of our moment and my four much-loved grandchildren give me added resolve to address it.”

Suggested Reading: (London) Guardian (on-line) Nov. 24, 1999; OpenDemocracy.org; Transnational Institute Wet site

Selected Books: How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger, 1976; Les Strateges de la Faim, 1982; Food for Beginners, 1983; A Fate Worse than Debt, 1987; Ill Fares the Land, 1990; The Debt Boomerang, 1992; Faith and Credit: the World Bank’s Secular Empire, 1994; La Suisse aux Encheres, 1997; The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the 21st Century, 1999; Remettre l’OMC a sa, 2001; Another World Is Possible If . . ., 2004; Nou, Peuples d’Europe, 2005

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From Current Biography (2007), © The H. W. Wilson Company, Volume 68 Number 7, July 2007, pp. 34-40.

And now here is “Erin Pizzey”, I believe this summary also around 1982:

Erin Pizzey — Founder of Modern Women’s Shelter Movement

Some bio background (from this site):

ABOUT ERIN PIZZEY

Erin Patria Pizzey, nee Carney. da Cyril Carney MBE Diplomatic Service (d 1980)m. Ruth Patricia Last. b. 19 Feb. 1939. Educ. Leweston Manor, Sherbourne Dorest; m 1961 9m dis 1979) 1.Amos b1976, d.cleo b. 1961. 7 adopted sons, grandchildren, Keita Craig b. 21 Apr 1977 Amber Craig b 24 Jan. 1979. Dymitri Scott b 24 Jan. 1990.

Career: International author USA Harper Collins. Translation rights to: Japan, Russia, Greece, Brazil, Poland, Latvia, Israel, Italy, Hungary, Turkey. All English speaking countries. Published poet and playwright. International founder of refuges for battered women and children working in the field of Domestic Violence.

Awards: International Order of volunteers For Peace, Diploma Of Honour (Italy) 1981. Nancy Astor Award for Journalism 1983. World congress of Victimology (San Francisco) 1987. St. Valentino Palm d’Oro International Award for Literature, Italy, February 14th 1994.

Non fiction: Scream quietly or the Neighbours will Hear, edited by Alison Forbes Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1974 (first book in the world on wife battering – out of print (the Edmonton Public Main Library has a listing) Infernal Child – a memoir – out of print Slut’s Cookbook Erin Pizzey Collects Prone to Violence  – working with violent women, out of print for a long time — now back in print (an on-line version is available too)

Fiction: The Watershed, London : H. Hamilton, 1983 In the Shadow of the Castle, London : Hamilton, 1984 Morningstar, London [England] : Harper Collins, 1992 The Pleasure Palace First Lady The Consul General’s Daughter, London : Collins, 1988 The Snow Leopard Of Shanghai Other Lovers, London : Collins, 1991 Swimming with Dolphins, London [England] : Harper Collins, 1993 For The Love Of A Stranger Kisses, London [England] : Harper Collins Publishers, 1995    Described by Erin Pizzey as being her most anti-feminist book    Reviews and Ordering The wicked World of Women, London [England] : Harper Collins Publishers, c1996. The Fame Game (in progress) Hugs and Kisses (in progress)

Short Stories: The Man In The Blue Van The Frangipani Tree Addictions Dancing Sand

Contributed to The New Statesman, The Sunday Times, Cosmopolitan. Contributed to journals and newspapers internationally and completed two world tours lecturing on domestic violence and helping to set up refuges. Invited by the German Government to Berlin to speak and to show my film ‘SCREAM QUIETLY OR THE NEIGHBOURS WILL HEAR.’ 1977 Lunch of honour on Capitol Hill sponsored by Congresswoman Lindy Boggs and Congressman Newton-Steer. 1978 invited by Mental Health Association of New Zealand to give lecture tour. 1979 invited by US Government and sponsored by The Salvation Army to do a second lecture tour of 21 cities. 1979 film SCREAM QUIETLY OR THE NEIGHBOURS WILL HEAR aired twice nationally on PBS in America. 1982 asked to be resident expert on family Violence show on ‘Phil Donahue.’ 1884 gave evidence in San Antonio, Texas to President Reagan’s Attorney General’s Task Force on Family Violence. Guest of honour in Rome of a conference of women International Supreme Court Judges, 1994.

 

The article in question: 

“Planned Destruction of the Family”

  by ERIN PIZZEY

Just recently a ‘battered woman,’ for that is how she saw herself, came to me for help.  Her lover, who lived apart from her and her children, had beaten her up badly and she was forced to go to the hospital. He then took her back to her own house and stayed with her in order to look after her while her wounds healed.

‘You are not a battered woman,’ I said with a sigh. I define a battered woman as a woman who is a genuine victim of her partner’s violence. ‘You are a violence-prone woman, a victim of your own need for violence.’ 

This comment indicates a need to read some Phyllis Chesler and a lack of understanding of HOW women possibly GOT to these stages.  Also a serious failure to analyze some of the major religions.

I sighed because those two sentences uttered twenty-five years ago in my early work at Chiswick caused me to be hated and despised.  I became the nation’s conscience. 

That statement is megalomania.  No one person represents a nation, except perhaps (figuratively) in England, the Queen…

I dared to say publicly that women can be as violent as men and that women were a great deal more psychologically violent than men.  In this woman’s case we have a great deal of work to do and he needs to find himself a good therapist.

In 1971, inspired by the promise of women journalists and other media-manipulators, I decided to join the newly founded Women’s Movement. ‘Sisterhood is powerful’ they chanted. ‘Sisters unite, no more competing, women helping women.’ 

Susan George’s book on Debt (above), cites on p. 113 (my version), in Zaire, a group of 400 women VILLAGERS confronting TWO ARMY ROAD BLOCKS on the way to the closest market. 

“Thus a group of 5400 women villages simultaneously confronted the two army road blocks on the way to the closest market.  The ‘taxes’ they were obliged to pay the officers were depriving them of any gains they might make from selling their crops.  The soldiers weren’t prepared ot take on such a united group.  Their captain accused the local parish of subversion, bu tthe people stuck together and the road blocks were finally removed.”

Also (the preceding sentences”  re:  Solidarity:  “People in Zaire are taxed every time they turna round — but most of them have no idea which taxes are legal and which aren’t.  {{See IRWIN SCHIFF for the UNITED STATES.  Our LABOR if we are workers is our “business.”  AND, the legal status of the income tax per se is shaky….}} 

Thus a

 

It all sounded too good to be true.  My first meeting filled me with doubts.  It was held in a very middle-class home in Chiswick and I gazed at the Mao posters on the wall of the drawing-room.  When asked why I was there by the hostess, I replied that my husband was a television reporter and was very rarely home and I felt lonely and isolated with my two children.  ‘Your problem is not your isolation but your husband.  He oppresses you and he is a capitalist.’  I pointed out that she too had a mortgage so she therefore was a capitalist, and far from oppressing me my husband was baby-sitting so that I could attend this meeting.  Her husband was out at a Union meeting organizing the Brentford Biscuit factory with the help of his degree in Political Science, to prepare for the forthcoming revolution.

What the woman didn’t know, was that I was the daughter of a diplomat.  I was born in China, and traveled the world with my father.  I also-worked in the Foreign Office and was well aware of the atrocities both in Russia and in China.  Then over cups of tea, we were assured that women were a minority group.  I pointed out that women made up fifty-two per cent of the world’s population. 

Like I said, half the world’s population and mother to the other half.  Treat us with respect!  What proportion of the world’s FOOD do we grow, and WORK do we do, and in return for which % of wages?  This woman’s perspective on the “we” is not a “we,” socially!

 

 I was given Mao’s little red book and SHREW magazine.  I took it home and was horrified at the hatred it spewed against men.

I decided that this organization needed looking at.  With both children in school and time on my hands I went to work for The Women’s Liberation Workshop in Shaftsbury Avenue.  I witnessed the women working there tearing open letters and pocketing the three pounds ten shillings that desperate women were sending in to join the movement.  I tried to answer as many of the letters as I could. Some of that money went into buying explosives.

Terrorists in the Women’s Movement blew up the BBC van outside the Miss World Contest and the top off the Post office tower.  I called in the police.  All this rubbish and rhetoric was to culminate in the up-rising of the ‘working classes’ and the death of Capitalism and the destruction of all men. Needless to say there were virtually no working class women in this movement.  Most of the revolution was fought around middle class dinner tables in grisly Islington.

By now I was very firmly ‘the enemy.’  Men, at this point, took the whole movement as a joke but it was no joke, as many homeless men deprived of their children will tell you.  Savaged by feminist lawyers and therapists, men have routinely been deprived of their homes, their children and their incomes.

I knew that I wanted to fulfill my original dream.  Women working with women in co-operation with men.  The idea that we should work with men was anathema to these women.  The Women’s Movement was dominated by the Radical Separatist Movement.  They not only hated men but heterosexual women as well.  I saw through their very hidden agenda.  I stood on platforms saying that if I had to pay three pounds ten shillings, meet in cells and call my friends comrade, then they were asking me to join the Communist Party, which was fine, but don’t lie.  Don’t collect money under false pretenses.  I had plenty of good Communist friends, I wanted a movement that truly represented women.  Not tired hacked-to-death male politics.

The early collective meetings and conferences involved hundreds of women, mostly middle-class women bored with their life-styles and they were terrifying.  Anyone brought up in a girls’ boarding school as I was, knows how violent and manipulative women can be.  The bullying in the collectives was unabated.  No lipstick, no high heels, no deodorant, I broke all the rules.  ‘Why do you wear men’s suits and ties,’ I asked. ‘if you so hate men?’  Silly question I suppose.  ‘We are wearing the symbol of our oppression,’ was the humorless reply.

By now I realized through reading the Women’s Movement literature that those thousands of women working in all caring fields, the journalists, the television makers, were determined to destroy family life in England. [See Communist Manifesto —WHS]  ‘Make the personal political,’ was one of their many banners.  So thousands of violent and very disturbed women attacked normal happily married women and our traditional way of life. Secret meetings were held (everything was done in secret) and I received a letter ‘…..and the collective decided that until the whole matter is sorted out, and you have given a statement of this position to a woman-lawyer, or someone in the N.C.C.L., you should no longer work in the office or attend meetings of any of the collectives.’

Profoundly depressed by my experiences in the movement, I went off to do what I always believed would liberate women.  A place to gather and to work together in co-operation with men.

Soon beaten and battered women with their children were coming to me for help.  There was no literature on battered women, so I wrote ‘Scream Quietly Or The Neighbors Will Hear.’  I was immediately in trouble because the book was not ‘politically correct,’ it discussed family violence and I refused to let the Managing Director politicize my book.  By now I was giving the figure of 62 women out of the first hundred women who came to the refuge were as violent or more violent than the men they left.  Also many were prostitutes taking refuge from their violent pimps.  This infuriated the Women’s Movement.  I knew that as soon as I attracted publicity and funding, the Women’s Movement which by now attracted neither, would be beating on my door.  When I called a small conference to help other groups get started, several hundred women with feminists and radical separatist feminists invaded my conference.  They started their usual bogus rubbish trying to appeal to my mothers, making much use of the phrase ‘working classes.’  My mothers were not impressed.  One of my closest friends at Chiswick said ‘there isn’t a working class woman amongst you.’  Another slightly bolder yelled ‘go home and get your dildoes.’  We left them to battle it out by themselves.  They then formed The National Women’s Aid Federation.

This delighted my many enemies at The Home Office and The Department Of Social Security.  My chief enemy at my first meeting was a member of the sisterhood.  ‘How will you pay for your refuge?’ she sniffed.  ‘I shall pray,’ I said.  I did all the time and it was our prayers that sustained Chiswick for all those years.  The Federation used all their contacts in the media (many of them were journalists) to rubbish me and my work. By now I was writing at home at night.  They came to interview me about my books but the books were never discussed, only how fat I was or how belligerent I was.

I recently asked The Home Office for their latest report and I was not surprised to see that my name and ‘Scream Quietly,’ the first book in the world on wife battering was missing. I knew from other writers that editors in the publishing world of London were themselves radical feminists and it was their habit to dictate their themes to desperate writers, who were then coerced into writing the editor’s book, knowing that should they disobey, they would not be published.  My brother Danny always wrote what he was told to write.  He complained down the telephone to me and finally, just before he died, he said bitterly ‘I have no contracts and no film deals in sight.’  He rewrote the four hundred page synopsis for his book four times to suit his agent and his publishers.

Throughout all the fighting I kept preaching that family life was and always will be the foundation of any civilization.  Destroy the family and you destroy the country.  I warned that of the violent women with their children coming to me, virtually none used contraception.  My mothers had an average of 5.1 children, meanwhile non-violent families had a 2.5 average.  I wrote reports, I drafted memos, all to no avail.  Nobody wanted to hear what I had to say.  In the back of ‘Scream Quietly’ I listed all the agencies that had failed my families.  I wrote that I was not seeing social workers, I was seeing political activists with social work degrees.  The same went for teachers, and probation officers, editors of books and magazines.  Like a giant cancer this movement dug its crabs legs into anywhere they could wield their power.

Many women, assisted by weak men, sought to destroy me and my work and I knew that finally having fought court cases that involved disobeying judge’s orders to save children’s lives, I knew I would be ousted from my own refuge.  A few men bravely tried to make their voices heard, realizing the dangers.  They too were excoriated by both men and women.  Businessmen in the media, managing directors of publishing houses, never understood that their editors were lying to them.  Playing the numbers game.  ‘Who do you think you are?’ screamed one feminist editor.  ‘I must be somebody,’ I replied.  ‘After all I’m in Debrett’s and Who’s Who.  You’re nobody in publishing.’ Another said…’Why can’t you write the sort of books you know I like, Erin…… books about women loving women?’  ‘I can’t,’ I replied.  ‘I’m a heterosexual writer and all my books celebrate family life.’

Because men looked upon the refuge movement as a ‘woman’s issue’, newspapers sent women journalists to attack me.  I addressed a conference of radical feminists and asked them why, when I respected their right to practice their politics and define their own sexuality they denied me my rights to my heterosexuality, my right to live and work to preserve family life and to enjoy being at home with my family.  That I think being a mother and a grandmother has given me more joy than any other achievement.  I was screamed down and met with utter hostility.

When I published ‘Prone to Violence‘, a book about my work with violent women and the children in the refuge, I was picketed by hundreds of banner-waving women.  ‘All men are bastards!’ read some of the banners.  ‘All men are rapists!’ shrieked another.  ‘If those banners said Jews or black people, you would have arrested those women,’ I told the policeman who had come to say that I had to have a police escort all around England for the book tour.

In due course, I lost the refuge but a carefully orchestrated campaigning the press never allowed the people of England to know that I was pushed into exile.  The newspapers made much of my defection and I was helpless.  My crime was to fight for family life and values.  A few months ago The Sunday Times sent a reporter to find out why I was waitressing in a bar in exchange for food. ‘There seems to have been a conspiracy,’ the reporter wrote.  I knew that remainder notices would soon be forthcoming and now my back list is remaindered. Thank goodness my books are selling all over the world including sales to Russia.  I own nothing but my four dogs and my cat and I work internationally for peace in the family.

______________________

I’m not interested in this or other hearsay attempts to characterize wholesale groups of society, but rather in establishing a POSITIVE CASH FLOW so I may cease from being subject to abuse, extortion, dependency (which is a form of slavery) and return to contributing to the world I inhabit, in my strong areas.  Perhaps this will be to call us to communally get some education on basic finances, which can be self-taught and practiced.  To do this, we DO need to know about global finances, at least some basics, foundations, and our current currency. 

He/she is less important when food is an issue!

And safety.

I’ve been comparing “Fatherhood” to a religion, in its use of force, lots of $$ to force onto people, and the consequent bloodshed that happens to those who object.

I am, in case you wondered, heterosexual, and I don’t want a world that is primarily women.  I DO, however, think that the world we now have, and its primary collective consciousness, is not going to become “NONVIOLENT” by anything men with a dominator mentality are going to devise, while the rest of us are stuck fighting for ECONOMIC independence.

I have personally experienced this “paternalistic” and “patronizing” attitude towards helping me after leaving a violent relationship.  I was repeatedly assured that I would never make it on my own, as a single mother, without Dad in the picture (although he WAS in the picture, almost weekly, as it turned out). 

At this time, I had already repeatedly proved competence in (1) at least one profession and in college; (2) by some fantastic, smart, healthy children that were in demand by others for a good influence on their OWN kids (i.e., playmates); and (3) I’d just filed a restraining order, RIGHT?  So I have some networking ability . . . . 

So I do have some sensitivity to the “patronizing” attitude, which was a new one to be on the receiving end of from people who didn’t look illiterate or religiously backward.

In order to PREVENT women (single mothers) from actually GETTING all the way out, or something has to be devised, and has been.  It’s called the family law system, and it’s SECRETIVE dealings from “on high” about “them folk” as discussed (without them present, naturally) particularly by the “social science” experts, with taxpayer funds.

And it produces economic devastation.  Guarantee you!

I think we should know about some of the presenters at that Ways & Means meeting (see last 2 posts) discussing renewing Responsible Fatherhood, in a new improved fashion.  Looking up Dr. Mincy . . . .

Testimony By Ronald Mincy Ph.D.

Maurice V. Russell Professor of Social Policy and Social Work Practice Columbia University School of Social Work, New York, New York

I found this organization:

CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON FATHERS, CHILDREN AND FAMILY WELL-BEING

David Hansell, JD, Commissioner, NY State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA). OTDA is the state agency charged with oversight of support programs and economic assistance for low-income New Yorkers. Commissioner Hansell, a former chief of staff of NYC’s HRA, chairs a number of state cabinets including the Governor’s Economic Security Cabinet, the Children’s Cabinet, and the Workforce Investment Board.

Ronald Mincy, PhD is a Professor at Columbia University School of Social Work and the Director of the Center for Research on Fathers, Children and Family Well-Being. Dr. Mincy has devoted over thirty years to research and policy aimed at discovering and promoting the needs of low-income families—with a particular focus on black fathers—at the local, state, national levels. He was born in the Bronx and lives in Harlem.

Helen Mitchell, MPA is Director of Strategic Planning and Policy Development for the Honorable Congressman Danny K. Davis of the 7th District of Illinois. As a senior leadership team member, Ms. Mitchell is charged with managing Representative Davis’s highest priority: problems effecting black men. This month, Representative Davis will introduce the Julia Carson Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act of 2009.

No wonder their presentations are so often thanking Congressman Davis…  They almost sound like our President — the word “family” doesn’t have the word “Mother” in association with it.  I have blogged before.

Here’s Dr. Mincy in Bermuda, studying Education of Black Males. 

A Qualitative Study of the Educational Aspirations of Young Black Bermudian Males

In order to further understand the quantitative findings revealed in the CRFCF examination of the 2000 Census of Population and Housing for Bermuda, this study explores the educational and career aspirations of young Bermudian Black men from their own perspectives. The quantitative study reveals that the unemployment rate of young Bermudian Black men is almost double the unemployment rate of young White Bermudian men and that Black Bermudian males also obtain less education than their same-age peers, both male and female. Findings suggest that while obtaining more education would increase the earnings and decrease unemployment among young Black Bermudian men, they would still earn less than their White counterparts. This study explores how young Black Bermudian males describe and explain their educational and employment experiences and aspirations. Semi-structured one-on-one interviews (n=18) with Black male high school graduating seniors, and focus groups with unemployed and employed young Black men (n=10), ages 20-35, at a community organization serving young adults in Bermuda, aim to understand the following research questions:

     1. How do Black male high school students in Bermuda describe and explain their educational and employment aspirations?

     2. How do the experiences of Black Bermudian boys at high school and at home influence their educational and professional aspirations?

     3.How do young Black Bermudian men describe and explain their educational and employment experiences and aspirations?

Research has yet to explore why Black Bermudian men are less likely to invest in education than Black females, or why they experience more unemployment and lower earnings than White Bermudian men. This study will enhance our understanding of the challenges experienced by a vastly understudied population.

 POOR PEOPLE, FOLK ARE THE NEW COLONIES TO EXPLOIT.  THE PROFIT IS IN STUDYING (US). ….