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). ….

. . . Put this link, among others, on your screensaver and post it near the refrigerator.  Log in more often than you do on “Facebook” and keep track of our government, unless you wish to become subject, versus citizen.

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/

This is not the committee that makes the laws, but they control the FUNDING of the laws already made.  It is possible to have a law, but not authorize any funding to enforce it.

Go to “house” go to “committees” (this one is near the bottom) and then “Hearings” to Hear what they are discussing on a regular day.  I think it’s interesting….

Now for today’s topics

(1) INDEPENDENCE & UNALIENABLE RIGHTS

Happy Independence Day.  If certain priorities don’t change, I believe this nation isn’t going to last 300 years.  Because you can only peddle myths for so long, and then bill the people (and jail them if they protest) until they find somewhere else to go, or begin to simply sit down and boycott all support of the system that oppresses.

I personally believe that women, not men, are better suited to do this.  I suggest we consider doing this BEFORE an artifical womb is invented, and I suggest we start to regain some of our self-respect (and the ability to defend ourselves and our children), such women are not so poor as to need to donate eggs, sell ourselves (or our kids) or become surrogate mothers in order to eat.  Or to have another purpose in life. 

The inalienable rights stated in the Declaration of Independence are as follows, per http://www.unalienable.com

 

In  CONGRESS,       July 4, 1776.    

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

                               WHEN in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to desolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the seperate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.       We hold these truths to be self-evident, (1) that all men are created equal, (2) that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. (3) That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

now, perhaps you noticed that in my numbering (added, obviously), I only came up to 3.  The 3 unalienable rights are NOT (read them) “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happyness” (as per Will Smith movie, based on a true story based in my Northern CA SF Bay Area) — but they are what they say they are, each one preceded with the word “THAT.”

(1) THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL

(2) THAT THEY ARE ENDOWED BY THEIR CREATOR (** for who these men thought that Creator to be, read below, you may be suprised) with certain unalienable rights (L, L & P), WITH CERTAIN UNALIENABLE RIGHTS. 

(3) THAT TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS (not “dispense these circumstances”) GOVERNMENTS ARE INSTITUTED AMONG MEN, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWER FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.

Anyone who is concerned about the violation of those rights might do well to memorize the text from which they came.  The 4th one (I count 4, if my grammar is right), is towards the end of my post, and it is important!

Transcript of the entire Declaration of Independence

Learn the fate of the signatories

The 13 Colonies

---

Unalienable Rights – Absolute Rights – Natural Rights

The absolute rights of individuals may be resolved into the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to acquire and enjoy property. These rights are declared to be natural, inherent, and unalienable. Atchison & N. R. Co. v. Baty, 6 Neb. 37, 40, 29 Am. Rep. 356.

By the “absolute rights” of individuals is meant those which are so in their primary and strictest sense, such as would belong to their persons merely in a state of nature, and which every man is entitled to enjoy, whether out of society or in it. The rights of personal security, of personal liberty, and private property do not depend upon the Constitution for their existence. They existed before the Constitution was made, or the government was organized. These are what are termed the “absolute rights” of individuals, which belong to them independently of all government, and which all governments which derive their power from the consent of the governed were instituted to protect. People v. Berberrich (N. Y.) 20 Barb. 224, 229; McCartee v. Orphan Asylum Soc. (N. Y.) 9 Cow. 437, 511, 513, 18 Am. Dec. 516; People v. Toynbee (N. Y.) 2 Parker, Cr. R. 329, 369, 370 (quoting 1 Bl. Comm. 123).

Chancellor Kent (2 Kent, Comm. 1) defines the “absolute rights” of individuals as the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right to acquire and enjoy property. These rights have been justly considered and frequently declared by the people of this country to be natural, inherent, and inalienable, and it may be stated as a legal axiom [A principle that is not disputed; a maxim] that since the great laboring masses of our country have little or no property but their labor, and the free right to employ it to their own best interests and advantage, it must be considered that the constitutional inhibition against all invasion of property without due process of law was as fully intended to embrace and protect that property as any of the accumulations it may have gained. In re Jacobs (N. Y.) 33 Hun, 374, 378.

EXERCISE YOUR UNALIENABLE RIGHTS WITH RESPECT FOR OTHERS

AND NEVER LET GOVERNMENT DEPRIVE YOU OF THEM!

 

Now, let me talk.  I DO have a final destination & POINT in this talk (unlike  some of my other posts, written in the grip and thrall of an emotion, in an “expressive responsive output” to the latest violation of sanity (and several of the above rights), i.e., a “rant….”

Many people seem to equate Tea Party folk and Christian Conservatives with this philosophy, and assume that, given they were dead white males who owned slaves, that it was time to “take control” and “progress” and fix things.

HOWEVER, I disagree.  I recently ran across some books talking about Early American Christianity, and — reflecting on this history and my own personal experience in a number of religions “venues” — you may notice that it refers to “The laws of Nature and Nature’s God.”

I am about, at this speaking, to the point of wondering how we can prevent any and ALL churches from retaining their non-profit status until they start acknowledging that their doctrine is hostile to women.

Women are about half of humanity and mothers to the other half.

We are less prone to destroy life, seeing as we spend about 9 months (give or take) producing it to start with.  This appears to frighten and challenge men, who then have produced, apparently, an account of creation which emphasizes that it was ADAM (not Eve) from which life came, and from this point on, we have learned how to believe that the impossible and improbable is often contrary to nature, and wars should be fought to establish this against those who, well, disagree.

The fact of the matter of The Founders is that many, if not most, of them did NOT believe what mainstream Christianity now does, i.e., they were not “Trinitarians.”  Refusal to believe in this Trinity came from, to tell the truth, a rational reading of the Bible (the word ain’t in there). 

Head And Heart: American Christianities – Garry Wills – Book …

Dec 9, 2007 … Garry Wills on the two great threads of America’s religious history.

Garry Wills, one of America’s best journalists and historians of the last half-century, has always enjoyed taking familiar subjects and staring at them long and hard until they look strange and new. In “Head and Heart” he invites readers to reconsider American religious history, challenging the conventional wisdom on many issues while synthesizing much of the finest recent scholarship. It is an odd and quirky book, however, going into extremely fine detail in some areas, hurrying past others with a few casual remarks, and deviating in its last hundred pages into political polemic.

Here’s some more of this NYT review, “CITY ON A HILL.”  I feel it’s relevant, if you are patient enough to read it:

The “head” of Wills’s title is Enlightenment religion, embodied in the thoughtful but sometimes chilly deism of Washington, Jefferson and Madison. The “heart,” by contrast, is evangelicalism, to be found in America’s emotionally intense but intellectually thin revivalists, like George Whitefield before the Revolution and Charles Grandison Finney not long after. These are the great polarities of America’s religious history, and their creative conflict has contributed to America’s religious diversity and vitality, and to church-state separation. “Head” has generally been the religion of the elite and “heart” its populist counterpart under the leadership of revivalist stars like Francis Asbury, Dwight Moody, Billy Sunday and Billy Graham.

The Massachusetts Puritans of the 17th century predated both, and their shadow looms over all later episodes. They too were intensely but narrowly intellectual, agonized over the destiny of their eternal souls, sought signs and portents of the imminent Second Coming and expected regular divine intervention in their everyday lives. They thought of religious freedom and mutual tolerance not as ideals to strive for but as instruments of the Devil.

I’m not there YET, but we are approaching, fast, the topic of “Fatherhood.”

In 1660 they hanged Mary Dyer, a 40-ish mother of six, for boisterous declarations of her Quaker beliefs. A few decades later, by contrast, they made a heroine of Hannah Duston, who escaped captivity by killing 10 Indians with a hatchet, six of them children, and bringing home their scalps for a bounty.

How did we get from the Puritan ideal of zealous intolerance to a contemporary America in which no church is established and most Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and others try to coexist? By means of the Enlightenment. Wills praises the Anglo-American philosophers and statesmen of the late 17th and 18th centuries, beginning with John Locke, who advocated toleration, disestablishment and humanitarian reform, and whose influence reached its height in the era of the American Revolution.

Wills is far more heady than hearty, but he recognizes that the two need each other. Occasionally they come together perfectly; he reserves high praise for people who blended intellectual rigor, humanitarianism and evangelical zeal. Anthony Benezet (1713-84), for example, who he suggests is “the one unquestionably authentic American saint,” was a Quaker who worked out a powerful Christian case against slavery, permitting reason rather than Scripture to have the last word but warming his arguments with God’s love. Both Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass exemplified the ideal combination in the Civil War era. More recently Martin Luther King Jr., long a hero to Wills, took arguments from brainy theologians like Reinhold Niebuhr but inspired grass-roots civil rights workers by adding the fiery rhetoric of African-American tradition.

Too much head or heart, unbalanced by the other, causes trouble. Wills rebukes today’s evangelicals for their intellectual feebleness. He shows that their effort to make born-again Christians out of the founding fathers is simply bad history. He dismisses their claim that creationism is a science, and he reproaches them for demonizing the social transformations of recent decades as a “secular humanist” conspiracy. A Christianity that refuses to face up to intellectual difficulties, he believes, will always render itself ridiculous.

I googled “Locke Trinity” because I don’t have my excerpt handy, telling how, although it was somewhat risky (as late as late 1600s) to confess one didn’t believe in the Pyramid in the Sky, might result in execution… 

on pg. 125 of Head and Heart, I read:

“Once men recoiled from emotional excess, they looked more carefully at how reason could be used to guide religion into more acceptable paths.  One of the first tasks they gave reason was to conclude, with Locke, against the Trinity, that “the extience of more than one God is contrary to reason.” (footnoted in the quote).

“Unitarianism had, in the seventeenth century, been the secret creed of leading intellectuals like Milton, Newton, and Locke.  They had to keep their views to themselves, since denial fo the Trinity had been a heresy that led to execution between 1548 and 1612, and it was still condemned in the 1689 Act of Toleration.  In America, too, men were cautious in revealing their opposition to the Trinity….”

 Benjamin Franklin going to France, acted like Quakers, who Voltaire admired. . Voltaire, bringing Franklin to a meeting in London, and (I think BF) wrote:. . “Women as well as men can speak in the Spirit.  There is no hierarchy, priesthood, or ceremonial liturgy.  This is a life close to nature, with none of the artifical distinctions created by human striving after power.”

(No wonder Quakers, though now well-accepted are not running the Tea Party, or really considered Mainstream Christianity…  They’re not warlike enough!)

You see, if a religion simply defies reason, reading, and common sense, it WILL take a lot of force (and institutions to force it) as well as MONEY to keep it going decade after century after decade…  And it will result in wars and bloodshed, transfer of wealth, and takeover of institutions. 

One of those institutions taken over by a mistake in judgment of those seeking a real conservative person (versus “pluralist”) was Princeton. On page 132, (Head and Heart) we learn that  the Calvinists (more austere, and with the philosophy that man was innately bad and should be harshly disciplined, etc.) the trustees wanted a good “Calvinist” for Princeton.  Not having the internet back then, they didn’t know their prime choice,

JOHN WITHERSPOON

had changed, and had gone “enlightenment” (for comparison this would be like some woman, thinking Warren Farrell was still a feminist, and hiring him to represent her in a custody ligation case).  Only this wasn’t a case, it was the running of Princeton!

“(Witherspoon) lost little time of ridding Princeton of its New Light (think, neo-con fundie) faculty members, and … (in short, became real pluralist).  Witherspoon trained much of the founding generation, which made him the msot influential educator in American history.  (GET THIS:):  A list of those who passed under his tutelage is astounding:

Among these were 12 members of the Continental Congress, 5 delegates to the Constitutional Convention; 1 U.S. President (Madison), a vice President (the notorious Aaron Burr); 49 US reps, 28 US senators, 3 Supreme Court justices, 8 US district judges, 1 secretary of state, 3 attorneys general, and 2 foreign ministers.  In addition to these national officeholders, 26 of Witherspoons’ graduates were state judges, 17 were members of their state constitutional conventions, and 14 were delegates to the state conventions that ratified the Constitution {{FN 35, and I abbreviated my transcript of the quote}}.

Like I said, those trustees who had hoped to make Princeton promote more conservative and traditionall Christian theocracy, really messed up!  They’re still backpedaling from that screwup — slaves got the vote, women got the vote, a Bill of Rights and a Constitution exist now!

{{NOTE — isn’t this stuff interesting?  If they’d had this in my history textbooks during high school, I’d have been awake more of the classtime.  Still graduated at the top of the class, sleeping — that should tell us something.  It was a public school in a suburban area, too}}

Tolerance and reason, and an insistence on due process, shouldn’t mess with the minds of anyone except people who wish to impose their religion on others at the others’ expense, and continually degrade one sector of humanity (the “THEMS of the world” to support the other-worldly discourses on the fine points of the USes who rule it.

I told you, I’m getting around to the theme of “Fatherhood.” 

This site talks about Locke, Reason, Tolerance (and Unitarianism):

John Locke on Reason and Faith

The 17th Century Background of American Unitarianism

© by Dr. Jan Garrett

Slightly modified: March 8, 2007

John Locke

My main focus in this talk is the religious ideas of John Locke (1632-1704). Locke is well-known as the founder of the philosophy which John Stuart Mill later named empiricism. Locke is also well-known as a political thinker whose views on rights to life, liberty and property are influential today. What is not so well known is that Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1689, has a lot to say concerning the relation between reason and faith.

Locke a Unitarian

It is even less well known that in his later years, Locke was a unitarian. Professor Nicholas Woltsterstorff, who is not a Unitarian, defends this claim in a recent publication. So did Herbert McLachlan, principal of the Manchester (England) Unitarian College, who gave the conclusion of his book The Religious Opinions of Milton, Locke and Newton (1941) the title “Milton, Locke, Newton and Other Unitarians.” (2) McLachlan writes, “The evidence, direct and indirect, is conclusive. John Locke was a Unitarian; cautious, conservative and scriptural; in all three respects resembling most Unitarians [before the nineteenth century]” (107).(3)

Formally, Locke belonged to the dominant Anglican Church, but within the Anglican Church, he was an advocate of the broad church, or latitudinarianism. The broad church held that all that was required to belong to the Church was that you believed what Jesus taught about God and human salvation.

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

Perhaps you are wondering how I’m relating this to “Fatherhood” and the First Amendment, here. per LII (Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School).  ONe might think that any and all legislators, and all judges, might be able to recite ALL of the Bill of Rights by memory to each other, and I would heartily recommend anyone approaching a court of law (or breathing in USA) to review, and commit to memory, these rights….

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances

Now I’m going to offend some more people.  Too bad.

FATHERHOOD IS A RELIGION PROCEEDING FROM THE LESS, NOT THE MORE, TOLERANT FOUNTS OF STRAIGHT MONOTHEISTIC RELIGION BASED ON THE OLD TESTAMENT, CHIEF OF WHICH IS THE GENESIS STORY, WHICH (AT THIS POITN IN TIME) I CAN ONLY EQUATE AS HAVING PROCEDED FROM A VERY DISTURBED BY THE AMAZING POWER OF CONCEPTION & BIRTH POINT OF VIEW.  I SAY THIS AS STILL A ‘CHRISTIAN” AND WISH TO NOTE THAT JESUS, UNLIKE HIS COHORTS, TREATED WOMEN WELL.  AMONG OTHERS WHO MODELED THEIR LIVES AFTER JESUS (and others) ARE GHANDI, AND MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

I REMIND US, FYI, THAT ALL 3 OF THEM WERE ASSASSINATED, AND QUITE POSSIBLY EXACTLY BECAUSE THEIR WORLD VIEWS UPSET THE STATUS QUO, WHICH INCLUDED SLAVERY, SEXISM, AND GOVERNMENT (ROMAN) AND RELIGIOUS  (PER THE ACCOUNT, JEWISH) INSTITUTIONAL OPPRESSION.

  PERHAPS THIS IS AN INDICATOR.

and I have been rethinking these models in what we can do about the warlike and irrational, reptilian-brain based religion of “fatherhood.” 

As follows:

(MAIN TESTIMONY, PANEL 1, Hon. David Hansell)

 http://waysandmeans.house.gov/hearings/Testimony.aspx?TID=8678

Testimony By The Honorable Milton C. Lee Jr.

Magistrate Judge

Superior Court of the District of Columbia

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

Testimony By Kirk E. Harris Ph.D.Facilitator

National Fatherhood Leaders Group

Chicago, Illinois

(and so forth):

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

President Obama, after all, is a prime example of the hazards of growing up fatherless:

Many statistics underscore the importance of addressing fatherhood in America:

• In 2007, 40 percent of all births in America were to unwed women

1

• 1 out of every 3 children in America lives apart from his or her father

2

 

• 1 out of every 4 children in this country, and 1 in 2 poor children, participates in the child support program

3

 

• In 2008, 43 percent of children living in single mother families were poor

4

 

President Obama, who grew up without his father, has spoken eloquently about the critical importance of responsible fatherhood.

 

 

 

 

This shlock is about 15 years old, and dates back to proclamations by Wade Horn, George Bush, Bill Clinton (1995) and proclamations by the United States Congress and House of Reps in 1998 & 1999 (I believe all are on my blogroll to the right, if you hunt) about how HORRIBLE it is that children wake up in homes without their biological fathers in them.

I think we should put some of this into more specific terms, rather than anecdotal.  Are your social services, libraries, transportation, welfare, and other things being cut back (I know mine are).  Is California, and the nation BROKE?  (sound like fundamentalism to you?).  Are your courts being closed?  Did you hear about THIS on your evening news?

In the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA), Congress established a five-year, $150 million per year grant program for Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood. Of this amount, Congress allocated up to $50 million per year for Responsible Fatherhood programs, the focus of my testimony today. In 2006, ACF awarded almost 100 five-year grants to public and private organizations to promote responsible fatherhood with a focus primarily on improving parenting skills. ACF awarded these funds on a competitive basis to States, territories, Indian tribes and ( so forth)….

 

 

 

Dugard’s kids woke up with their (bio) father in their home, and it’s costing California $20 million in settlement, too!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/02/jaycee-dugard-kidnap-compensation-california

California to pay $20m compensation to kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard

State agrees payout for woman held captive for nearly 20 years by man parole officials were supposedly monitoring…..

Phillip Garrido, is accused of kidnapping of Jaycee Dugard, holding her captive for nearly 20 years and fathering her two children. Photograph: Reuters

A woman held captive for nearly two decades by a rapist out on parole will receive $20m (£13.2m) from the state of California for her ordeal, during which she bore two children to the man whom officials were supposedly monitoring.

Politicians approved the settlement yesterday for Jaycee Dugard, now 30, and her two daughters, who reappeared last August after being held in a secret backyard by a suspect identified by authorities as Phillip Garrido.

“It is compensation for three people for the rest of their lives who have been horribly damaged over a period of 17 or 18 years,” mediator Daniel Weinstein said.

Dugard and her daughters, aged 15 and 12, filed claims in February, saying state parole agents began supervising Garrido in 1999 but did not discover them.

The Dugard family members claimed psychological, physical and emotional damages.

“I can’t emphasise enough that we’ve got to be much more prudent in terms of how we provide oversight for released prisoners in the state of California,” assemblyman Ted Gaines said. 

THE 4th UNALIENABLE RIGHT:

(4) —THAT whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
• He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
• He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
• For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
• For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
• For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
• He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
• He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
• He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Not even the best of documents is free from categorizing other forms of humanity as “other.”

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

They spoke of a Prince.  Every prince has princely associates and offices attending.  We had better watch the “nationalization” of USA where all important decisions (and funds) stem primarily from “Washington, D.C.”  Let’s remember who is funding Washington DC, and that some/many of these funds come from working people who pay taxes. 

I am not advocating to refuse to pay just taxes, but I AM advocating we remember that those rights were declared to be “UNALIENABLE” and they most certainly are & were then, VALUABLE.

`

The last post was leading into this one, as I mentioned “Fatherhood” and then posted a reply to a review of the latest book by a woman who fled Islam to the Netherlands, then to the United States, and who I’ve mentioned on my blog before (Ayaan Hirsi Ali).  I have not gone through anything like — well in quality — her life experience, but am going through similar re-evaluation (ongoing) of my allegiance to the monotheistic religion I have all my life felt represented the truth, beauty, and transcendence I knew as a child in Nature, and as an adolescent in art, and which I felt personally coherent in attributing to “God.”

TODAY — pros and cons, submit your “testimony” in print.  Is the pie in the sky going to stop the constant drainage of blood, sorrow, rape, kidnapping, degradation of humanity, bitterness, and other features of the supposed “human condition” beginning in sin til redeemed by bloodshed or repentance to acknowledging one’s sin, one way or another?? 

Here’s the FEDERAL discussion of “FATHERHOOD” — again, find a woman present in the witnesses or panelists, if you can:
 
June 17, 2010

Hearing to Review Responsible Fatherhood Programs
B-318 Rayburn House Office Building – beginning at 10:00 AM (June 17th, 2010)

FOCUS OF THE HEARING: 
The hearing will [did] 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.  \

{{again, “noncustodial parents” are increasingly WOMEN, but is code for “FATHERs.”}}

Provide a submission HERE

Find a female on the Panelists, either Panel 1 or Panel 2. 

Remember, this is an off-shoot of 1994 & 1995 (Clinton era, folks!), 1998 & 1999 male offence that children wake up in homes without fathers in them.  Particularly African-American children, what else is new. 

I cannot blog completely (time, and personal issues), but commend to us today, more “fathers” that got their kids back. 

THIS one (Father tries to sell baby for $25, is beaten by inmates, etc.) shows a man with a domestic violence background (not to mention drug, not to mention, his 6 yr old removed from his home.  No problem, he finds another woman through a drug deal, impregnates HER (age difference, 18 years) and they BOTh try to sell their offspring.  Notably, the 6 yr old who was removed was the son of his ex-wife, against whom he committed domestic violence.  SOMEHOW, though that child (after jail for DV?) ended up in HIS household, or his Mommy & Daddy’s.. 

Man accused of trying to sell baby beaten in jail

Jun 28, 2010 … Inmates beat dad in baby-for-sale case … (AP) – Jail officials in California say a father accused of trying to sell his baby for $25 …
http://www.wane.com/…/man-accused-of-trying-to-sell-baby-beaten-in-jail-ob10-jgr_3458216 – 8 hours ago

Faustek/Tomasini

 

Like all my blogs, “just noticing” here.  When one has processed so many years of irrational destruction of life, and waste of time — and reads about this also continuing to happen, while processing the carnage of yet another “Father’s Day” and so forth — well, the human mind needs metaphors and evolving symbols to handle the information.

Unless of course, it ain’t hit YOU yet, and the “if I don’t see it I’m not responsible” or the “what I can’t fix I won’t lose sleep over it” mantra applies, still. 

Some things are transformative, one’s gyroscope needs to be re-set.  Domestic violence is one of these.  Divorce, for the best of us, generally speaking.  Family trying to shove skeletons back in the closet to preserve a (facade) of normalcy.   By the way, that basically is my take on the family law system, these days.  I re-read a kind male friend’s comments on one of my (years ago) court transcripts of a 20-minute hearing in which I had a PTSD “event” requiring water to be brought.  The transcript was earmarked with repeated comments (from my male friend) about my PTSD.  And precious few comments about what had happened.

Re-reading it (a few years later), I realized that what my mother’s feminine instinct had noticed – AND ADDRESSED ALOUD IN COURT — was the court’s attempt to hide behind its own “rules” in trying to keep the lid on the garbage can (refusing to address any previously very bad decision), while I was myself addressing — though highly distressed — matters of fact and law and violations of law, court order, and rules of court.  For me to do this at the time, when ANOTHER woman had within the past month been gunned down (trying to divorce) in the same city, showed significant stamina.

Within about a year, the issues I’d sensed, but didn’t have the documentation on, I later got the documentation on, some of which I hope to illustrate in a 2nd post today, and which this blog talks about — the money trail, and the “paraprofessionals” and the turning of what is supposed to be a LEGAL system into a pop-dispensary of psychobabble (and business source for the peddlars).  Among the psychobabble is this word:

Fatherhood.

I assert that we no longer have (if we ever did) separation of church in state in the United States. 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-05-22/ayaan-hirsi-alis-new-book-nomad-reviewed/

Nomad: From Islam to America, A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations. By Ayaan Hirsi Ali. 277 pages. Free Press. $27. Women, as the historian Bernard Lewis once told me (probably echoing a desert proverb), “are half the population, and mothers of the other half.” Educated mothers, he said, make a great difference to a society, and the Muslim world’s great drawback is that its women are benighted. Hirsi Ali’s mother was one such woman. Uneducated—and as unenlightened as it was possible to be, on earth, in the 1970s—she hit Hirsi Ali when she first got her period, a sickening blow that was part of an ongoing pattern of violence and misogyny that holds sway not merely in every Somali family, but, in the author’s contention, in almost every Muslim family in the world.

After all, she writes, male domination and female subjugation are Quranically prescribed, and who is Man to challenge the immutable Word of God—especially when God’s arrangements ensure perpetual male domination? This punitive patriarchy is not confined to Muslims in their own lands; it thrives, she points out, in the West, in the lands to which Muslims immigrate, but whose “degenerate” and “sinful” societies they abhor.

In a blistering passage, written with the forthright elegance that characterizes the book, Hirsi Ali asserts that “the subjection of women within Islam is the biggest obstacle to the integration and progress of Muslim communities in the West.

It is a subjection committed by the closest kin in the most intimate place, the home, and it is sanctioned by the greatest figure in the imagination of Muslims: Allah himself.” It is easy to see why Hirsi Ali has bodyguards, and round-the-clock protection. She would be dead if she did not.

Religion, rather than turning the other cheek (as Jesus admonished) instead, slapping the other cheek and backstabbing the critics, as Ayaan Hirsi Ali has experienced.  Here’s a comment to the review, below, responding to another comment by “Chittagong.”  The speaker is ”

bhaskar_chat

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-05-22/ayaan-hirsi-alis-new-book-nomad-reviewed/

Anyway. Women had high place in Indian society prior to advent of Islam in India. Supreme Godhead is of feminine gender in Hinduism. Many women saints referred to in the high Hindu scripture of the Vedas, Upanishads. Indian women were pushed under Purdah (in most of North India) after advent of Muslim invaders who targetted the women. Sati (burning at husband’s pyre) which was stopped for 1000s of years came back as Juhar as Muslim invaders started targeting Hindu women on Rajasthan. Even a liberal Indian as Tagore accepted that Purdah came to India with Muslims and caused women degradation in the middle ages Even Islamic sources prove situation of women were better in India prior to advent of Islam. Chittagaon should read the commentary of Ibn Battuta , the Moroccan Muslim Traveler who travelled many places including Chittagaon,in Bangladesh now. In 14th century, Ibn Battuta saw Women working with men in eastern India. Many places, he saw women ruling small kingdoms, working as security guards, running business. With growth of Islam in all these areas, women were pushed inside and became object of sexual pleasure.

We can very well say, women’s rights have become inversely proportional to Islamization. Today, you cant find any bangladeshi women (mostly Muslim) working side by side with men folks that was seen even few decades back. Muslim women who used to conduct economic activities are now put inside purdah.

If you look at western india, women of eastern pakistan (mostly Sikh/Hindus) enjoy much greater rights than women in the west Punjab (Pakistan, mostly Muslim). But few centuries back, all of them were Hindus and enjoyed same rights. Richard Eaton analyzed some of these issues well in his book -The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760. We can very well say, womens rights depend also on culture they follow.

What bigger example of Muhamad’s own wife. She was a successful business woman prior to she became Muslim. This shows in pre Islamic Arab societies, women enjoyed some rights. But slowly they lost those after islamization took root.

Western women in Non-Islamic cultures are becoming affected by this, also.  Women who got college educations and were somehow (pre-breeding) immune to some of the things that feminism helped us with, have made the mistake of turning to the church for spirituality to add to their educations, failing to realize what was coming forth.

Women whose marriages, though in (or even NOT in) one of these 3 religions, were NOT abusive somehow, lacked the vocabulary to describe the shock, trauma, outrage, fear, and literal danger that the marriages represented.   Rather than address the problem (and possibly have to repudiate aspects of their own culture, or take a stand against, perhaps a male spouse), they preserve their own, and let the others be drained away into oblivion.

For those who didn’t get Latin as part of their catechism or haven ‘t thought about this recently, the word “PARENS” means “obeying,” last I heard.

These two characters — IF accused properly — took it to an extreme.

Public indignation aside, that a father & stepmother (“a.k.a. “parents” — biological mother is MIA currently) could cage, abuse, and almost starve what appears to be about a 5th grade boy, and the school not notice his distress or thinness (or was he stoic), I wish to remind us that the United States itself is the world’s largest jailer, per capita.  Without exception, and has been known to imprison and torture others in the name of Homeland Security, etc. 

We also cage and warehouse animals, who also live miserable lives before being slaughtered in many cases, and even a good deal of the food we eat has been shrinkwrapped and pre-processed (like news stories), with nutrients deleted, and chemicals added, and then Organic stuff higher-priced than non-organic. 

So if a white male who may feel disenfranchised in some manner engages in the same behavior, and gets a female to help him, is it really that outrageous?  This is the new “normal,” only a little more extreme.

Parents accused of holding son prisoner in home

Reading the entire article below, reported facts are: a newly-remarried FATHER and his new wife imprisoned and tortured a 10 year old boy.  

His former (male) roommate now being interviewed,  Mr. “Fulks,” claims he was aware of the previous abuse by father BEFORE he remarried, but like the current public school the boy was enrolled in, didn’t intervene, or (it seems) report.

The boy, who was found sleeping in the master bathroom sink cabinet, told investigators he had been living in the locked bedroom with limited provisions since December, according to an arrest report.

Sheriff Bill Cameron said detectives were able to verify that the boy attended a local elementary school through May. School officials could not be reached for comment (link to this, 2nd link below):

Perhaps Folks like FULKS should be prosecuted.  On the other hand, if they called CPS, what would happen?

Our society doesn’t like mother who will actually FIGHT to protect their children’s safety.  We get thrown in jail if we attempt to solve the situation by LEAVING, if that leaving is declared illegal somewhere.  Judges are not negligent to reach overseas in the effort to put kids back with their fathers.

Here’s one what obviously WAS put back with his father.  The news article doesn’t even bother to mention notification of the BIOLOGICAL mother, who (if she’s still alive), her son, that she gave birth to, was being tortured.

The inability of human beings to act above the level of animals is PROBABLY a factor of the society we’ve built, and the false religions along with this.

ONE of these religions (and what religions DO, FYI, is shed blood, and sacrifice humans.  Some are more overt about it than others, say ancient Aztecs, but it’s all there for easy viewing if one takes a look). ….ONE of these religions is the religion of Fatherhood.

Another thing some religions do worldwide is impoverish others, while building some of the world’s most amazing architecture, music, literature, and in general, splendid (royalty-quality) eduring monuments to what humanity can do. 

THIS kid’s life was impoverished.  He was for DAMN sure innocent, and he was NOT homeschooled, either.  DID anyone in the school NOTICE anything?  Report anything?  DO anything?

This suffering is invisible out in the open, but we have just turned our backs on it, not knowing what to do.  Perhaps this superstructure needs to be re-metabolized into smaller units, in which people will UNDERSTAND they are accountable to each other on an individual level, and will suffer, on an individual level, if they permit other adults to abuse children, or with them, women.

FYI, the Civil Rights model of nonviolent disobedience (economic strikes, walkouts, sit-ins, and so forth) HELPED, I believe, and is a good model for what women might continue to do.  We’d (I’m obviously a woman) better do this before a world is created in which, from birth, we have no un monitored contact with ANY infants we have created, while those who structured this world, including the associated women, hire slaves and wetnurses and tutors and such so that THEIR offspring might grow up, also isolated, but privileged, and not realize what their society is doing to the rest  of the world.

In order to do this, a lot of church-boycotting might need to happen.  AND, folks, we need not just more WOMEN in Congress, but more WOMEN who are not overprivileged or (sorry, Mrs. Lockyer-Davis, but your example comes to mind) 3rd wives of rich white successful men.  We COULD make a significant difference.

Parents accused of holding son prisoner in home

Posted: Jun 21, 2010 5:46 AM CDT Updated: June 21, 2010 06:46 AM EDT PORT CHARLOTTE:

The parents of a 10-year-old boy who was reported missing in Charlotte County Saturday are facing child abuse charges after deputies say the child was tortured and held prisoner in his bedroom for six months.

Thomas Anthony Boone, 38, and Kimberly Sue Boone, 39, both of 754 Seabold Ave., Port Charlotte, are each charged with three counts of Aggravated Child Abuse, according to the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office. Authorities began looking for the boy around 11 a.m. Saturday after Thomas called the Sherrif’s Office to report the child missing. After a five-hour search involving deputies, K9 units and a Sheriff’s Office helicopter, a Crime Scene technician found the child sleeping inside a cabinet under a master bathroom sink, according to a Sheriff’s Office report. The boy told investigators he came out of his room looking for food and then hid from his parents. Deputies said he appeared scared, malnourished and tired. According to the report, authorities found deplorable conditions inside his bedroom. “It was bare with no rug on the floor, no toys in the room, no clothing or lights. The only thing in the room was a box spring and mattress that smelled of urine,” the report said. Detectives said there were several areas on the floor where they could see human feces and puddles of urine. “The door handle to the boys room was reversed, and the lock was facing into the hallway; a latch to secure the door was on the hallway side of the door,” the report said. The boy told detectives since December 2009 he had been locked in his room most of the time, and was only allowed a small drink of water and peanut butter sandwiches. “[The boy] was only allowed to come out when he went to school or the family went away,” the report said. “The child was locked in his bedroom and due to this, urinated and defecated on the floor in his room and bed. The child was made to sleep in the urine soaked bed and as a punishment had his face rubbed in the urine and feces.”

The boy also said he was very afraid of his step mother, Kimberly, who married his father last year, according to the report.

Dan Fulks used to live with Thomas Boone. He says he was nearly sick when he heard the allegations against his former roommate. “I think it’s disgusting that some one would do that to their kid,” said Fulks. Fulks said when they all lived together in Cape Coral, Boone rarely fed his son or allowed him out of his room. Fulks also said the boy was never allowed to roam freely around the house or play outside.

{{AND FULKS DID NOTHING???}}

Once found, the child was taken to Peace River Regional Medical Center and released after getting a shower and food. Deputies said he then met with detectives, the CCSO Forensic Child Interviewer, and representatives of the Department of Children & Families. After the interview DCF took the boy into custody, the report said. Thomas and Kimberly Boone were arrested and taken to the Charlotte County Jail. Both posted $15,000 bonds and were released. __._,_.___

THEY WERE TORTURING A 10 YR OLD AND THEY WERE RELEASED?  On PRETTY LOW BOND, TOO…..

2nd article:

Boy will remain in custody of state as home is sought

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This woman, unwisely, took up with Mr. Boone and has been married to him less than a year ago.  Like his former roommate FULKS (and the not too observant school officials who couldn’t be reached yet), she appears to be both perpetrator and enabler. 

But why is HER picture on the top?  (hmm???)

Judge Peter Bell granted a petition allowing the Department of Children and Families to maintain oversight of the child until a suitable home is found.

The boy’s father, Thomas Anthony Boone, sat silently in the courtroom as his attorney accepted the order and waived his client’s right to a trial on the matter.

Boone, 38, and his wife, Kimberly Sue Boone, 39, were charged Sunday with three counts of aggravated child abuse after an investigation concluded the Port Charlotte couple “willfully abused, tortured” and “caged” the boy inside his room.

Authorities said they uncovered the “deplorable” living conditions Saturday while searching for the boy, who had been reported missing after he slipped out of his room and hid from his parents.

A one- year old marriage does not a “PARENT” make.  This woman was a stepmom.

Detectives searched the home in the 700 block of Seabold Avenue and found that the child’s bedroom had no furniture aside from a soiled box spring mattress. The bare concrete floor was also covered in urine and feces, the Sheriff’s Office reported.

The boy, who was found sleeping in the master bathroom sink cabinet, told investigators he had been living in the locked bedroom with limited provisions since December, according to an arrest report.

Sheriff Bill Cameron said detectives were able to verify that the boy attended a local elementary school through May. School officials could not be reached for comment.

A DCF spokeswoman said the agency had investigated an abuse complaint at the home earlier this year, but she would not discuss the case, citing confidentiality laws.

The agency will recommend placing the boy with his grandmother, as investigators were unable to locate the biological mother.

QUESTION:  WHICH grandmother — HIS mother, or HERS?  We need to take some serious looks at whether a mother who raised someone who ends up torturing his own son is a fit mother, or grandmother.  Sorry, folks, but these reporters need to tell us.

Are future efforts to LOCATE the biological mother intended?  Does Mr. Boone, released on bond, have any concept of where she was?  Because SOMEHOW, he got custody of this child (WHEN?).     Is she alive?  Does her wish to know about the welfare of her son count?  Is she a “Ms. Boone” or did she ever marry the father? 

Thomas and Kimberly Boone, who also attended Tuesday’s hearing, were released from the Charlotte County jail on $15,000 bail. Per court order, neither can not have contact with the boy. They declined comment Tuesday.

A review hearing is set for Thursday morning.

 Well, being the decent, law-abiding citizens they have to date proved to be, I’m sure they won’t try to contact the boy. 

DCFS will surely help them, and a foster care home will be better.  You can guarantee it, right? 

Here’s a MOTHER & STEPFATHER CASE (2002, Indiana)

Parents Accused Of Locking Boy In Room With Cat Feces

Mother Denies Neglect

UPDATED: 10:20 am PDT October 2, 2002

(And the stepdad didn’t?  His interview doesn’t show).

They were called “parents’ and got $3,000 bond….

Here’s another one, this time Father:

Court Documents: Fort Wayne Dad Locks Son In Feces-Covered Basement For Months

By Laura Donaldson

Story Published: Apr 7, 2010 at 1:43 PM EDT

Story Updated: Apr 9, 2010 at 4:10 PM EDT

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (Indiana’s NewsCenter) – A Fort Wayne man is behind bars after police say he locked his son in a feces-covered basement while vacationing in Florida.

Court documents show 38-year-old Eric Urbano locked his emotionally challenged son in the basement of a home in the 1400 block of Spy Run Avenue from October to March.

Police responded to a call about a fight on March 6th, and followed what neighbors say is a 10-year old boy home and found him living alone in horrendous conditions.

According to court documents, the boy told police his father locks him in the basement every night. He says he would also be locked up if he ate too much. The boy says he would sometimes escape to use the bathroom at a local fast food restaurant and try to get food there.

“We’ve never seen anything like this in this area,” Department of Child Services Communications Director Ann Houseworth said.

Court documents reveal that the boy was sleeping on an air mattress surrounded by feces. But the boy says once his mattress popped he slept on the deflated plastic and bundled his jacket for a pillow.

Court documents show the boy’s mother, who lives in Arizona, told police her son has Tourette’s Syndrome, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Bi-Polar disorder. She says she hasn’t spoken with her son in six months.

“Hasn’t spoken with her son in six months” could be for a variety of reasons, none of which the reporters dug out in this story. 

Neighbors say they were happy to see the family move into the neighborhood in October, but are shocked to learn the disturbing details.

“Last time we saw he was playing outside with his dogs in October,” a neighbor who didn’t want to be identified said. “And he seemed happy then. No bruises or anything like that. There were no warning signs. That’s horrible. That kind of sickens me that we didn’t see anything.”

Another neighbor said he returned one of Urbano’s five dogs to the house a few months ago. He says he was very friendly at the time.

“The guy was so oh thank you, oh thank you, for finding my dog,” Jeffery Schweyer said. “He was so nice that day. That’s why I can’t believe all this is happening, because he was so polite.”

Court documents show the boy told his teacher about his living conditions. The teacher then reportedly notified the Department of Child Services. But no word when this happened or what DCS did about the situation. . . .

WELL< at least the “Department of Child and Family Services” will rescue these poor children, so we don’t have to worry about what’s going on “behind closed doors” in our neighborhoods any more….

Boy in Chains Escapes from California Couple

He Had Been Missing Since 2007 from a Foster Home

Published December 02, 2008 by:

Gary Davis

MercuryNews.com is carrying a story about a boy who has escaped from an apparent captive situation. The article, ” Tracy couple arrested after teen with chain on foot says he escaped torture,” reports that the

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 16-year-old boy has been missing from a foster home since 2007. He was apparently picked up by the Tracy, California, couple.

Neither the boy nor the couple’s names have been released.

The teenager entered a gymnasium wearing only flesh-colored boxer shorts and he was carrying a chain that was padlocked to his ankle, according to the Mercury News.

He had the earmarks of abuse. He had burns and cuts on his back and he was emaciated. Also he was covered with soot, blood, urine and feces.

Another report from ABC7 says the boy is 17. It further updates the story by giving the couple’s names and ages.

When the boy entered the gym he exclaimed “Hide me, hide me, they’re coming to get me!” Staff members gave him water and a banana which he downed quickly.

The Tracy couple has been identified as Michael Schumacher, 34 and his wife Kelly Schumacher, 30.

A neighbor across the street indicated that the boy was always doing chores and was always dirty. The Schumacher’s indicated they were caring for him as a favor to a friend.

The neighbor, Mike Portillo, indicated that his daughters played with daughters of the Schumacher’s and they told him the boy slept in the laundry room on a towel. The girls also told them Mrs. Schumacher once made him eat a dead fly.

This problem started when the boy ran away from the foster home by his own admission.

{{And WHY might he have run away from a foster home??}}

So far the Schumacher’s have been taken into custody; the teenager has been sent to the hospital and the Schumacher’s daughters are in a foster home.
 

 

Google the Pierre Larsen case in Wisconsin.  He caught his foster Dad’s hidden camera in the bathroom, reported it, was ignored, ran away a few times.  Finally FOSTER Dad was caught….

In another case I almost posted yesterday, a man who ended up killing (himself also) had gotten a restraining order after placing a gun to the mother’s head unless she agreed to reconcile. I’m GOING to post, because that one (in Texas) was another avoidable catastrophe.  I didn’t post, because considering these things make me, too, want to gag, like Mr. Fulks, above.

Also provoking the “gag” reaction, news like this below — that the wheels of the engine of society are going to, like the giant lawnmower that it has become, continue chewing up things in its path, until, God knows how many generations in the future (hopefully before the Doomsday scenario that the world’s major monotheistic religions seem to believe is the natural conclusion of the human race) we will get this “fatherhood” thing right.

THE BOTTOMLESS HOLE OF THIS WORLDVIEW THAT ALL BOYS NEED THEIR DADS, NO MATTER WHICH DAD, OR NO MATTER HIS CHARACTER (AND THAT MOTHER LOVE IS SMOTHER LOVE) — IT’S A SINKHOLE, AND THE AMOUNT OF ENERGY AND MONEY GOING INTO IT PARALLELLS THE BP OIL GUSHERS IN THE GULF OF MEXICO, PRESENTLY.

Anyone interested in stopping this, and reverting to a more humane lifestyle?  You will have to re-examine the school system, work system, and nonprofit status of religious organziations, as well as probably the MONETARY system.  We are talking, life without slaves.  You willing to change that, those who haven’t taken up a side on this yet?
http://indianafatherhoodsummit.com/about.html

• About Us
  The 2010 Indiana Fatherhood Summit is an initiative of the Indiana Parent Information Resource Center (PIRC) in conjunction with a number of local and statewide organizations working to improve the role of fathers address the issues mentioned above. These organizations include the Lumina Foundation, Kid’s Voice of Indiana, All-Pro Dads, the Indiana Family Institute, Ball State University, IUPUI, Indiana Family Institute, Dad’s Inc., the Circle City Fatherhood Coalition, Indydads.com, and the Marion County Commission on Youth. Contributing partners include the Indiana Department of Child Services, Indiana Youth Soccer, La Plaza, the Indiana PTA, The Villages, Prevent Child Abuse Indiana, Head Start of Indiana, the YMCA of Greater Indianapolis, the National Fatherhood Initiative, 100 Black Men, and the Indiana Commission on the Social Status of Black Males. The event is also sponsored by Estridge Homes, the Indiana Fever, WIBC, ESPN1070, and Dads Root Beer.
  The purpose of the Summit is multi-fold:
• To increase the public awareness of the importance of fathers in the positive development of their children
  To increase the ability of fathers to be effective parents through education and bonding opportunities.
  To facilitate cooperation between the many local and statewide organizations working to assist fathers

I thought I’d leave this personal, to defuse the situation a bit.

This is half in jest.  The God question is not too “moot” for me at this point, and like my tastes in other things in life, I like to keep my options open.

I was just walking down the street, my usual Christian feminist/libertarian/ increasingly alienated (from my kids and the systems I used to NOT question) self, and in the course of thinking about “God,” took some moments to think about the Genesis thing. 

I mean, the world is created, then Adam, after naming all the animals, comes up lonely.  In other words, sheep are not good enough company.   (Good planning, God …  )   God, in his great wisdom, anesthetizes Adam (after originally breathing into his nostrils the breath of life and forming him from the earth), and takes out a rib surgically.

That’s beginning to sound like the male obstetrician’s pipe dream — no conscious protests from the human being carrying the fetus, just put to sleep and cut out.

Eve comes out like an adult, presumably, and her job (so far) is to wait til politely til Adam names her, which he does, naturally referencing her relationship to himself (and not, for example, physical characteristics, which we can presume at that time still differed from his significantly).

Still sounding pretty male, right?  She has no role in life without him.

He gets the original marching orders about Don’t Eat of THAT tree, although all the other stuff is good.  She was supposedly to receive them from him.

Again, that sounds pretty male to me also, totally current with church as I have known it at the turn of the century…

Eve actually takes in sensory input and engages in conversation with someone besides Adam (and, presumably, the Lord), who is characterized as the serpent, who, naturally (being “bad”) tempts her. 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

http://erv.scripturetext.com/genesis/1.htm

Here’s the initial version:

 Animals first, then people….. 

24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind: and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the ground after its kind: and God saw that it was good.

26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27 And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28 And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

http://erv.scripturetext.com/genesis/2.htm

And then the “bad-girl” version…

15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

(Seeking knowledge apart from God is bad, disobeying God is bad…)

Echoed also in later book-burnings and even in Ecclesiastes Ch. 12, which says the whole duty of man is to fear God and keep his commandments.

18 And the LORD God said, (“oops, I forgot something!”) It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. 19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them: and whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was the name thereof.  

{{Sounds like this account may not be strictly chronological}}

20 And the man gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for man there was not found an help meet for him. 21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof: 22 and the rib, which the LORD God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

23 And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. 25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

HEY!  What about the woman?  She doesn’t exist without a man? 

You got it … (See my last posts)….  Back to the future for us ….

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Now Genesis 3

A serpent in real life is cold-blooded, and some are poisonous, some are not.  They don’t operate in packs, like dogs, and are not most typically known as prey, like other things that hang out in groups. …  They are sneaky..  and seductive, in fact Proverbs even compares a man seducing a woman to a serpent on a rock….

Proverbs 30:19 the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake …

… The way of an eagle in the sky, The way of a serpent on a rock, The way of a ship in the middle of the sea, And the way of a man with a maid. … //bible.cc/proverbs/30-19.htm – 16k

The book “The Chalice and the Blade” discusses the need to eradicate and discredit the serpent image (and females in general) as bad, because prior mythology was matrilinear, and it was thought that life proceeded from the female.

For the uninitiated, fatherhood is a relatively new concept in human history — the relationship of intercourse to childbirth wasn’t always known.  It was thought women had some special life-giving power in their blood, within them (i.e., menstrual blood).  Hence the many blood-rites and sacrificial rites, that carry over into the Bible also (“the life is in the blood”) and with it a helluva a lot of mutilation, worse than circumcision, in attempt to replenish that blood.

It’s commonly accepted (one would think) that Catholicism, is hated by Protestantism in principle because of its compromise with paganism / mythology, particularly with the Mother of God imagery.  Well, I must say that a celibate priesthood (and consequences of this on children) and encouraging fertility for the rest of the lay people sure speaks to the practicality of that. 

The book “CRONE, Women of Age, Wisdom and Power” talks about these collective unconscious myths in a more honest way than I’ve heard in a long time…    It really forces one to look at the consequences of a “dominator” system (with appropriate bloodshed, wars, and more and more advanced ways of destroying the “Other” in the world) and the role of caricaturing & disenfranchising older, independent women as “witches.”  And the historical impact of this, called “war.”

And (the author) accurately, from what I have deduced about the stupidity of trying to “negotiate” with abusers of any sort, says:

“The real solution to this problem is not to assume the protective coloring of sweet-little-old-ladyism in the hope of escaping notice.  Not being sadistic as a rule, women often fail to understand the basic fact about sadistic behavior:  It is not allayed but stimulated by the appearance of vulernability in the prospective victim.  It would be better for old women to assert their right to judge, to be bolder in questioning male authority, to demand the respect due them as mothers and as decent caring citizens.  Younger women should also uphold the ideals of feminine authority, so their own later cronehood will not be blighted by fear or contempt. . . .   men are the real killers in human society …  “

This is not possible to condense into a single post, but as a degreed and I thought liberal woman balancing these things with my own experience, and no discredit meant to “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” I have to think about this — perhaps there was more than one reason that Lord got crucified. . . . .

He didn’t reproduce. 

He criticized the power structure without breaking civil or religious law.

He treated women throughout his short life as the people they were, and (according to the gospels) in the resurrection also.  He intervened not in just a domestic violence situation, but an attempted sharia-type stoning for supposed adultery (John, chapter 8).  In many of these incidents, he was an ananachronism, and his own disciples’ surprise was noted also. 

He was taken in violation of civil and religious standards, if I remember that right.

The apostle Paul, as bad a “rap” as he has (for those who don’t read all he wrote) is credited with this amazing statement — never mentioned by the father in MY religious, Bible-toting, marriage:

for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. 27For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave^g nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.  (Galatians 3)

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The word “Christ” refers to the anointing, it’s a spiritual (not “genital or hormonal!”) quality…

Some of this is discussed in “The Chalice and the Blade” (The Other Half of History:  Part II). 

I think when the lights starting going on in my thinking (again, I am always collating learning, experience, thought, reflection on these earth-shaking matters), when in chapter 6, the Orestes myth was explained (same book, chapter 6) as an intentional BURYING of the powerful image of how Queen Clytemnestra, in revenge for her king Agamemnon’s trick of sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia (to help fate in re: Troy), as revenge for shedding of blood.

Then Orestes, her son, ends up killing her new consort, and his mother the queen.  Then, in the trial, he is exonerated, as 12 Athenians, presided over by the goddess Athena (remember?  Sprang fully-clothed from a male god’s head.  Sound familiar, as in Genesis, a rib from Adam?) (well, except for the clothing…)  ((If you are going to really defeat female gods, you need to win over a female god to do it.  This plays out in family law situations more than one might first imagine. . . . . ))

The “Furies” were symbolically driven underground, which is where to this day, female outrage at male violence — even against one’s offspring — is being put.

This often-performed play illustrated publically that men’s crimes against women, even to killing of a daughter, were to be forgotten, on the basis that a mother and child are not REALLY related.  Women are now incubators for sperm, a concept carried forth in Mary, the mother of Jesus. …

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There’s a lot more in these short books, including the agrarian vs. nomadic myths (in the beginning of Genesis, Cain’s offerings from the fields are rejected, but Abel’s blood sacrifice is not.  Cain, jealous, kills Abel.  In the latter New Testament, they are still pissed off at him, and he is an archetype of evil.

When societies, through their mythology/theology, profile and personify the face of evil, attaching it to a gender, race, or religion, there’s going to be war.  And if I as a Christian American woman can face, after years of DV and figuring out (the hard way) that this legal system wasn’t intended for WOMEN any more than it was originally intended for BLACKS (or any other oppressed populations), nor were any of the monotheistic religions:  In other words, if I can face my own personal blind spots, I believe some of the rest of us can also, and should.

Unless you LIKE the Doomsday version of the world (linear, ending with a BIG BOOM!) (and blood up to a horse’s bridle, AND, it all being blamed on the whore of Babylon.  Other whores in the Bible, figuratively, include disobedient tribes –even when those tribes were clearly patriarchal!) I’d recommend taking a closer look. 

War, after all, is what men do while women give birth, raise kids, and learn things like nursing, and administrative support to male-run businesses, in general.  I’m talking, in the wide sweep of history, OK?

About this paganism stuff — Jews, Muslims and Christians are ideologically opposed to each other when they aren’t busy making world peace.  But one thing they can ALL agree on is the subordinate place of women.

How much, really, of the principle book of these 3 monotheistic religion, deals with hate, and distinguishing the Us’es from the Thems? ???

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I can’t think of a single adult woman who appreciates having been used to produce children, then cast out.  The last time I met such a person, and she was upset about it too (she wasn’t able to reproduce, and so had been replaced within 8 months of a long marriage), was last week.

Men’s archetypal fears relate to things from childhood — abandonment, rejection,  and criticism, and being told “no” to their self-centric worldviews.

We have to face the archetypal fears in a more coherent way, and suppressing them, or blaming them on others just ain’t working.

I am not recommending going back to tribalism (although this seems like it’s already in place), nor do these books.  But I do say that it’s hard to self-correct a system which is a “dominator” system, endlessly splitting off and chewing off its extremities.

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Here’s ONE symbol:

which represents a flexible edge, and ongoing balance, and fluidity, more representative of life, than death.  We are, after all, mostly water inside.

Here’s ANOTHER:

This is a symbol of death, and splits the world up into 4 quarters.  For example, Male/Female, Haves/Havenots, Christian/Pagan (i.e., everyone not Christian), pick one.  Either way, it’s bloodshed and death, and supposedly, through that, life.

LIFE in this world (biologically) comes out of a woman who generally has menses, blood flow, and birth is accompanied with blood.  Men just can’t DO that, but the one thing they COULD do in imitation  of it was bleed, and make others bleed as well.  This does not bring forth life, but death.

Combination symbols presided in some places, for instance, Celtic ones:

Which combined some of the circular themes, a holdover from earlier traditions.

Besides, Jesus didn’t die on the image above, it was a STAKE, something the Assyrians were pretty good at doing in warfare, as were the Romans, for an object lesson in what happens to those who don’t fall in line.

Assyrian Empire (1400-1200 BC)

People were impaled . . . . It was a power structure.

THIS symbol:

Is acknowledged HERE to be a pagan symbol later adopted through the Ottoman empire (note:  “empire”), but often rejected by Muslims.

The crescent moon and star symbol actually pre-dates Islam by several thousand years. Information on the origins of the symbol are difficult to ascertain, but most sources agree that these ancient celestial symbols were in use by the peoples of Central Asia and Siberia in their worship of sun, moon, and sky gods. There are also reports that the crescent moon and star were used to represent the Carthaginian goddess Tanit or the Greek goddess Diana.

The city of Byzantium (later known as Constantinople and Istanbul) adopted the crescent moon as its symbol. According to some reports, they chose it in honor of the goddess Diana. Others indicate that it dates back to a battle in which the Romans defeated the Goths on the first day of a lunar month. In any event, the crescent moon was featured on the city’s flag even before the birth of Christ.

The early Muslim community did not really have a symbol. During the time of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), Islamic armies and caravans flew simple solid-colored flags (generally black, green, or white) for identification purposes. In later generations, the Muslim leaders continued to use a simple black, white, or green flag with no markings, writing, or symbolism on it.

It wasn’t until the Ottoman Empire that the crescent moon and star became affiliated with the Muslim world. When the Turks conquered Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453, they adopted the city’s existing flag and symbol. Legend holds that the founder of the Ottoman Empire, Osman, had a dream in which the crescent moon stretched from one end of the earth to the other. Taking this as a good omen, he chose to keep the crescent and make it the symbol of his dynasty. There is speculation that the five points on the star represent the five pillars of Islam, but this is pure conjecture. The five points were not standard on the Ottoman flags, and as you will see on the following page, it is still not standard on flags used in the Muslim world today.

For hundreds of years, the Ottoman Empire ruled over the Muslim world. After centuries of battle with Christian Europe, it is understandable how the symbols of this empire became linked in people’s minds with the faith of Islam as a whole.

Based on this history, many Muslims reject using the crescent moon as a symbol of Islam. The faith of Islam has historically had no symbol, and many refuse to accept what is essentially an ancient pagan icon. It is certainly not in uniform use among Muslims.

More put-down of paganism is to be found in the Bible in Acts 7, when the first martyr Stephen, was giving his pre-stoning castigation of Israel’s idolatry ….

Acts 7

This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush. 36He brought them out, after that he had shewed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red sea, and in the wilderness forty years. 37This is that Moses, which said unto the children of Israel, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear. 38This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina, and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us: 39To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt, 40Saying unto Aaron, Make us gods to go before us: for as for this Moses, which brought us out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him. 41And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. 42Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? 43Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon

(Stephen is preparing them to understand that Jesus was the prophet that Moses spoke of).

WHILE WE’RE ON “MOSES,” obviously quite a leader, right?  … 

He would’ve been killed, as the practice was infanticide at the time, except his parents did some civil disobedience, and Pharaoh’s DAUGHTER (remember, women are vicious, too, right?) had mercy on that abandoned baby, and had him fetched out of the river.  But being a well to do, well, royalty, she hired someone else to nurse him.  As the story goes, he was breastfed by his own mother. …  

Fat chance that would’ve happened in our day if those two had split up.  It was Moses’ MOTHER’s smarts that kept him alive, and got her back to be nourished by her.  Hmm….

Well, obviously this is not one of my more cogent posts, BUT, I think we have to look at some of these images, and the concept of WHOSE god is the RIGHT God?

Throughout history, while men have been warring over this, women have continued to produce cannon fodder, help with the cannons (“Rosie the Riveter, in the U.S., right?”) and in general patch things up before, during and afterwards.

How about a little civil disobedience on some of these activities?  I think the men might figure it out sooner or later. 

Coming soon:  When God, Jesus & Paul wanted to speak about their nurturing, caring, sacrificial, and stedfast devotion sides, the images they chose are of nursing mothers, a mother hen, and a women in childbirth.

What we also need to let back into our collective mythology is the image of the FIERCE mother, like “a bear robbed of her whelps” of proverbs.

These are sayings describing ways of interacting with the world.

Or you could go for the warehoused, alienated incubator babies and the “pit of despair” mothers model, if you prefer!

Yeah, Contra Costa Times has gotten a lot of mileage out of Melissa Huckaby, on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day both.  If you have a real bad female, drag her photographically out for an object lesson.

I’ve followed this case, and without pronouncing on the validity of the charges, I HAVE noticed just TOO many anomalies and weird stuff surrounding the finding of Sandra Cantu’s killer.

In the same county, a good long time let Jaycee Dugard suffer in an Antioch backyard, with the Berkeley cop that found her coming not from this county, but from neighboring Alameda County.  And the cop that noticed Jaycee’s two daughters were acting strangely and DID something about it was female.

Let me explain, in the short time I have to post today:

Here’s Contra Costa Times Lead story in the Sunday Print magazine:

(this source is AP, and is posted several places on-line, one of which I have picked here):

Girl’s Murderer: Cold, Calculating

Melissa Huckaby stuck to claim of innocence as evidence mounted

(AP) – Sunday school teacher Melissa Huckaby placed the lifeless body of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu into a suitcase with a care that investigators say indicated a “calm, calculating mind at work.” This and other macabre pieces of information were revealed in more than 1,800 pages released yesterday, shedding new light on Huckaby, a depressed woman with a penchant for cutting herself, in the murder of her daughter’s playmate last year.

What kind of people are cutting themselves?  Maybe check http://www.acestudy.org again.  This is possibly a symptom of “Adverse Childhood Events” including possible sexual abuse or domestic violence.  That’s no excuse for taking it out on innocents, but being female she is cold and calculating and great press for this time of year.

I’m maybe going to take some more heat for bringing this up, but here were some comments I’d shared back in July 2009, when the relatives began fighting over custody of her daughter ….These comments are my simply questioning details that caught my attention:

I’m not sure Huckaby’s own relatives are so innocent in the matter.  Also, there’s a gag order, even her own defense attorney  had trouble getting to look at the evidence (the little gir’s body), proclamations were issued by the prosecutor before the report was in, etc.  Finally, I just got busy with life. 

Something NEVER smelled right about the Huckaby conviction. Her ex husband had DV against him, yet gets full custody. I am wondering whether the abuse (if not murder) related to her (Huckaby’s) older relatives. Church of God connection (if I recall it right) in the Lawless family. Perhaps the girl is better off with her father than grandparents, but they jumped on this too fast. An eager (YOUNG) newspaper reporter in this area (Tracy, was it?) tipped off police somehow.There is a lead that was not followed up on — a beige truck seen by a nearby resident near the irrigation ditch.

For all the murderers and family annihilators that do NOT get the death penalties, this one just seems odd.

(above comments were in response to THIS story:

Melissa Huckaby’s ex granted custody of daughter – By Mike Martinez
San Joaquin Herald

After a contentious exchange of court filings, full custody of Melissa Huckaby’s 5-year-old daughter was granted to the child’s father, John Huckaby, 25, following a hearing Monday in Orange County Superior Court.

And here’s some more, which was posted around April 2009 about, statistically, how “odd” this was:

For 8-year-olds, overwhelmingly abductors are
male. In homicide cases, they are overwhelmingly
male. Our assumption in these kinds of cases is
you’re looking for a man,” said Ernie Allen, president
of the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children. “A lot of the typical profiles that you use in
these cases may not apply here. This may be
something else.”

The why, how, and even where of Sandra’s killing
remain hidden from view, although prosecutors
revealed Monday that they are considering rape and
molestation charges against Huckaby, the 28-year-
old Sunday school teacher arrested early Saturday
on suspicion of murder. Sandra often played with
Huckaby’s 5-year-old daughter.
Little reliable research exists on women who
molest children, and none that specifically identifies
women who molest girls, experts say. A decade-old
federally funded study reported that about one in
every 50 sex offenders overall is a woman. Another
study suggests that women commit 1 percent to 3
percent of all violent sex offenses against children.
“You’re speaking about a phenomenon that’s an
anomaly. You have very little data because they’re so
infrequent,” said L.C. Miccio-Fonseca, a San Diego
clinical psychologist and researcher who focuses on
sexually abusive people. “This is a relatively young
woman. This woman’s history, what she’s been into
“… we don’t know anything.”
Also rare, for children Sandra’s age, is murder.
According to the youth homicide report, the murder
rate for children ages 6 to 11 — fewer than one in
100,000 — is the lowest of any segment of the Full coverage: If the discovery of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu’s body
in a suitcase last week and the weekend arrest of
neighbor Melissa Huckaby seemed doubly stunning,
there is good reason, experts in child killings say.
 Not only are children Sandra’s age among the least
likely murder victims, but their killers are rarely
women, research shows. Women are responsible for
43 percent of homicides of children 12 and
younger, but three-quarters of their victims are
younger than 6 and most often are infants,
according to a 2001 federal Department of Justice
study.

I wrote, at the time, “The press has pulled out all the stops on this one.  Something does not smell right to me.
I’ll also look for the article that tells something about this young woman. “

======

MEANWHILE, IN SAN FRANCISCO PROPER, JAXON VAN DER BEKEN HAS HIS USUAL DETAILED REPORTING.  THESE LYING POLICE WERE NOT ‘COLD & CALCULATING” BUT RATHER “Tainted,” indicating that the routine character is honest, and they were passively (the word “tainted” is passive, right?) polluted by something in their environment.

But Melissa Huckaby (DV victim) was NOT.  SHE was cold and calculating.  Well, women can be. 

It just caught my attention, though.  Because some police DO lie…  PEOPLE lie. 

SFPD / What to do with tainted officers?

Jun 20, 2010 … This story is exclusive to the Sunday Chronicle and will not appear on SFGate.com until 4:00 AM on Tuesday, June 22.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/06/20/&#8230; – 12 hours ago