Archive for the ‘in Studies’ Category
Who Submitted Statements re H.R. 2979 Fatherhood Funding?
(Continuing on the Julia Carson Responsible Fatherhood Funding, from testimony at the HOUSE.GOV site. (searching “Julia Carson”)
WHO ELSE GOT THEIR COMMENTS IN, THEN?
The FOLLOWING individuals, some on behalf of their organizations, made “statements of record” between the time of the June 17, 2010 hearing and the cutoff for submitting statements on-line, which I believe was July 1, 2010.
- American Humane Association
- Illinois Council on Responsible Fatherhood
- PAIRS Foundation
- American Mothers Political Party
- AngelFury.org
- Anita Barnes
- Dr. Alan Hawkins, Brigham Young University
- California Healthy Marriages Coalition 1 (“CHMC” for this post)
- California Healthy Marriages Coalition 2
- Center for Family Policy & Practice (Search — I have posted before).
- Center for Urban Families
- Child Find of America Inc.
- Community Endeavors Foundation
- COPES, Inc.
- Families in Crisis, Inc.
- Fatherhood and Marriage Leadership Institute
- Gail Lakritz
- Goodwill – Easter Seals Minnesota
- Greg Eckenrode
- Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Health Policy Institute
- Linder Battershall
- Male Empowerment Network Inc.
- Mariz Zwiefka
- Mothers of Lost Children – Indianapolis
- National Fatherhood Initiative
- National African American Drug Policy Coalition I
- National Alliance for Family Court Justice
- National Center for Fathering
- Nurturing Father’s Program
- Nurturing Father’s Program, Study 1
- Ohio Practitioners Network for Fathers and Families
- Dr. Philip Cowan, Supporting Father Involvement Project
- Randi James
- Relationship Research Foundation, Inc.
- Renovando Familias
- Rights for Mothers Group
- Ruth Whipple
- Sacramento Healthy Marriages Project
- Technical College System of Georgia-Fatherhood Program
- Teen-Aid, Inc.
- Texas Coalition for Healthy Families
- Dr. Jennifer Baker, The School of Professional Psychology at Forest Institute
- VA EQUAL Parents
- VOW Family Champions
- Warren County Center for the Family
- YouandMe.We
- ICF International
- Northwest Family Services
- The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy
- Patty Howell, California Healthy Marriages Coalition
It should be immediately obvious that some of them have a vested interest in continuing their own programs. We all have a “vested interest” in knowing more than anecdotal evidence whether its purpose (reducing welfare, helping kids) was accomplished
CHMC is one of the largest, I already blogged them.
https://familycourtmatters.wordpress.com/?s=California+Healthy+Marriages+Coalition
Any of these can be blogged, and their statements read (My electronics won’t, for some reason…
REP. DANNY K. DAVIS’ STATEMENT:
Here’s the statement from the Committee on Ways and Means’ Blog, from Danny K. Davis, sponsoring it (I gather):
Rep. Danny Davis Discusses Responsible Fatherhood Programs
June 17, 2010 12:47 PM |-by Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-IL)There is broad agreement that fathers matter in the upbringing of children. Studies show that children raised in the absence of a father are more likely to live in poverty. Children whose fathers interact with them on a regular basis in such daily activities as helping with homework, enjoying recreational opportunities and sharing meals have higher self-esteem and are better learners.
{{cites, please? Who funded the studies {{see earlier posts…}}? Are mothers simply incompetent? This is now the common rhetoric breathed in these economically cloistered circles.}}
Children raised in the absence of a father are more likely to engage in risky behaviors such as early sexual activity, as well as drug and alcohol abuse.Statistics demonstrate that boys raised in fatherless homes are more likely to become violent. Fathers’ positive involvement in their children’s lives and men’s positive involvement in their communities are irreplaceable contributions to the strength of our nation.No one argues that there is any one model of family structure
but the elimination of government barriers to healthy relationships and healthy marriages,
the promotion of cooperative parenting skills and the fostering of economic stability and the provision of incentives to non-custodial parents to fulfill financial and emotional support responsibilities are clearly in the interests of millions of children.
Public Debt
and the Economy

STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images
The National Debt Clock at 1133 Avenue of the Americas and 44th Street, March 26, 2006, in Manhattan.
The public debt is the same as the national debt and the deficit. All of these terms calculate the difference between the amount of money the government takes in each year in taxes and investments and the amount the government spends. The United States public debt is currently well over $9 trillion. (You can look up the exact public debt at the U.S. Bureau of Public Debt.) In 2006, the interest alone on the national debt cost U.S. taxpayers $405 billion.
Who Owns the National Debt?
The top foreign purchasers of U.S. debt are:
- Japan
- China
- UK
- Oil exporting countries
(now let’s review: WHOSE kids are these Responsible Fatherhood is rescuing? “Ours”? I guess the Congressmen must be independently wealthy, unlike the rest of “U.S.” because at this rate, their asse(t)s appear to be in hock to other nations. (See my blog on Independence, Fatherhood and Debt — they ARE related topics…))
COPYEDITING and PROOFREADING NOTES, plus commentary:
JUST ANOTHER HOMECOMING KING?
DIGRESSION to cover the 2004 CORONATION of The Parent to the World, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, as reported by Chicago Tribune Op Ed Columnist, Eric Zorn.
I already like this guy Zorn; he admits up front his blog is “observations reports, tips, referrals and tirades, though not necessarily in that order.” (my kinda writing. You have to love what you do . . . . )
The problem is when the tirades, or rhetoric, IS taken seriously by those dispensing it. This one dates from Nov. 2008 and context is, whether Mr. Davis was going to replace Senator Obama:
The flippant response when confronted on this regal behavior is disturbing. It’s disturbingly similar to the marriage rhetoric, and we might want to explore whether the Messianic thinking has gone a little too far in in Federal Circles. . . . . . the U.S. is NOT a monarchy; the Constitution doesn’t allow our leaders to receive titles of nobility or dispense them either. (See “Obama Obeisance link,” if it’s still active, to the right.
This is so “beyond” the faith-based cooperation that’s disturbing a lot of us — take a look at this:
“Can Danny Davis’ Star rise with a Moon in the Way?”
In promoting himself as a candidate to succeed Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate, U.S. Rep. Danny Davis (D-Chicago) seems to be hoping the public has forgotten his participation in a very creepy 2004 “coronation” ceremony in Washington for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his wife.
As I wrote at the time, Davis was an active assistant (see this photo via Rich Miller) in pageantry designed to burnish and inflate the reputation of a man who, divine or not, wants to abolish Western-style democracy, compares gay people to dung-eating dogs, and in exhorting Jews to convert and follow him, told them: “You have to repent. Jesus was the King of Israel. Through the principle of indemnity, Hitler killed 6 million Jews.”
From the archives, here’s my column on that event and the Tribune editorial that followed:
Lawmaker’s take on Moon fete is crowning oddity
June 20, 2004
The most disturbing thing is not that U.S. Rep. Danny Davis (D.-Ill.) attended an elaborate coronation ceremony in Washington for the controversial Rev. Sun Myung Moon and his wife.
And it’s not that Davis took an active role in the ceremony, carrying to the dais on a velvet pillow one of the jeweled crowns that were placed upon the heads of the robed Moons.
[Photo from a blog, not the news article:
By David Neiwert Saturday Nov 29, 2008 5:00pm ]
{{Back to the Washington Post Article:}}
More than half a dozen other congressmen and senators also were in attendance, according to several reports, including one in the Washington Times, a newspaper Moon owns.
The event took place March 23 in the Dirksen Senate Office Building under the banner of the Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace, a Moon-led organization.
“People crown kings and queens at homecoming parades all the time,” Davis said when I called him Friday to ask for his thoughts now that the story, which had been incubating for months in Web logs, has gathered momentum. “We do a lot of things in our society that are simply symbolic.”
Davis said it was his understanding that the crowns represented the Moons’ achievements as “true parents, both to their own children and I guess to lots of children and other people. I think they were being feted for their promotion of parenthood, of family values and family traditions.”
That’s quite a thought. In its heyday, Moon’s cultlike Unification Church was famous for separating adherents from their families and promoting mass arranged marriages that violated American family traditions.
Be afraid. Be VERY afraid. Where are Lily Tomlin, Chris Rock, Roseanne, Robin Williams, George Carlin, ANY comedians, when you need them? Rep. Davis doesn’t seem to “get” the message that this message is marching to an entirely different beat than our Constitution.
And the “Crown of Peace” honor that Moon in effect bestowed upon himself that day in the federal office building was no mere Good Daddy prize.
As he made clear toward the end of his speech to the gathering, Moon believes himself to be “God’s ambassador, sent to Earth with his full authority.“
He said, “I am sent to accomplish his command to save the world’s 6 billion people, restoring them to heaven with the original goodness in which they were created.”
Moon went on to tell the gathering in simultaneously translated Korean that he’s been in communication with the spirits of Hitler, Stalin, Marx, Lenin and “the founders of five great religions,” and that these men and other notables have unanimously “declared to all heaven and Earth that Rev. Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity’s savior, messiah, returning lord and true parent.”
Rep. Davis said: “I think he was simply saying that he’s a promoter of a message and that he thinks his message of peace and world peace make sense, not that he’s a messiah in the traditional sense.”
It’s disturbing that Davis, who has spoken and appeared at numerous other Moon-sponsored gatherings in his seven years in Washington, would have missed the plain assertion in Moon’s speech, an assertion Moon has made frequently and that Davis says conflicts with his own Christian beliefs. But it’s not the most disturbing thing.
No, the most disturbing thing is that, to this day, Davis expresses no regret about assisting in the pageantry designed to burnish and inflate the reputation of a man who, divine or not, wants to abolish Western-style democracy, compares gay people to dung-eating dogs, and in exhorting Jews to convert and follow him, told them: “You have to repent. Jesus was the King of Israel. Through the principle of indemnity, Hitler killed 6 million Jews.”
WOW. Some of the fast backpedaling over this event (which I missed. I was dealing locally with issues regarding child support, child visitation, and in general increasing job losses from a very poorly written (and unenforced) custody order at the time . . . . ) is phenomenal. Appa-rently even some of Washington’s finest felt they had to explain their endorsement by attendance in this event . . . .
The Rev. Moon Honored at Hill Reception
Lawmakers Say They Were MisledBy Charles Babington and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 23, 2004; Page A01More than a dozen lawmakers attended a congressional reception this year honoring the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in which Moon declared himself the Messiah and said his teachings have helped Hitler and Stalin be “reborn as new persons.”
. . .
The event’s organizers flew in nearly 100 honorees from all 50 states to receive state and national peace awards. The only “international crown of peace awards” went to Moon and his wife.Some Republicans who attended the event, including Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (Md.), said they did so mainly to salute the Washington Times, a conservative-leaning newspaper owned by Moon’s organization. “I had no idea what would happen” regarding Moon’s coronation and speech, Bartlett said yesterday.
But a key organizer — Archbishop George A. Stallings Jr., pastor of the Imani Temple, an independent African American Catholic congregation in Northeast Washington — said Moon’s prominent role should have surprised no one. He said a March 8 invitation faxed to all lawmakers stated that the “primary program sponsor” would be the “Interreligious and International Federation for World Peace (IIFWP), founded by Rev. Dr. and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon, who will also be recognized that evening for their lifelong work to promote interfaith cooperation and reconciliation.” The invitation was signed by Davis and the Rev. Michael Jenkins, as co-chairmen of the IIFWP (USA).
The event’s co-sponsors were the Washington Times Foundation, the United Press International Foundation, the American Family Coalition, the American Clergy Leadership Conference and the Women’s Federation for World Peace, according to the invitation. Stallings, a former Roman Catholic priest who was married in Moon’s church, said Moon’s association with those organizations is well known.
“You’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind to not know that any event that is sponsored by the Washington Times . . . could involve the influence, or the potential presence, of the Reverend Moon,” he said.
Use of the Dirksen building requires a senator’s approval. Dayton said he gave no such permission, and Stallings said the question of who did so is “shrouded in mystery.”
Moon has claimed to have spoken in “the spirit world” with all deceased U.S. presidents, Jesus, Moses, Mohammed and others. At the March 23 event, he said: “The founders of five great religions and many other leaders in the spirit world, including even Communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin . . . and dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, have found strength in my teachings, mended their ways and been reborn as new persons.”
Back to MY Digression:
We cannot stop the multiple foundations funding the government, which I have a come to realize probably own most of the figureheads in Washington more than we want to accept. I certainly think President Obama is plenty intelligent, and I notice, being lean, he’s probably at least as healthy as any preceding president, particularly former President Clinton. However, it’s also known that prior to election, the Obamas were the 10th richest congressmen around. These Congresspeople’s wealth includes wealth and/or assets from spouses as well. Given that, being raised by a single parent or not, there are certain differences from “the rest of us” which skin color doesn’t compensate for. The Healthy marriage Fatherhood Movement was supported by Bush AND Clinton AND even moreso, Obama. What this movement really represents, as far as I can tell, is a centralized government under the pretense of a more Healthy Nation.
Everyone (but “everyone”) knows of the Health Care debate. Too few of those not involved in it know about the extent and far-reaching consequences of the Healthy MARRIAGE debate. It doesn’t make headlines (family wipeouts DO, but they are not generally traced to this doctrine).
Nor do newspapers, also owned by SOMEONE, necessarily point the finger at the hands that feed them, and say, this waste is KILLING us financially, as well as physically.
While my blogs don’t read so smooth, or look so neat, I still will continue keeping the debate going, among fellow-bloggers and on-line, while I can spare the time to do so. The trail tells us a whole lot we didn’t learn in school, often, and what was “going down” while some of us were minding our own business, meaning, “families” and “jobs.”
I could’ve picked on another representative. However, Rep. Davis DID lead out on this bill. It’s not about individuals, but the whole language of this movement DOES smack of government playing parent to the nation, paternalistic talk, and in circles far removed from the situation.
WHEN WE FILE IN COURT, WE ARE NOT TEMPTED TO THINK OF COLUMBIA, PRINCETON, HARVARD, CORNELL, UNIV. OF PA, UNIV. OF MICHIGAN, AND THINK TANKS, PLUS JOSHUA DuBOIS ADVISING PRES. OBAMA (see top pdf, the Kirk Harris download shows a US map of all the fatherhood programs, and the title of the map refers to a webinar run by J. DuBois, i.e., faith-based initiative.
BUT DECISIONS MADE THERE AFFECT WHERE KIDS WHO MAY HAVE BEEN PRIMARILY RAISED BY A MOM FINISH GROWING UP. ALL TOO OFTEN, THEY ARE TRANSFERRED TO DAD, AND THEN HER WAGES GARNISHED, IF SOME REMAIN. T HIS IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE BECAUSE IT’S ‘SOCIAL-OUTCOME-BASED” THINKING, WHICH HAS NO PLACE IN THE COURTS. And although “low-income” may have been the initial target (supposedly), and particularly low-income Black, it certainly hasn’t remained there.
Unlike many programs that are being cut back substantially, THESE are not, it seems. They’ve been going on undercover (not in the press) for over a decade, so that when a person hits the court (she) takes a hit in the gut, the emotional/financial, etc. gut. WHY? Because of the involvement through the child support agencies.
The extra “Pow!” of the punch comes from the involvement of socialistic social service programs’ intent to put Dads back in the hoome. Well, how can this be done? By tipping the balance, working behind the scenes, pushing mediation (I’ll review in another post soon) and talking in comes of OUTCOMES, not PROCESS. Information is withheld that this is going on.
RE: OTHER PEOPLE WHO SPOKE:
I think I may set up some pages for the individual players. Although you can download it here, The first page will be Kirk Harris MPA, JD, a 14 -pager showing how the fatherhood programs nation wide grew out of the “maternal and child” care programs (no they didn’t actually). I think that innocent and naive viewers (as well as any Dad visitors) whould know what is being said about this fantastic noun, “fatherhood,” and how the thing is to really help the Dads.
[PDF]Harris, MPA, JD – Testimony for Ways and Means, Subcommittee on …
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – View as HTML
Jun 17, 2010 … The Julia Carson Responsible. Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act (HR2979) championed by Congressman Danny Davis …
waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/…/2010Jun17_Harris_Testimony.pdfCommittee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Human Resources …
PANEL: The Honorable Evan Bayh, U.S.S., Indiana. The Honorable E. Clay Shaw, Jr., M.C., Florida. The Honorable Julia Carson, M.C., Indiana …
waysandmeans.house.gov/legacy/humres/106cong/hr-11wit.htm
(1999 testimony — the link leads to individual’s statements . . . . )
ASIDE- COMMENTARY:
The larger question, really is, do we want to become socialist (or have we already); it is a question of finances, and use of them. These finances, many, come from private citizens who submit tax returns. Others are heavily pumped in with help by major foundations.
As an individual leaving a certain bad relationship, I knew that the MOST important thing to me was to regain the infrastructure of my own life and being to make choices how to run it. There were mistakes, but the most overt ones had been made over my objections during the marriage. How to correct this was problematic, but not WHAT to correct.
By contrast, some outsiders (primarily family) saw the breakup of the marriage as a failure. I saw it as a positive step, an improvement, and not a failure. The failure probably was marrying this guy to start with, but I was a different person then, not so confident.
Generally back seat drivers are not GOOD drivers. To just exist, and not have much control over the primary decisions of one’s life, or what one does with it, isn’t good. No, where freedom to choosee remains, it should be exercised and safeguarded. The OTHER reason it’s important is that one can adjust course faster, when a choice doesn’t work so well, and the learning curve accelerates.
When the government, or any major, large institution gets into doing things behind closed doors, then those ‘done to” miss that learning curve, and either have an illusion of choice in action (hence, don’t know their landscape well), or know they don’t and are less motivated to make something MEANINGFUL out of time on earth, as opposed to merely eating, breathing, surviving. And many are at that level already.
The concern about the role that private wealth plays in running government isn’t new, but people who don’t look, just aren’t aware.
These programs have been going on for so LONG: here’s from 2000, 106th Congress: The Child Support act was approved “BY VOICE VOTE.”
ACTION
FROM THE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Contact: (202) 225-3625
July 20, 2000
No. FC 31-A
Archer Announces Committee Action on H.R. 4868, the “Miscellaneous Trade and Technical Corrections Act of 2000,” H.R. 4678, the “Child Support Distribution Act of 2000,” and H.R. 4865, the “Social Security Benefits Tax Relief Act”
Congressman Bill Archer (R-TX), Chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, today announced that on Wednesday, July 19, 2000, the Committee ordered favorably reported, as amended, H.R. 4868, the “Miscellaneous Trade and Technical Corrections Act of 2000,” by voice vote. The Committee also ordered favorably reported the following two bills, as amended: H.R. 4678, the “Child Support Distribution Act of 2000,” by voice vote
Title V – Fatherhood Programs
For the fatherhood grant program for fiscal years 2001 through 2007, $140 million would be appropriated. The charitable choice provision of the welfare reform law of 1996 (P.L. 104-193) would apply to these fatherhood grants; this provision would allow States to contract with charitable, religious, or private organizations to deliver services. In addition, a national clearinghouse of information about fatherhood programs and a multi-city fatherhood demonstration project would be established.
Non-profit fatherhood organizations eligible to apply for one of the two $5 million multi-city fatherhood project grants would be required to have several years of experience in designing and conducting fatherhood programs; experience in conducting fatherhood projects in more than one major city, and experience in coordinating programs with local government agencies and private, nonprofit agencies. One of the fatherhood organizations would be required to have extensive experience in using married couples to deliver their program in the inner-city. Several provisions designed which would deal with domestic violence are included in the bill. Funds would not be able to be used for court proceeding on matters of child visitation or child custody or for legislative advocacy.
TITLE VI: Miscellaneous
The time that funds can be spent on the evaluation of the Abstinence Education Program would be extended through 2005.
Monkeying with Mothers, Lovely (but motherless) Russian Orphans, and “Child Care Research Scholars”
Mothers Day, the Day After:
Articles that make you go “Hmm…..”
Let’s connect a few dots here. . . . .
-
Article One:
The Pit of Despair (posted May 1st, 2010)
We are going to look at Harry Harlowe, the man that made Monkey Mothers “noncustodial” and how & why he did this…. back in the 1970s….
I remember seeing photographs about this Maternal Deprivation study in (as I recall) a glossy publication called “The Family of Man.” I looked at this book a lot growing up. It emphasized the HUMAN aspect, including emotions…
The Steichen exhibit described in Wikipedia:
The Family of Man was a photography exhibition curated by Edward Steichen first shown in 1955 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
According to Steichen, the exhibition represented the ‘culmination of his career’. The 503 photos by 273 photographers in 68 countries were selected from almost 2 million pictures submitted by famous and unknown photographers.[1] These photos offer a striking snapshot of the human experience which lingers on birth, love, and joy, but also touches war, privation, illness and death. His intention was to prove visually the universality of human experience and photography’s role in its documentation.
The exhibit was turned into a book of the same name, containing an introduction by Carl Sandburg who was Steichen’s brother-in-law. The book was reproduced in a variety of formats (most popularly a pocket-sized volume) in the 1950s, and reprinted in large format for its 40th anniversary. It has sold more than 4 million copies.
The exhibition later travelled in several versions to 38 countries. More than 9 million people viewed the exhibit. The only surviving edition was presented to Luxembourg, the country of Steichen’s birth, and is on permanent display in Clervaux (
50°03′15″N 6°01′49″E / 50.054246°N 6.03025°E / 50.054246; 6.03025Coordinates:
50°03′15″N 6°01′49″E / 50.054246°N 6.03025°E / 50.054246; 6.03025). In 2003 the Family of Man photographic collection was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in recognition of its historical value. [2]
The exhibit elicits, among other things, compassion, empathy, and perhaps some understanding that we don’t all live the same, but we share common human emotions and challenges across the cultures.
BY CONTRAST, let’s take a closer look at what the U.S. (and other countries) have become, in their quest for categorizing, studying, and producing (on demand) these same human emotions. First, let’s start with the primates, it’s a little more politically acceptable, at first….
(I cited “The Family of Man” for the opposite of this:)
The Pit of Despair (posted May 1st, 2010)
Someone forwarded the article to me. One has to ask, why wasn’t the man who would do this to monkeys being psychoanalyzed, rather than the monkeys. Talk about “detachment” — on the part of the researcher.
The question I also ask is: Who would FUND this kind of a study? I mean, what is the profit of knowing how to scientifically CAUSE trauma, anti-social behaviors, and depression on the part of the experimented-upon population (here, primates).
And from under which rock did this type of (male) researcher crawl? Because it makes my skin crawl….
Think about it. . . . .
Background
A rhesus monkey infant in one of Harlow’s isolation chambers. The photograph was taken when the chamber door was raised for the first time after six months of total isolation.Much of Harlow’s scientific career was spent studying maternal bonding, what he described as the “nature of love”.
Read on, and you might conclude, like me, that Harlow’s own childhood might have been a little maternal love deficient.. Did he have kids, and did he watch those kids with their mother???
These experiments involved rearing newborn monkeys with surrogate mothers, ranging from toweling covered cones to a machine that modeled abusive mothers by assaulting the baby monkeys with cold air or spikes. The point of the experiments was to pinpoint the basis of the mother-child relationship, namely whether the infant primarily sought food or affection. Harlow concluded it was the latter.
Note: Why not give the infant both, and be done with it?
In 1971, Harlow’s wife died of cancer and he began to suffer from depression. He submitted to electro-shock treatment and returned to work but, as Lauren Slater writes, his colleagues noticed a difference in his demeanor. He abandoned his research into maternal attachment and developed an interest in isolation and depression.
Harlow’s first experiments involved isolating a monkey in a cage surrounded by steel walls with a small one-way mirror, so the experimenters could look in, but the monkey could not look out.
FYI, a good deal of the current family law system is designed in this manner. It’s not transparent. You have to go looking to see what’s the gas in its tank, and it takes some time. Just show up to be “demonstrated” upon, and you’re in for a rude awakening. After a while, it’s damn hard to get all the way out.
The only connection the monkey had with the world was when the experimenters’ hands changed his bedding or delivered fresh water and food. Baby monkeys were placed in these boxes soon after birth; four were left for 30 days, four for six months, and four for a year.
After 30 days, the “total isolates,” as they were called, were found to be “enormously disturbed.” After being isolated for a year, they barely moved, did not explore or play, and were incapable of having sexual relations.
When placed with other monkeys for a daily play session, they were badly bullied. Two of them refused to eat and starved themselves to death.
Wow, that’s starting to sound like some of our current public school systems: bullying, anorexia, and other behavioral problems….
Harlow also wanted to test how isolation would affect parenting skills, but the isolates were unable to mate. Artificial insemination had not then been developed; instead, Harlow devised what he called a “rape rack,” to which the female isolates were tied in normal monkey mating posture.
A rape rack??? At about this point, perhaps the doctoral students should have suggested he try it first….
He found that, just as they were incapable of having sexual relations, they were also unable to parent their offspring, either abusing or neglecting them.
“Not even in our most devious dreams could we have designed a surrogate as evil as these real monkey mothers were,” he wrote.
With typical detachment. The evil originated in him, and was forced onto the moneky mothers by repeated trauma, (including rape), torture and systematic intentional behavioral modification. Yet in his reports, he describes the monkeys, not himself, as if there was no correspondence between his treatment of them and their behavior.
Today, as it pertains to human beings, we call this “domestic violence” (or should I say, “USED to call that”).
Having no social experience themselves, they were incapable of appropriate social interaction. One mother held her baby’s face to the floor and chewed off his feet and fingers. Another crushed her baby’s head. Most of them simply ignored their offspring.
These experiments showed Harlow what total and partial isolation did to developing monkeys, but he felt he had not captured the essence of depression, which he believed was characterized by feelings of loneliness, helplessness, and a sense of being trapped, or being “sunk in a well of despair,” he said.
He was PAID for this???
(This web page lists a lot of subtitles, and below the next excerpt, references).The technical name for the new depression chamber was “vertical chamber apparatus,” though Harlow himself insisted on calling it the “pit of despair.” He had at first wanted to call it the “dungeon of despair,” and also used terms like “well of despair,” and “well of loneliness.” Blum writes that his colleagues tried to persuade him to not to use such descriptive terms, that a less visual name would be easier politically. Gene Sackett of the University of Washington in Seattle, one of Harlow’s doctoral students who went on to conduct additional deprivation studies, said, “He first wanted to call it a dungeon of despair. Can you imagine the reaction to that?”
Note, the doctoral student, here, was more concerned, apparently, about the REACTION to calling it what it was, than the actual doing of this.
Again, think about it.
Most of the monkeys placed inside it were at least three months old and had already bonded with others. The point of the experiment was to break those bonds in order to create the symptoms of depression. The chamber was a small, metal, inverted pyramid, with slippery sides, slanting down to a point. The monkey was placed in the point. The opening was covered with mesh. The monkeys would spend the first day or two trying to climb up the slippery sides. After a few days, they gave up. Harlow wrote, “most subjects typically assume a hunched position in a corner of the bottom of the apparatus. One might presume at this point that they find their situation to be hopeless.”Stephen J. Suomi, another of Harlow’s doctoral students, placed some monkeys in the chamber in 1970 for his PhD.
He wrote that he could find no monkey who had any defense against it. Even the happiest monkeys came out damaged. He concluded that even a happy, normal childhood was no defense against depression.
The experiments delivered what science writer Deborah Blum has called “common sense results”: that monkeys, very social animals in nature, when placed in isolation, emerge badly damaged, and that some recover and some do not.
Reaction
The experiments were condemned, both at the time and later, from within the scientific community and elsewhere in academia. In 1974, American literary critic Wayne C. Booth wrote that, “Harry Harlow and his colleagues go on torturing their nonhuman primates decade after decade, invariably proving what we all knew in advance that social creatures can be destroyed by destroying their social ties.” He writes that Harlow made no mention of the criticism of the morality of his work.
Charles Snowdon, a junior member of the faculty at the time, who became head of psychology at Wisconsin, said that Harlow had himself been very depressed by his wife’s cancer. Snowdon was appalled by the design of the vertical chambers. He asked Suomi why they were using them, and Harlow replied, “Because that’s how it feels when you’re depressed.“Harlow’s colleagues and doctoral students also expressed concern. Sackett told Blum that, in his view, the animal liberation movement in the U.S. was born as a result of Harlow’s experiments.
Thereby revealing his motivation. He was working out his own (severe, I’d have to guess) psychological issues on helpless subjects.
MY point is, he was also paid for doing this, and he had Ph.D’s working under him, too. They were getting their doctorate degrees and learning how to abuse animals. Tranferable later (if the outcry over animals got too loud) to the human behavioral sciences spheres…. Business is business….
Another of Harlow’s students, William Mason, who also conducted deprivation experiments elsewhere, said that Harlow “kept this going to the point where it was clear to many people that the work was really violating ordinary sensibilities, that anybody with respect for life or people would find this offensive. It’s as if he sat down and said, ‘I’m only going to be around another ten years. What I’d like to do, then, is leave a great big mess behind.’ If that was his aim, he did a perfect job.”
Leonard Rosenblum, who studied under Harlow, told Lauren Slater that Harlow enjoyed using shocking terms for his apparatus because “he always wanted to get a rise out of people.”
POINT. … This study, years later, provokes indignation & outrage. BUT, after that, it reminds me of where we are, these days, only using human subjects more and more overtly. Think about it: What was the funding behind those Harlowe experiments? The federal income tax as distributed by which departments? Or was it private money?
Article Two:
Russia’s 700,000 Orphans
Russian Orphanage Offers Love, but Not Families (The New York Times: posted & printed May 4th, 2010 )
. . .
MOSCOW — There is nothing dreary about Orphanage No. 11. It has rooms filled with enough dolls and trains and stuffed animals to make any child giggly. It has speech therapists and round-the-clock nurses and cooks who delight in covertly slipping a treat into a tiny hand. It has the feel of a place where love abounds.
What it does not have are many visits from potential parents.
Few of its children will ever be adopted — by Russians or foreigners. When they reach age 7 and are too old for this institution they will be shuttled to the next one, reflecting an entrenched system that is much better at warehousing children — and profiting from them — than finding them families.
The case of a Russian boy who returned alone to Moscow, sent back by his American adoptive mother, has focused intense attention on the pitfalls of international adoption.
But the outcry has obscured fundamental questions about why Russia has so many orphans and orphanages in the first place.
In recent days, senior Russian officials have begun to acknowledge how troubled their system is.
The chairwoman of the parliamentary committee on family and children, Yelena B. Mizulina, spotlighted what she said was a shocking statistic: Russia has more orphans now, 700,000, than at the end of World War II, when an estimated 25 million Soviet citizens were killed.
Ms. Mizulina noted that for all the complaints about the return of the boy, Artyom Savelyev, by his adoptive mother in Tennessee, Russia itself has plenty of experience with failed placements. She said 30,000 children in the last three years inside Russia were sent back to institutions by their adoptive, foster or guardianship families.
“Specialists call such a boom in returns a humanitarian catastrophe,” she said.
She reeled off more figures. The percentage of children who are designated orphans is four to five times higher in Russia than in Europe or the United States. Of those, 30 percent live in orphanages. Most of them are children who have been either given up by their parents or removed from dysfunctional homes by the authorities.
Now let’s review again: What constitutes a “dysfunctional” home, and who decides what is dysfunctional? Of those “dysfunctional home,” how did they get that label dysfunctional, and what, if any, role did the same government play in that “dysfunction.”
This is the land (isn’t it?) of “The Gulag Archipelago…” You are either functional or you ain’t.
It’s a SYSTEM. What caught my attention — the NYT is reporting on this “humanitarian catastrophe” as it occurs in Russia, not the ongoing one in the United States ….
Article Three:
“Grant Opportunity: Child Care Research Scholars:”
I believe I posted this around April 15th, also, so we know what noble causes those taxes are going towards. Some doctoral students (who are obviously more important than mothers in the lives of little kids) can get from $30,000 — $50,000 to STUDY child care situations. (Why else do you think there is the huge push for “supervised visitation” in the family law system? To help families somehow? ???)
Child Care Research
Child Care Research Scholars, 2007-2010
Overview
Funds for Child Care Research Scholars grants are available to support dissertation research on child care policy issues in partnership with State Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) lead agencies.
Since 2000, Congress has appropriated about $10 million per year of CCDF discretionary funds to be used for child care research and evaluation. These funds have supported projects that add to our knowledge about the efficacy of child care subsidy policies and programs in supporting employment and self-sufficiency outcomes for parents, and providing positive learning and school readiness outcomes for children. Previously funded Child Care Research Scholars have made significant contributions to the child care policy research field.
To ensure that research is responsive to the changing needs of low-income families, partnerships between the graduate student, their mentor and the State CCDF lead agency are essential. This partnership ensures the research will be policy-relevant and is the foundation that fosters skills necessary to build the graduate student’s career trajectory of successful partnership-building and contributions to the policy and scientific communities.
The specific goals of the Child Care Research Scholars grants are:
1. To directly support graduate students as a way of encouraging the conduct of child care policy research
(and so forth…..)
I’m so glad that federal funding is going to support graduate students and encourage them to enter the arena of “child care policy research,” rather than, say the mother-daughter (or -son) bond such that we might have fewer maternal deprivation, trauma, depression, and other symptomology as created by other institutions which BREAK Up the family at will, and for ulterior motives, usually the old one, the profit motive.
NB: Wasn’t that a feature of slavery? The disintegration of the family, at will, by the masters, and farming out the kids to work, for no or low pay in unknown conditions, for the profit of — THE KIDS? of SOCIETY? ?? of the PARENTS???
I don’t THINK so..
This google search shows that where these are being advertised are sites ending, primarily, in *.edu or *.gov, and some *.org.
Posted on April 15, 2010 by Nancy CruzThe Early Ed Watch blog posted information on a new grant opportunity for graduate students focusing on child care policy issues. According to the post,
Federal grants are now available as part of the Child Care Research Scholars program. Letters of intent are due April 19; applications are due May 3. The program is funded through the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services. The grants are designed to support dissertation research on child care policy issues and are available for 12 and 24-month projects, with awards of up to $30,000 for the first 12 months of a project and a maximum of $50,000 for a two-year project. Grants are open to doctoral level graduate students who, according to the funding announcement, are “enrolled in accredited public, state-controlled, and private institutions of higher education.”
Also advertised on this site, the “New America Foundation,”
http://earlyed.newamerica.net/node/30591
Click on link to see the cute puzzle graphic. The “New America Foundation,” has many “initiatives.” I blogged earlier on the Conflict between (and among) Christians & Muslims in Nigeria, from this same foundation.
Here’s the foundation of the “OLD” America:
HERE, by the way, is the purpose of Government as defined in the U.S. Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among men.”
The forces, and deeds, that changed the U.S.A. from a government BY PERMISSION of the people to a People ENSLAVED by the Government has a lot to do with the tax system, which is providing endless grants to study human subjects at will, and often enough without their informed consent. And to separate mothers (and fathers) & children and raise up a generation to usher in the new utopia by forgetting the original foundations.
The philosophical question of USA is NOT whether or not the Constitution was a “good idea” but to stop redefining who was, and who was not “Men.” As a member of the gender that got the vote 2nd, I STILL prefer the usage “Men” to “Human,” which is a different point of view. Wake up folks, unless you want the fringe groups who do NOT acknowledge non-WASPS and non-MALES, and whose specialty is distrust of the “other” (when it comes to religion, too) to co-opt the original principles.
here, by contrast, is the Greek mythological version of “equality”:
Procrustes (proh-KRUS-teez)
Procrustes was a host who adjusted his guests to their bed. Procrustes, whose name means “he who stretches”, was arguably the most interesting of Theseus’s challenges on the way to becoming a hero. He kept a house by the side of the road where he offered hospitality to passing strangers, who were invited in for a pleasant meal and a night’s rest in his very special bed. Procrustes described it as having the unique property that its length exactly matched whomsoever lay down upon it. What Procrustes didn’t volunteer was the method by which this “one-size-fits-all” was achieved, namely as soon as the guest lay down Procrustes went to work upon him, stretching him on the rack if he was too short for the bed and chopping off his legs if he was too long. Theseus turned the tables on Procrustes, fatally adjusting him to fit his own bedOR:[edit] Procrustes in Greek Mythology
In the Greek myth, Procrustes was a son of Poseidon with a stronghold on Mount Korydallos, on the sacred way between Athens and Eleusis. There, he had an iron bed in which he invited every passer-by to spend the night, and where he set to work on them with his smith’s hammer, to stretch them to fit. In later tellings, if the guest proved too tall, Procrustes would amputate the excess length; nobody ever fit the bed exactly because secretly Procrustes had two beds.[1] Procrustes continued his reign of terror until he was captured by Theseus, travelling to Athens along the sacred way, who “fitted” Procrustes to his own bed:
“He killed Damastes, surnamed Procrustes, by compelling him to make his own body fit his bed, as he had been wont to do with those of strangers. And he did this in imitation of Heracles. For that hero punished those who offered him violence in the manner in which they had plotted to serve him.”[2]
A Procrustean bed is an arbitrary standard to which exact conformity is forced.
A Procrustean solution is the undesirable practice of tailoring data to fit its container or some other preconceived stricture. A common example from the business world is embodied in the notion that no résumé should exceed one page in length.
A Procrustean solution in statistics, instead of finding the best fit line to a scatter plot of data, one first chooses the line one wants, then selects only the data that fits it, disregarding data that does not, so to “prove” some point. It is a form of rhetorical deception made to forward one set of interests at the expense of others. The unique goal of the Procrustean solution is not win-win, but rather that Procrustes wins and the other loses. In this case, the defeat of the opponent justifies the deceptive means.
GET IT? This is the Family Law System. It ain’t what it pretends to be.
Nor, any more is this country.
I recommend we start looking at what those taxes are going for, as well as the tax structure itself.
Start here: It took me less than one day to (re) read this 1970 publication:
Money, Bona Fide or Non-Bona Fide
by Dr. Edward E Popp, D.D.S.Wisconsin Education Fund
P.O. Box 321 • Port Washington
Wisconsin 53074To my EdithCopyright © 1970 by Edward E. PoppMANUFACTURED IN
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Contents
Preface 7 1. Some Useful Definitions 9 2. Media Of Exchange 17 3. Money Is A Document 31 4. Media Of Exchange Used In The United States 42 5. Borrowed Money As A Medium Of Exchange 52 6. Value Of Money Or Purchasing Power Of Money 59 7. How To Introduce Coins In A Country, Where No Money Exists 68 8. Who, With Justice, Has The Right To Issue The Medium Of Exchange? 72 9. How Much Media Of Exchange Should Be Issued? Who Should Determine The Amount? 78 10. How To Make A Bona Fide Medium Of Exchange Acceptable 80 11. Foreign Trade 90 12. Inflation And Deflation 95 13. Interest, Just And Unjust 104 14. Conclusion 118
May your Mothers and Fathers & Sons & Daughters prosper.
And may you stop leaving your legacy to mediators, custody evaluators, litigators, and those who don’t teach this stuff to your kids.
New America Foundation on “God’s Country” tribalization
Blessed be the hands that feed us social services, and report on them too:
APRIL 15th in U.S.A., land of the Federal Reserve Currency System and the bottomless hole of debt in the name of every good cause under the sun.
- Land of Big Brother and the crisis in Fatherlessness.
- Land where THINKING is relegate to THINK TANKS, and information gathering is via media owned by some of the same people funding the think tanks, and where experts are paid for.
- LAND where good luck if you as an individual, or family, want to get the services promised for (luck will be necessary, or a loud squeak in the system…..)
With a land like this religion will be necessary for revival — either faith (“take it on faith”) in this big brother, or in the collective consciences of the voters (and the honesty of the ballot processes) — or faith in God, Allah, Buddha, or the innate goodness of the human condition, when given proper environment, and watering.. This last will require also the fantasy-version of human history.
So I thought on Tax Day I’d write you about two things: New America Foundation (you DO know we are already forming a “new America” right? — or didn’t you catch that on the evening news? The Constitution is evolving and the Bill of Rights (etc.) are anachronistic in the global economy….) AND an article by one of its authors, under one of the MULTIPLE “INITIATIVES” in this think tank, foundation, or whatever it is. One thing I bet — IT’S not filing taxes and paying them today….
The New America Foundation
1899 L Street, N.W., Suite 400, Washington, DC 20036
921 11th Street, Suite 901, Sacramento, CA 95814
The RELIGIOUS INITIATIVE (I clicked actually under Family & Workforce) is only one of many initiatives for this megalith (presumably). You should know who’s running this part of it:
David Gray
Director, Workforce and Family Program; Senior Advisor, Education Policy Program; Coordinator, Religious Center Initiative
gray@newamerica.netRev. Dr. David E. Gray directs the New America Foundation’s Workforce and Family Program, which researches and develops solutions to social, economic and family policy issues. He also serves as a senior advisor to New America’s Education Policy Program and the coordination for the Religious Center Initiative
<!–
Image
In case you wondered, he’s also a Presbyterian Pastor….and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and your academic pedigree, probably, can’t hold a candle to his. How DARE You make decisions for your own family contrary to some of these foundation-funded, policy-studied, pronouncements? Especially if you are a WOMAN– Look at this:
David is the Senior Pastor of Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church, a chaplain at American University, and a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a graduate of Yale, Harvard, Northwestern University School of Law and Wesley Theological Seminary
While I doubt he’d subscribe, even (I hope) in his private thoughts, to the “Christian Domestic Discipline.com”, I wonder if he subscribes as well to the concepts embodied in the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence, and other concepts that do not treat people as policy subjects…. I wonder if he cares that our country has become a child-trafficker through its own courts, and that some of the policies promising “help” have redefined the Constitution, and help, and are themselves a problem, if not THE problem, nationwide? It’s an “attitude” thing…..
SO, I”m going to post about “God’s Country” faith struggles which are actually economic struggles, and how it plays out. The article is written by another, I’d bet highly-credentialed writer, whose work is I presume sponsored by this same foundation. I think it’s a well-written article.
How I found this article: Watching TV, and in particular a MSM (MainstreamMedia) protest that the federal government, really, really is doing great stuff for us, and should not be criticized — especially in Florida — look at the school system, look at this nearly blind woman whose Alzheimer husband has home help, look at the military installation — why aren’t we grateful for the hand that feeds us, etc. — as I recall a spokesperson from New America Foundation was shown.
(As usual with my posts, the intros can be long, personal and pedantic. For the body of the post, scroll down to the article quote…. As it’s also MY post, I feel free to stray off topic and cast a wider context than the title. The persistent, fast readers, or those with time to spare will get to the juicy center of it eventually, the faint of heart (or attention) need not apply. Welcome to what’s on my mind today…)
I may be wrong about the context where I heard this name, but I doubt I’m wrong about the heavy hand that foundations play in our daily lives, and government.
FOUNDATIONS:
Foundations (tax-free, and typically from wealthy capitalist families, some of whose ancestors helped install the IRS, and progressive income tax, Federal Reserve Board, and other marketed viewpoints that help keep this U.S.A in permanent debt crisis) — have got my attention. Previously, as this blog states, my attention was merely on getting free from domestic violence and back to a “normal” lifestyle which by my definition means (without abuse in the home) the freedom to:
1. Earn money where, how, and when I choose, within limits of demand for services I’m qualified to give and contacts I have made. To someone leaving a battering relationship, that alone is like heaven. It breeds HOPE and CONFIDENCE.
2. Spending that money with wisdom according to our particular needs and staying off the receiving end of social services once I’d gotten there.
4. Not subjecting my offspring to the bottom of the barrel educational model, which (as to our options) the public schools in this state ARE. And are not about to change in the near future — at least for the better….They are war grounds for competing ideologies and breeding grounds for gangs and civil rights violations, through trauma and in general chaotic philosophies.
They are also — and I believe intentionally so — class sorters. And they feed social scientists (and pharmaceutical companies) with nonstop substance in the form of young humanity, for projects of all kinds and with all kinds of motives. Again, I came to this jaundiced view (after decades of working with multi-talented and smart kids of all kinds in and out of the schools) after my bout with the family law system in this century.
GOD’S COUNTRY, @ 2008…..
(In the land of the brave and home of the free, this is when I first hit 100% unemployment through family court escalations and insanity, and my own “insane” and apparently religious faith, that there was some due process somewhere around…Instead, I found the alternate religion of therapeutic jurisprudence and courts as psychology. It’s really all a matter of how you view the issues, and what language is used to describe them).
NOW FOR TODAY’S ARTICLE — many parallels with USA.
God’s Country
By Eliza Griswold, New America Foundation
Ms. Griswold bio:
Eliza Griswold is a writer who focuses on conflict, human rights, and religion. Her reportage and analyses have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and The New Republic, among other publications. She was a 2007 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and is the recipient of the first Robert I. Friedman Award for international investigative reporting. Her first book of poems, Wideawake Field, was recently published by Farrar Straus and Giroux.
As a Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation, Ms. Griswold will continue to pursue her interest in conflict, human rights, and religion. She is at work on her first nonfiction book, The Tenth Parallel, an examination of the meeting place between the Christian and Muslim worlds, which will also be published by Farrar Straus and Giroux.
If I have enough more decades of life left, I could get into this type of writing. Hope you read the whole thing….
March 2008 |
It was an ordinary soccer pitch: sparse tufts of grass and reddish soil surrounded by cinder-block homes. The two candidates stood on opposite sides of the field as the people of Yelwa, a town of 30,000 in central Nigeria, lined up behind them one May morning in 2002 to vote. Whoever had more supporters would lead the town’s council. And whoever led the council would control the certificates of indigeneship: the papers certifying that Yelwa was their home, and that they had a right there to land, jobs, and scholarships. Between the iron goalposts milled ethnic Jarawa, principally Muslim merchants and herders; next to them were the Tarok and Goemai, predominantly farmers and Christians. For several years, their hereditary tribal chief, a Christian, had refused certificates of indigeneship to Muslims no matter how long they’d lived in Yelwa. Without the certificates, the Muslims were second-class citizens.
As the two groups waited in the heat to be counted, the meeting’s tone soured. “You could feel the tension in the air,” Abdullahi Abdullahi, a 55-year-old Muslim lawyer and community leader, said later. A tall, thin man with a space between his two front teeth and shoulders hunched around his ears in perpetual apology, he was helping to direct the crowd that day. No one knows what happened first. Someone shouted arna — “infidel” — at the Christians. Someone spat the word jihadi at the Muslims. Someone picked up a stone. “That was the day ethnicity disappeared entirely, and the conflict became just about religion,” Abdullahi said. Chaos broke out, as young people on each side began to throw rocks. The candidates ran for their lives, and mobs set fire to the surrounding houses.
After that episode, the Christians issued an edict that no Christian girl could be seen with a Muslim boy. “We had a problem of intermarriage,” Pastor Sunday Wuyep, a church leader in Yelwa, told me on the first of two visits I made in 2006 and 2007. “Just because our ladies are stupid and attracted to money,” he sighed.
Economics lay at the heart of the enmity between the two groups: as merchants and herders, the Muslim Jarawa were much wealthier than the Christian Tarok and Goemai. But Pastor Sunday, like many others of his faith, felt that Muslims were trying to wipe out Christians by converting them through marriage.
{{A book Now They Call Me Infidel talks about this}}
“It’s scriptural, this fight,” he said. So he and the other elders decided to punish the women. “If a woman gets caught with a Muslim man,” Sunday said, “she must be forcibly brought back.” The decree turned out to be a call to vigilante violence as patrols of young men, both Christian and Muslim, took to the streets. What eventually transpired, in the name of religion, was a kind of Clockwork Orange.
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country, with 140 million people (one-seventh of all Africans), and it’s one of the few nations divided almost evenly between Christians and Muslims. Blessed with the world’s 10th-largest oil reserves, it is also one of the continent’s richest and most influential powers — as well as one of its most corrupt democracies. Last year’s presidential election in particular — in which President Olusegun Obasanjo, an evangelical Christian, handed power to a northern Muslim, President Umaru Yar’Adua — was a farce. Ballot boxes were stuffed by thugs or carted off empty by armed heavies in the pay of political candidates. Across the country, political power is a passport to wealth: according to Human Rights Watch, anywhere from $4 billion to $8 billion in government money has been embezzled annually for the last eight years. The state has all but abdicated its responsibility for the welfare of its people, roughly half of whom live on less than $1 a day.
In this vacuum, religion has become a powerful source of identity. Northern Nigeria has one of Africa’s oldest and most devout Islamic communities, which was galvanized, like many others, in the 1980s by the global Islamic reawakening that followed the Iranian revolution. For Christians, too, in Nigeria, there’s been a revolution: high birthrates and aggressive evangelization over the past century have increased the number of believers from 176,000, or 1.1 percent of the early-20th-century population, to more than 51 million, or more than a third now. Thanks to this explosive growth, the demographic and geographic center of global Christianity will have moved, by 2050, to northern Nigeria, within the Muslim world.
No one knows what this shift will yield, in part because neither faith is a monolith. Indeed, the most overlooked aspect of this global religious encounter may be that the competition within the faiths — between Pentecostals and orthodox Christians, or between Islamic groups that want to engage with or reject the modern world** — is just as important as the competition between the faiths. But it’s also true that the fastest-growing forms of faith on both sides tend to be the most effervescent and absolute. They promote a system of living in this world that promises heaven in the next, they see salvation in stark binary terms, and they believe they have a global mandate to spread their exclusive brand of faith.
{{** In my last post about “christian domestic discipline” — a euphemism — is an example of the latter, who want to reject the modern world, and go back to wife-beating. }}
While religion became a source of friction in Nigeria during the Biafran civil war in the late 1960s, the trouble between Christians and Muslims intensified in the 1980s, when the first oil boom fizzled and the ensuing economic downturn led to violence. Since then, thousands have been killed in riots between the two groups sparked by various events: aggressive campaigns by foreign evangelists; the implementation in 1999 and 2000 of sharia, or Islamic law, in 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states; the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan in 2001; and the 2002 Miss World pageant, when a local Christian reporter, Isioma Daniel, outraged Muslims by writing in one of Nigeria’s national papers, This Day, that the Prophet Muhammad would have chosen a wife from among the contestants. Most recently, in 2006, riots triggered by Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad left more people dead in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world.
“These conflicts are a result of secular processes,” said Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, one of Nigeria’s leading intellectuals and a top executive of one of the country’s oldest banks, FirstBank. “It’s about bad government, economic inequality, and poverty — a struggle for resources.” When a government fails its people, they turn elsewhere to safeguard themselves and their futures, and in Nigeria at the beginning of the 21st century, they have turned first to religion. Here, then, is the truth behind what Samuel Huntington famously calls religion’s “bloody” geographic borders: outbreaks of violence result not simply from a clash between two powerful religious monoliths, but from tensions at the most vulnerable edges where they meet — zones of desperation and official neglect where faith becomes a rallying cry in the struggle for land, water, and work.
****
In Nigeria, the two faiths meet along a band of terrain roughly 200 miles wide called the Middle Belt. This swath of land, for the most part (an exception being Nigeria’s southwest), marks the fault line between Christianity and Islam not only in Nigeria, but across the entire continent. A satellite image from Google Earth shows the Middle Belt as a gray-green strip between the equator and the 10th parallel, dividing the fawn-colored dry land from the vibrant sub-Saharan jungle canopy. It also separates most of the continent’s 367 million Muslims to the north from 417 million Christians to the south. Plagued by bad government, a shortage of water and arable land, and rising birthrates, the Middle Belt is also the victim of environmental change: growing aridity in the north (the desert creeps forward at slightly less than half a mile a year) and flooding in the south. Shifting weather patterns have made planting and grazing seasons unpredictable and allowed insect-borne diseases, such as malaria, to run rampant.
Islam all but stopped its southward spread here in the late 1800s, because the traders, missionaries, and Sufi jihadists who had carried Islam south couldn’t handle the jungle terrain or the tsetse flies that plagued their horses and camels with sleeping sickness. Abdullahi’s people, the Jarawa, claim that their rights to the land go back to the days of Usman Dan Fodio, a Sufi teacher and ethnic Fulani herder who launched a 19th-century jihad to purify the faith, promote the education of women, and outlaw the enslavement of his fellow Muslims. Some of his jihadists, called his flag bearers, rode south over vast reaches of dry land until they reached the southern edge of the Sahel, roughly where the town of Yelwa is today.
The high, dry ridges and rocky escarpments of the Middle Belt also provided an ideal defense against Muslim slave raiders for non-Muslim hill people like the Goemai. When Christian missionaries arrived 100 years ago, many targeted these “pagan” hill people. For some, the mission was to create a buffer against the southern “spread of Mohammedanism,” as Karl Kumm, one of the more uncompromising missionaries, put it. But many of his coreligionists had little interest in combating Islam. Instead, armed with the two B’s of Bible and bicycle, as well as with the imperative of self-reliance, they dispensed practical advice on health, agriculture, and eventually education, providing a form of “emancipation” for the historically disenfranchised hill people, who also gained a powerful collective identity in Christianity.
The British colonial administration was ambivalent about missionaries, fearing that their efforts to convert Muslims would destabilize Britain’s plans for empire-building — as they had elsewhere in Africa. When the British overthrew the caliphate, then unified North and South Nigeria in 1914, the new colonial administration forbade missionaries to enter Muslim lands. Under the British policy of Indirect Rule, which was modeled on the Raj in India, Dan Fodio’s emirs were largely left in place. Many came to be seen as colonial agents, losing their religious legitimacy even as they amassed power and wealth. This colonial policy of favoring Muslims over minority Christians left a legacy of mistrust between the two groups.
{{Doesn’t this sound like some of the forerunners of the Rwandan genocide, with Belgian basis? In the bottom line, it’s about empire-building. Americans, beware…}}
“Every crisis is automatically interpreted as a religious crisis,” said Archbishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon, the Anglican bishop of Kaduna. “But we all know that, scratch the surface and it’s got nothing to do with religion. It’s power.”
****
One Tuesday at 7 a.m. in Yelwa, about 70 people were praying their morning devotions at the Church of Christ in Nigeria (founded by none other than the fiery Kumm himself). It was in February 2004, about a year after the elders had issued their edict that no Christian woman was to be seen with a Muslim man. As the worshippers finished their prayers, they heard gunshots and a call from the loudspeakers of the mosque next door: “Allahu Akhbar, let us go for jihad.” “We were terrified,” recalled Pastor Sunday, who had been standing outside the gate as the churchyard swarmed with strangers. He stayed near the church gate, but many other people fled toward the road behind the church. There, men dressed in military fatigues reassured them that they were safe and herded them back to the church. Then the men opened fire.
Pastor Sunday fled; that’s why he survived. The attackers — who were not, in fact, Nigerian soldiers — set the church on fire and killed everyone who tried to escape. They chased the head of the church, Pastor Sampson Bukar, to his house next door and ran him through with cutlasses. They set fire to the nursery school and the pastor’s house. During my first visit to Yelwa in the summer of 2006, his burned Peugeot was still outside. The church had been rebuilt and painted salmon pink. Boys were playing soccer, each wearing only one shoe so that everyone could kick the ball. “Seven in my family were killed,” said Sunday as we sat in the churchyard. “We call them martyrs.” He pointed to a mound of earth not far from where we were sitting. On top was a small wooden cross: it marked the mass grave for the 78 people killed that day.
“This is about religious intolerance,” he went on. “Our God is different than the Muslim God… If he were the same God, we wouldn’t fight.” For Pastor Sunday, the clash was millenarian and grounded in the literal words of Christian scripture. “The Bible says in Matthew 24, the time will come when they will pursue us in our churches,” he said. Matthew 24 foretells the Tribulation: the war that will precede Armageddon and the final coming of Jesus.
****
A few hundred yards down the road from the church, there’s a cornfield. In it, a row of mounds: more mass graves. White signs tally the dead below in green paint: 110, 50, 65, 100, 55, 25, 60, 20, 40, 105. Two months after the church was razed, Christian men and boys surrounded Yelwa. Many were bare-chested; others wore shirts on which they’d reportedly pinned white name tags identifying them as members of the Christian Association of Nigeria, an umbrella organization founded in the 1970s to give Christians a collective and unified voice as strong as that of Muslims. Each tag had a number instead of a name: a code, it seemed, for identification. They attacked the town. According to Human Rights Watch, 660 Muslims were massacred over the course of the next two days, including the patients in the Al-Amin clinic. Twelve mosques and 300 houses went up in flames. Young girls were marched to a nearby Christian town and forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. Many were raped, and 50 were killed.
Yelwa was still a ghost town of sorts in August 2006. In block after burned-out block, people camped in what used to be their homes. The road was lined with more than a dozen ruined mosques and churches, but the rubble was hidden in hip-high elephant grass; canary-yellow morning glories climbed the old foundations. When I arrived at the home of Abdullahi, the Muslim human-rights lawyer, his street was mostly deserted. He stooped on his way out of a low-ceilinged hut. Behind him, I could see the sour faces of a man and woman sitting on the floor by his desk. “Marital dispute,” he explained.
It was the rainy season, so I waited out the noon deluge in another small hut on his compound. Finally, Abdullahi ducked inside, a worn accordion file under his arm. His wife followed, carrying a pot of hot spaghetti. In the beginning, he explained, the conflict in Nigeria had nothing whatsoever to do with religion. “Let me give myself as a case study,” Abdullahi said. He went to Christian mission schools and federal college, and never, as a Muslim, had any problem. “Throughout this period, I’d never seen religious segregation, because at that time the societal value system was intact. We were taught to respect each other’s beliefs and customs.” But as the population grew and resources shrank, people began to fight over who had the right to the land and its resources — who belonged as an indigene, and who didn’t.
{{THINK ABOUT< NOW< THE TAX BURDEN IN USA, AND HOW THE FACTIONALISM BEGINS TO TAKE ON RELIGIOUS TONES, THROUGH THE GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS (FATHERHOOD, HEALTHY MARRIAGE, VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN, EDUCATION, HEALTHCARE, YOU NAME IT…) IN THE BOTTOM LINE, DOES MONEY HAVE COLOR? OR RELIGION? OR NATIONALITY? WHO IS FUNDING THE POLICIES, AND THE POLICY STUDIES? }}
Abdullahi has attempted to bring several cases of ethnic abuse to the government’s attention, but as with the church massacre, the government has done little to investigate or to try those involved. He handed me a folder with depositions from one such case. As I read them, Abdullahi returned with two young women, Hamamatu Danladi and Yasira Ibrahim, who had survived the incident detailed in the files. Danladi met my eye as she stood in the doorway; Ibrahim, with long upturned lashes and a moon face, didn’t. Abdullahi invited the women in, lowered his head, and left.
During the Christian attack, the two young women took shelter in an elder’s guarded home. On the second day, the Christian militia arrived at the house. They were covered in red and blue paint and were wearing those numbered white name tags. The Christians first killed the guards, then chose among the women. With others, the two young women were marched toward the Christian village. “They were killing children on the road,” Danladi said. Outside the elementary school, her abductor grabbed hold of two Muslim boys she knew, 9 and 10 years old. Along with other men, he took a machete to them until they were in pieces, then wrapped the pieces in a rubber tire and set it on fire.
When Danladi and Ibrahim reached their captors’ village, they were forced to drink alcohol and to eat pork and dog meat. Although she was obviously pregnant, Danladi’s abductor repeatedly raped her during the next four days. After a month, the police fetched Danladi and Ibrahim from the Christian village and took them to the camp where most of the town’s Muslim residents had fled. There, the two young women were reunited with their husbands. They never discussed what happened in the bush.
“The Christians don’t want us here because they don’t like our religion,” Danladi said. “Do you really think they took you because of your religion?” I asked. The women looked at each other. “In Islamic history, there are times when believers and nonbelievers have fought,” Danladi said. “We think what happened here is part of the clash that will come. After the clash, people will see poverty and suffering and that’s what’s happening now. According to our ulamas [teachers], there is no way that the whole world will not be Muslim.”
Later, I looked up Matthew 24, the verses that Pastor Sunday had cited. In many versions of the Bible, Jesus’ words are inked in red to show that these are the exact and inerrant words of the Lord. Down the rice-paper page, one red verse (Matthew 24:19) caught my eye: “But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days!” I thought of Hamamatu Danladi. After her rape, she told me, she didn’t give birth for four more months, which meant she carried that child for more than a year. Maybe I didn’t understand her. When I returned to visit her a year later, I asked again if I’d misunderstood. No, she said, she’d carried the baby for more than a year. Maybe, she thought, he simply refused to come into this world during the conflagration.
****
At the time of the massacre, Archbishop Peter Akinola was the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, whose membership was implicated in the killings. He has since lost his bid for another term but, as primate of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, he is still the leader of 18 million Anglicans. He is a colleague of my father, who was the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in America from 1997 to 2006. But the American Episcopals’ election of an openly homosexual bishop in 2003, which Archbishop Akinola denounced as “satanic,” created distance between them. When I arrived in 2006 in the capital of Abuja to see the archbishop, his office door was locked. Its complicated buzzing-in system was malfunctioning, and he was trapped inside. Finally, after several minutes, the angry buzzes stopped and I could hear a man behind the door rise and come across the floor. The archbishop, in a pale-blue pantsuit and a darker-blue crushed-velvet hat, opened the door.
“My views on Islam are well known: I have nothing more to say,” he said, as we sat down. Archbishop Akinola has repeatedly spoken critically about Islam and liberal Western Protestants, and he was understandably wary of my motives for asking his thoughts. For Akinola, the relationship between liberal Protestants and Islam is straightforward: if Western Christians abandon conservative morals, then the global Church will be weakened in its struggle against Islam. “When you have this attack on Christians in Yelwa, and there are no arrests, Christians become dhimmi, the vocabulary within Islam that allows Christians and Jews to be seen as second-class citizens. You are subject to the Muslims. You have no rights.”
When asked if those wearing name tags that read “Christian Association of Nigeria” had been sent to the Muslim part of Yelwa, the archbishop grinned. “No comment,” he said. “No Christian would pray for violence, but it would be utterly naive to sweep this issue of Islam under the carpet.” He went on, “I’m not out to combat anybody. I’m only doing what the Holy Spirit tells me to do. I’m living my faith, practicing and preaching that Jesus Christ is the one and only way to God, and they respect me for it. They know where we stand. I’ve said before: let no Muslim think they have the monopoly on violence.”
Archbishop Akinola, 63, is a Yoruba, a member of an ethnic group from southwestern Nigeria, where Christians and Muslims coexist peacefully. But the archbishop’s understanding of Islam was forged by his experience in the north, where he watched the persecution of a Christian minority. He was more interested during our interview, though, in talking about the West than about Nigeria.
“People are thinking that Islam is an issue in Africa and Asia, but you in the West are sitting on explosives.” What people in the West don’t understand, he said, “is that what Islam failed to accomplish by the sword in the eighth century, it’s trying to do by immigration so that Muslims become citizens and demand their rights. A Muslim man has four wives; the wives have four or five children each. This is how they turned Christians into a minority in North Africa.”
He went on, “The West has thrown God out, and Islam is filling that vacuum for you, and now your Christian heritage is being destroyed… You people are so afraid of being accused of being Islam-phobic. Consequently everyone recedes and says nothing… Over the years, Christians have been so naive — avoiding politics, economics, and the military because they’re dirty business. The missionaries taught that. Dress in tatters. Wear your bedroom slippers. Be poor. But Christians are beginning to wake up to the fact that money isn’t evil, the love of money is, and it isn’t wrong to have some of it. Neither is politics.”
****
Democracy, Nigerians told me repeatedly, is a numbers game. That’s why whoever has more believers is on top. In that competition, Christianity has a recruiting tool beyond the frontline gospel preached by those such as Archbishop Akinola: Pentecostalism, one of the world’s most diverse and fastest-growing religious movements. In Nigeria, the oil boom of the 1970s brought a massive movement of people into cities looking for work. That boom’s collapse spurred the growth of the Pentecostal Gospel of Prosperity, with its emphasis on good health and getting rich; and of the African Initiated Churches, or AICs, which began about 100 years ago, when several charismatic African prophets successfully converted millions to Christianity. Today, AIC members account for one-quarter of Africa’s 417 million Christians.
One bustling Pentecostal hub, Canaanland, the 565-acre headquarters of the Living Faith Church, has three banks, a bakery, and its own university, Covenant, which is the sister school of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Canaanland is about an hour and a half north of Lagos, which has an estimated population of 12 million and is projected to become the world’s 12th-largest city by 2020. With 300,000 people worshipping at a single service at the Canaanland headquarters alone and 300 branches across the country, Living Faith is one of Nigeria’s megachurches, and the dapper Bishop David Oyedepo is its prophet. The bishop, whose bald pate glistens above deep-set eyes and dazzling teeth, never wanted to be pastor: he had no interest in being poor, he told me. “When God made me a pastor, I wept. I hated poverty in the Church — how can the children of God live as rats?”
Bishop Oyedepo built Canaanland to preach the Gospel of Prosperity. As he said, “If God is truly a father, there is no father that wants his children to be beggars. He wants them to prosper.” In the parking lot at Canaanland, beyond the massive complex of unusually clean toilets, flapping banners promise: WHATSOEVER YOU ASK IN MY NAME, HE SHALL GIVE YOU, and BY HIS STRIPES HE GIVES US BLESSINGS.
The Pentecostal movement is so vast and varied, it’s a mistake to generalize about its unifying principles. But Pentecostals do tend to share an experience of the Holy Spirit, or the numinous, that offers the gift of salvation and success in everyday life — particularly in the realms of personal health and finance. Archbishop Akinola, whose own Anglican Church is more threatened in some ways by the rise of Pentecostalism than by the rise of Islam, finds these teachings suspect: “When you preach prosperity and not suffering, any Christianity devoid of the cross is a pseudo-religion.”
But Bishop Oyedepo’s followers say that those who criticize don’t understand what’s happening in Africa. “There’s a kind of revolution going on in Africa,” one of the bishop’s employees, Professor Prince Famous Izedonmi, said. “America tolerates God. Africa celebrates God. We’re called ‘the continent of darkness,’ but that’s when you appreciate the light. Jesus is the light.” The professor, a Muslim prince who converted to Christianity as a child to cure himself of migraine headaches, was the head of Covenant University’s accounting department and director of its Centre for Entrepreneurial Development Studies.
++++++++++++++
COMMENT: I am beginning to think it is not possible to separate religion from government, because my understanding of “religion” is a vocabulary, an assignment of meaning to life (and who wants a government to do that?) and a set of priests, prophets, sacred tabus (thinks we can’t talk about) and of course the caste system. The history of humanity is basically a history of human sacrifice, that is hard put to treat women & children kindly across the board, and is offended when some intend to do so. The history of humanity IS a power struggle…
So I think the thing is, to limit it.
An article today in the newspaper tells how an ex-homeless man is being kept in debt and penalized for his industry (I’ll try to put it up next). But if you want to become an early child-care researcher, the heavens (grants) will open up for sure.. See next post.
HAPPY APRIL 15th….. And many more.
WIKIPEDIA:
United States House Select Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations and Comparable Organizations
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Select Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations and Comparable Organizations was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives between 1952 and 1954.[1] The committee was originally created by House Resolution 561 during the 82nd Congress. The committee investigated the use of funds by tax-exempt organizations (non-profit organizations) to see if they were being used to support communism.[2][3] The committee was alternatively known as the Cox Committee and the Reece Committee after its two chairmen, Edward E. Cox and B. Carroll Reece.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3768227/Dodd-Report-to-the-Reece-Committee-on-Foundations-1954
All I know, is I wanted ANSWERS why the courts have become a farce. I have a logical mind, in my own way, and like to look things up. The more I looked the more foundations I saw behind policies that hurt my family. These are identifiable traces, and I know the average person doesn’t have time (or sometimes the will) to find this out. The average person, in short, is being lied to in regards MANY of the institutions that affect his or her daily lives.
I couldn’t have been battered at home for so many years without scores of “enablers” who just didn’t have the vocabulary to address this, or the commitment, risking THEIR times, livelihood (and at some level, when it escalates) possibly lives — and certainly, money — which seems to have been key — in failing to speak about it.
Speaking out can mean “ex-communication” from one’s supportive spheres, but shutting up does violence to the spirit of a person. And if there’s one thing we need to sustain us in troubles, it’s that spirit.
I believe that the “thing” is to understand what’s going on in the very TOP (behind the media curtain and even behind the government curtains) and the very BOTTOM of society. This will better explain the middle.
Currently, the very TOP does not really want to hear from the very BOTTOM.
This is going to fall harder and harder on those in the middle who just don’t want to talk about it. Particularly REALLY hard topics like, murder, and child molestation, government-sanctioned and promoted. In the U.S.A.
Sooner or later there may be no “middle,” so I suggest more of the “middle” folk start listening to the Bottom folk with their HEARTS, and EYES open, and without that patronizing, us/them, condescension, let us fix you mentality. Get over yourself! Get quiet, and start observing.
(if that shoe fits, please wear it. If not, ignore it). Some burdens we have to bear alone, others we cannot. Stop being a spectator and start thinking — for real!
Warning: ALL of you just got Outsourced!
Apologies in advance if this post is a little ill-tempered. So was I, at the time.
The need for the most human of functions in life is rapidly becoming obsolescent. We are becoming, I fear, a patriarchal society modeled on the Queen Bee and hive mentality. Assets are collected centrally, larvae (adjust term for biological precision) nursed, and workers sent out to collect more, for more of the same.
Those with too much drive, individuality, and just dang eccentricity will be dumped, and not allowed to breed. Or if they do, not keep their own. Or, if they do manage to keep their own for a few years, they will be forced to break that “unnatural” parental bond and be coached on REAL parenting from, I suspect, people who haven’t gone through the most challenging aspects of it — like: poverty, exposure to racism, sexism, and the familycourtism(s).
This is only half in jest. And in order to express this, I may have to incorporate some scatalogical terminology. Otherwise, it just doesn’t make sense…
I am trying to think of some sphere of human activity — character-formation that has NOT become a market niche. That I could engage in, PRIVATELY, without being told by some expert how to do it better.
Certainly no one could state that the basic human functions of eating, copulating, and (sometimes, sometimes not) a product of the second, parenting are not now major market niches. Similarly, communicating, and making basic decisions relating to, say, their own lives….
Decisionmaking has been outsourced in the courts, obviously, to those more expert in (well, the facts and the law) than the general peasantry.
Face it, you’re either expert, or you’re not. The key to determining whether a person is a true expert, or not, is language.
If they use simple, declarative prose with concrete active verbs and nouns, they don’t know what they are talking about, obviously.
If they use passive tense, and speak in terms so ridiculously vague no one could prove or disprove a single fact regarding (whatever the subject matter is), t hey are “one of us” and should be given more power over more people (and said people’s money, children, and futures).
If they behave in a generally moral fashion without being educated, forced, bribed or threatened in order to do so, they are living in an alternate economic system, and should be quarantined, or otherwise silenced, and prevented from propagating more of their kind.
If they show signs of independent THINKING, ditto.
============
How did I come to this jaundiced opinion? Well, on my way to this particular internet access, I am confronted coming and going with signs encouraging the (unwary) to open a child support case. A beautiful photo of a young, light-skinned black girl tenderly holding a growing plant claims that it’s quick, easy, and free to open a child support case. Please do so.
NOTHING, friends, in life is truly free except life itself from (so far) sperm & egg when it comes to humans. You may squeak out a little privacy between him and her (initially), but institutionally, there are sperm banks and egg donors, too. THOSE are not free.
TurboCourt has fostered a collaboration between the California courts and the Department of Child Support Services
07/01/2008TurboCourt has also fostered a collaboration between the California courts and the Department of Child Support Services where Domestic Relations court filers are directly linked to the Child Support application allowing them to immediately request IV-D services. And the data from TurboCourt’s Family Law application is transferred to the Child Support application, speeding up the process.
Not in the fine print: http://fatherhood.gov/
Now, the logo changes to a profile of one adult male holding a child (boy’s?) hand, and the motto to “Take Time to Be A Dad today!” (I couldn’t copy it, but you can go look….).
The National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC) is funded by the Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Family Assistance’s (OFA) and supports efforts to assist States and communities to promote and support Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Marriage.
Primarily a tool for professionals operating Responsible Fatherhood programs, the NRFC provides access to print and electronic publications, timely information on fatherhood issues, and targeted resources that support OFA-funded Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Marriage grantees. The NRFC Web site also provides essential information for other audiences interested in fatherhood issues.
http://fatherhood.gov/documents/promisingpracticesreport.pdf
If you THINK you understand government, read this and think again. . . . . There is NOTHING that can’t be sold, taught, marketed, and summarized in a slick brochure paid for by (your donations and/or taxes).
Target population? Anyone that has a problem with practically anything relating to human life (raising children, personal relations) or supporting it (low-income families especially welcome for subject matter, or those in prison, or under other distresses — possibly from the same institutional sources that are now going to illuminate and fix the problems that “emerged” during the passage through some other institution(s).
Seriously now, I printed this one out and read it….
INITIAL SALES PITCH: We love your CHILDREN and we want to make sure they are SUPPORTED. (aren’t we nice?).
ACTUAL INTENT: We need CHILDREN to participate in RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD PROGRAMS as run (substantially) through the OCSE (Office of Child Support Enforcement):
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/
On the bar to left of this page is one called “Access Visitation.” Click on it:
The motto on THIS page is “Giving Hope and Support to America’s Children.”
[[Doesn’t that sound noble enough? It had BETTER, when it involves wage garnishment, possible incarceration for contempt of orders (but never mind, Big Brother will contact you in prison to teach you how to be a better man, or woman, and give you FREE legal help to get back with your children, possibly even job training… and that child support payment which –in typical ‘rational’ system manner, continues to accumulate while you’re IN prison — reduced, therefore helping you, if not the kids, experience “success” and “support.”]]
Whoever wrote this cannot have been on the requesting help in the form of CHILD SUPPORT end of a custody battle, and attempting to get a consistently straight, honest response out of this agency.
If I had ONE piece of valuable advice for women leaving a battering relationship, which I well know usually includes economic abuse as well (else we’d LEAVE, right?) it is — Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT entangle yourself in this system. Figure out SOME other way.
Here’s from that Access/Visitation page:
Overview
With an annual appropriation of $10 million, 54 States (*including the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Virgin Islands) have been able to provide access and visitation services to over a half million non-custodial parents (NCPs) and their families since the program became operational in 1997! In FY 2006, States contracted with over 300 court and/or community- and faith-based, non-profit service providers for the delivery of access and visitation services to NCPs and their families.
I. Enabling Legislation
The “Grants to States for Access and Visitation” Program (42 U.S.C. 669b) was authorized by Congress through passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.
Goal: “..to enable States to establish and administer programs to support and facilitate non-custodial parents’ access to and visitation of their children…”
II. Allowable Services
According to the statute, States are permitted to use grant funds to develop programs and provide services such as:
- Mediation
- Development of parenting plans
- Education
- Counseling
- Visitation enforcement (including monitored and supervised visitation, and neutral drop-off and pick-up)
Development of guidelines for visitation and alternative custody arrangements.
Mothers attempting to leave abusive relationships with kids intact, FORGET THIS ROUTE! Do anything (legal) to avoid the emotional and fiscal prostitution of Y OUR soul, time, and potential loss of your children (and money) in the long run anyway. Put extraordinary and superhuman effort in UP Front.
Think about it: If he was going to pay willingly because of the goodness in his heart and concern for the kids, he would, without being forced, or bribed to with more time with the kids.
How hypocritcal — the same theory that is to teach “morality” (relationship counseling) and so forth, is doing it in the form of a bribe, and not because it’s just the right thing to do. Go figure.
MEANWHILE, on the outside (for the custodial parent, often a MOM), SHE is repeatedly told, there is NO connection between payments and visitation, and if she withholds visitation on teh basis of the person simply won’t pay support (No, I do NOT recommend this either), SHE could be jailed for custodial interference. But on the INSIDE (and out of her hearing) he gets free legal help and reduced support assignments for moving a few steps in the direction of payment, i.e., we got here a serious double standard, and dishonesty.
And this is who is telling us how to raise kids and be better parents?
Caveat Emptor and Beware unsolicited helpers bearing ridiculous, vague, and ( unenforceable) promises. Get enough help to get out and then develop good boundaries and if possible a cash flow system.
Keep your self away from that agency. Think about it: Why are they soliciting parents with cute fuzzy pictures in high commute areas?
Why don’t they instead go to the soup lines and ask the mamas and papas what’s up? That’s where to find at least SOME people that truly need some help (if divorced) with child support payments. . . . .
Add this to the Moral Reconation Therapy — which was first tested on female inmates, then males, then I guess trademarked, bundled, and marketed. Beginning with a truly “captive” audience.
To “get” this first read the history of it, and then the variations. A sense of humor will be required.
Stocking Stuffers: 2009-2010 Status of Women, if Jesus had been born in CPS era, and Jurisdictionary plea.
California Commission on the Status of Women 2009
http://women.ca.gov/images/pdf/issues/1073.2009.2010publicpolicyagenda.pdf
HERE is the list Family Law is 9th.
2009-2010 Priorities • 1
Child Care • 2
Civil Rights • 3
Economic Security • 4
CalWORKS • 5
Education • 6
Employment • 8
Family Law • 9
Health • 10
Substance Abuse and Mental Health • 13
Long Term Care & Aging • 14
Reproductive Health • 15
Crisis Pregnancy Centers • 16
Teen Pregnancy and Parenting • 17
Violence • 17
Sexually Exploited Minors • 19
Teen Dating Violence • 20
Women and Girls in the CriminalJustice System • 20
Women and Corrections • 20
Girls in the Juvenile Justice System • 22
Women Veterans • 23
================
This would be good reading, for sure…..
Family Law
California is failing to protect its most
vulnerable children.
[[Not that this is exactly breaking news…]]
Whether it is child support enforcement, the foster care system, or the family courts, the rights and safety of many women and
children are at risk.
[[In a masterful understatement, not mentioned here — many have also died, probably needlessly… Others remain in the custody of their abusers…In truth “at risk” is a diversionary phrase. They have died. What about THOSE? So, as to the living ones, then…]]
Courts are overburdened and
court personnel often lack knowledge and
resources needed to address the complex issues
of domestic violence and child abuse. [*] Women
often suffer financially and emotionally as a result
of unjust rulings. In order to improve outcomes for
children and families, the Commission supports
the following agenda:Legislative Proposals
1. Establish an independent state-level oversight
committee/commission to review child custody
proceedings to better inform public policy, with a
particular focus on cases with allegations of
child abuse or domestic violence (Priority)2. Establish a multidisciplinary team of professionals
with expertise in assessing child abuse
and domestic violence to evaluate cases when
child custody is in dispute and such allegations
are made against one of the parties
3. Strengthen the right of custodial parents to
relocate without the risk of losing custody of
children
4.Support a State General Fund appropriation to
backfill lost federal matching incentive funds for
administrative costs in the child support program**
5. Require judges, mediators, custody evaluators,
law enforcement officers and social workers to
receive education on how to coordinate and
interface with all appropriate agencies in child
custody cases as a means of preventing
systems from failing to meet the needs of
families
If you know my blog, you know I’m not into this solution, because I don’t think that’s the problem. I think that if these personnel receive MOTIVATION (not “education”) to do the right thing, when evidence is on the record, that would be a nice gift for this season….
6. Allow children the opportunity to speak directly to the judge regarding their custody and visitation wishes and needs
And just hope that no undue influence has been applied outside the court…. (??? in a DV case??)
Administrative Proposals
7. Require judicial education regarding
• the dynamic of domestic violence and child
abuse, including the invalidity of the
“Parental Alienation Syndrome” (Priority)
• transgender individuals to prevent
discrimination in child custody matters due
to a parentʼs transgender status
8. Support a request for a Joint Legislative Audit
Committee to audit child custody cases involving
allegations of child abuse or domestic violence
9. Establish a judicial performance evaluation
system for appellate and trial court judges and
commissioners using American Bar Association
guidelines…
Study Proposals
10. An update of the 1987 “Senate Task Force On
Family Equity” report on family law
11. A study of gender fairness in the California
family courts
[added in 2011 commentary:]
[*]Viewing this post, over a year later, again (as then) phrases pop out, that somehow we, the public, are to understand ( believe) that Judges DON’T understand what we do — behaving like an out of control kindergartner in a marriage (or after sex has produced a child, producing whats’ called a mother, and a father, if not a family) and asserting dominance over pregnant, nursing, or mothers of young children — is wrong and dangerous to others than just the pregnant, nursing or mother of young children. Or, to fail to understand that real adult men, really do (and sometimes women, I fear & hear) molest children, and that’s a euphemism. IN such case, to continue this, they have to get rid of any parent who would stop this. The venue where this happens is “family” court.
All these people wanting to reform family court, and keep the professionals, while tossing off lives left and right (and some of the damage hit sthe community) and failing to account for usage of grants to the California Judicial Council/Administrative Office of the Courts / Center for Families & Children in the Courts (CFCC, or whatever the acronym) and from there, at a minimum, the “access/visitation” grants system spinning off of welfare reform, which criticizes women of color (primarily) for being poor, and determines to help men of color that have been made poor by the same type of mentality — and this system to supposedly reform welfare and help poor people, is being exploited by very RICH people, and a lot of powerful, white males, to keep their kids. See Nassau County, (NY). wife jailed for ‘alienating” her children. Nassau County, people….Different coast, same mentality.
Also (I learned in this 2010) the “fatherhood commissions” are legislated into various states. Now it’s time for “You, the people” to figure that out.
Or, keep paying taxes without expecting ANY, and I mean ANY accountability in a timely fashion to what the hell they are being used for. YOU take one day a week out of spa, or whatever (or something — like church, if it applies? — and get on-line and fact-check organizations like “Kids’ Turn” or others that are being marketed worldwide (now, in other countries) and funded by U.S. Federal $$, then having parents ordered into counseling, education, and in essence becoming the permanent “infants” (no matter their ages) to the everpresent BigBrother/”fatherland.”
[end of, added in 2011 commentary]
Ah, well.
No, This is closer to my legislative proposal, taken from an email from the author of “Jurisdictionary [TR]”. He waxes eloquent, but he talks about loving JUSTICE in addition to the natural human love we have for each other. He is talking about getting ourselves educated on how the justice system works. Not paying taxes to hire experts to talk to experts about how it SHOULD work and why it doesn’t (only). There is something individuals can do; teach themselves how it works! (Should be required with the marriage certificate, probably).
Love is manifested in many strange and wonderful forms.
There is the unmistakable, mystical love of a mother for her offspring, incomparable, impossible for us men to ever comprehend.
There is the love of a soldier for his comrades at arms, a power deep within the heart that motivates the impossible and sometimes galantly gives the soldier’s final gift.
And, there are other forms of love too many to list here.
Yet, in that mix of many forms of love there is an adoration that dwells deep in the breast of every one of us: the love of honor, the love of peace, and the love of justice that has rules by which our peace and shared prosperity can be fashioned and preserved both for ourselves and those who follow after, justice that is not perverted by the persuasion of power nor undermined by the influence of base motives.
Justice is, perhaps, the greatest of our American ideals.
We must immediately decide for justice that has rules.
We must unquestioningly decide and seek every practical mechanism we can find to promote the ideal of justice that has rules … not for one or a few but for everyone.
. . .
The American Dream is an Holy Experiment, a Republic under law and not an oligarchy of powerful men free to do as they choose and justice be damned.
The American Dream is a Wise People.
- A People who care for those who are unjustly treated.
- A People United.
- A People united by a vision that puts honor first, with love, mercy, kindness, courage, and justice constrained by rules.
- Whatever your faith this Season, whatever your political persuasion, whatever notions you’ve picked up from others about the horrors we are threatened with at the hands of those who hold ideas contrary to our own, remember this:
We are One People United by Our Ideals!
We are one precisely because we share ideals, of which the chiefest is that justice must have rules, and those who judge must obey those rules to-the-letter!
Cling to those ideals as dearly as you embrace your own children, for they preserve your children more than anything that you alone can do, more than any army, more than any doctor, more than anything you can imagine … for those ideals we share as Americans are the very hope of the world!
…
Tell everyone about us, please, and do what you can to help us promote your ideals!
… Dr. Frederick D. Graves, JD
Yeah, it’s an item for sale. But it’s designed for the general public, not the experts, and it teaches principles. I don’t have to share his faith to share the concept that there are rules we ALL should know and hold our appointed officials to by any means possible, and send a strong message that we are NOT their property, they are our paid servants, by law.
to do this, more people need to actually understand the financial systems also..
And a final thought for the evening — suppose Jesus had been born in a manger, and CPS had caught wind of it? Oh my God, Mary would never see him again.
Plus, part of his childhood, it appears he went to sleep in a fatherless home. Well, at least somewhere in there Joseph disappeared.
I think Jesus did all right, don’t you? He had a Father figure, at least….
More irreverence later….
THESE are a START in understanding WHASSUP with “women and Children” — learn the origins of this CFDA, the promoters, what else they promoted, and how they have changed the face of litigation throughout this country. Here’s TAGGS.hhs.gov, ALL I did was sort on “CFDA 93.597.” I learned this at NAFCJ.net, talked to the site author, and fact-checked Wake up!
S
tate = CALIFORNIA
CFDA Number = 93597Recipient: CA ST DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SERVICES
Recipient ZIP Code: 95814
FY Award Number Budget Year
of SupportAgency Award Code Action
Issue DateAmount
This Action1998 9701CASAVP 1 ACF 2 05-31-1998 $1,113,750.00 1998 9801CASAVP 1 ACF 1 09-01-1998 $1,113,750.00 1999 9901CASAVP 1 ACF 2 08-16-1999 $987,501.00 2003 9801CASAVP 1 ACF 7 02-24-2003 ($250,805.00) 2003 9901CASAVP 1 ACF 5 02-25-2003 ($139,812.00) 2009 9901CASAVP 1 ACF 8 09-14-2009 ($38,917.00) Award Subtotal: $2,785,467.00 Recipient: CA ST DEPT OF CHILD SUPPORT SERVICES
Recipient ZIP Code: 95741
FY Award Number Budget Year
of SupportAgency Award Code Action
Issue DateAmount
This Action2000 0001CASAVP 1 ACF 3 08-24-2000 $987,501.00 2001 0001CASAVP 1 ACF 4 10-06-2000 ($987,501.00) Award Subtotal: $0.00 Recipient: CA ST JUDICIAL COUNCIL
Recipient ZIP Code: 94107
FY Award Number Budget Year
of SupportAgency Award Code Action
Issue DateAmount
This Action2001 0010CASAVP 1 ACF 5 10-10-2000 $987,501.00 2001 0110CASAVP 1 ACF 1 08-23-2001 $987,501.00 2002 0210CASAVP 1 ACF 2 08-06-2002 $970,431.00 2003 0310CASAVP 1 ACF 1 09-11-2003 $970,431.00 2004 0410CASAVP 1 ACF 1 09-15-2004 $988,710.00 2005 0510CASAVP 1 ACF 1 09-14-2005 $988,710.00 2006 0610CASAVP 1 ACF 1 09-19-2006 $987,973.00 2007 0710CASAVP 1 ACF 1 07-20-2007 $950,190.00 2008 0810CASAVP 1 ACF 1 01-30-2008 $957,600.00 2009 0010CASAVP 1 ACF 8 09-14-2009 ($48,827.00) 2009 0110CASAVP 1 ACF 4 09-14-2009 ($26,938.00) 2009 0210CASAVP 1 ACF 6 09-14-2009 ($46,392.00) 2009 0310CASAVP 1 ACF 2 09-14-2009 ($15,092.00) 2009 0910CASAVP 1 ACF 1 12-23-2008 $942,497.00 2010 1010CASAVP 1 ACF 1 11-25-2009 $946,820.00 2011 1110CASAVP 1 ACF 1 10-08-2010 $928,087.00 Award Subtotal: $11,469,202.00
Total of all awards: $14,254,669.00
Recipient: CA ST JUDICIAL COUNCIL Address: 303 SECOND STREET, SOUTH TOWER
SAN FRANCISCO, CA 94107Country Name: United States of America County Name: SAN FRANCISCO DHHS Region: 9 Type: Other Social Services Organization Class: State Government Award Actions
FY Award Number Budget Year
of SupportAward Code Agency Action Issue
DateAmount This
Action2011 1101CASCIP 1 1 ACF 12-10-2010 $ 799,429 2011 1110CASAVP 1 1 ACF 10-08-2010 $ 928,087 Fiscal Year 2011 Total: $ 1,727,516 WONDER WHAT 1101CASCIP (court Improvement Program) is? Well, so do I.
THIS SITE CONTINUES TO EXPAND, AND PEDDLE THE “YOU MUST GET ALONG WITH YOUR PERP” MENTALITY; “HE WAS YOUR PURP, NOT YOUR CHILDREN’S, RIGHT?”
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/programs/cfcc/
HOW COME THE STATUS ON WOMEN DOESN’T REPORT ON THIS?
This is the “official” view:
Click to access Snapshot2008SummaryFindings.pdf
Key Findings
The majority of mediation sessions involve clients who are self-represented. The proportion of cases involving at least one self-represented party has increased steadily over time, from 52 percent of cases in 1991 to 75 percent of cases in 2008.
The population of mediation clients is ethnically diverse, the majority being non-White. The proportion of Hispanic/Latino clients has increased since the 1991 survey.
The mediation population includes many non-English speaking clients who may be in need of special language services. Mediators reported that special language services were used in 10 percent of mediation sessions. Approximately one out of ten clients indicated that they would have benefitted from, but did not receive, this sort of language assistance—including more bilingual staff, and bilingual interpreters or mediators.
Many families have been seen multiple times by family court services and are in mediation to try to reach agreement on more than one type of order and to discuss a wide range of concerns. The most frequent issues cited by mediation clients are problems with visitation arrangements not working, the other parent not following the order, and child emotional adjustment and behavioral concerns.
Not cited– threats to kidnap, actual kidnappings, and child abuse, stalking, or death threats from the other parent, which we are told happen, after a case becomes a “statistic.” This report dates to 2008. In 2008, in Contra Costa County, there was a triple-homicide/femicide, DV-& divorce-related. In 2007 in Oakland, there was a church-parking lot gunning down of a woman who was trying to stay alive, on a mid-week morning with lots of witnesses. In 2006, there was a woman who disappeared (mother of two young kids) on a routine exchange, when her ex was thousands behind on child support (Reiser). In 2005, there was (I believe in SF), a man who’d been stalking just a temporary GIRLFRIEND (not even a parental situation) who was ‘diverted into” domestic violence counseling, like many fathers are. Days after he got an A+ from that sesssion, her body shows up in a trunk. (McAlpin). We have had little girls show up in suitcases in ponds (Sandra Cantu), young women kept captive in back yards, giving birth to and raising children by their captor/rapists (Garrido) and all kinds of horrible events happen. The treatment of women throughout this Bay Area has been horrific. Meanwhile, many of the justice NONprofits (vs. “agencies”) are in it for themselves (see my “Dubious Doings by District Attorneys” post. The CEO is a plum position, and the women needing the protection are at the bottom of the barrel.
These reports here are meaningless to many women in my situation. We personally know mediators that regularly lie, fail to do intake forms, and break rules of court designed to protect children, in particular, when writing orders. This creates chaos in their lives, and chaos in the community, and increases poverty — of the affected parites, and those helping them. It creates “business as usual” for the court. Look here — they say it, right up front:
Family violence is a common issue among mediation clients. More than half of the families reported a history of physical violence between the parents.
THE FAMILY COURT paradigm is “Families” and “between the parents.” When one is assaulting another, the only thing “between them” is not enough airspace, and not enough distance. The blows are typically going ONE way, not both ways. The word “family violence” is to replace the term “domestic violence” which is a misdemeanor, or felony, in this state. It is no accident. MORE THAN HALF the FAMILIES reported — means typically ONE parent reported first, and possibly obtained a civil, or criminal, order — at which time the other would be foolish to fail to acknowledge it. That’s how the term “families …. reported… a history of physical violence.” Moreover, if the children were not interviewed by this mediator, then it’s only adults reporting. This phrase is a coverup of an ugly reality.
Approximately 15 percent of both mothers and fathers indicated that there was a current restraining order in place. Concern for future violence with the other parent was common, as was the concern for possible child abuse by the other parent.
Let’s see how oblique and indirect a “report” can get. What does the phrase of both mothers and fathers need to come in here for? The very grants system that ensures lots and lots of mediation happens (see this same site, Access/Visitation programs) does NOT say “mother and fathers” much at all — but “parents” or “Noncustodial” etc. Why stick it in here, haphazardly? To show that Dads get restraining orders too now? Well, they do, but why mention it here, and retain the same consistency of saying the word “mother” throughout, then?
The length of the mediation session and time spent preparing for mediation varied. The median face-to-face service time was 90 minutes and the median preparation time was 15 minutes.
The words “physical violence, history of” equates to “domestic violence.” There are lethality risks involved here, and there typically has been some serious physical injury, though not also. MOreover, physical violence indicates other forms of intimidation and coercion, generally speaking. And to resolve this potentially life-threatening (and childhood stultifying lifestyle of WHICH parent, primarily, against the other — or is fighting back to protect oneself also “mutual violence”? — the litigants get a whopping 90 minutes (we didn’t — the one joint sessions, more like half that, and subsequent separate sessions I swear it was a half hour, at most, and a farce at that). There are two ways to do this: Jointly, in which case a woman sits with her batterer or abuser that she just confronted by filing a DV order, in the same room, and attempts to “negotiate” with the mediator, which I did. Never again! NO way can you keep those thoughts on target that early in the game after separation. the other way — (all subsequent mediations), separate. In which case, there is NO real recourse for a party whose mediation report has factual errors, material ones, or was out of compliance. Why? Because if that family court judge bases an order on that mediator’s report (which they will, typically), then the life goes through another immediate upheaval. She (or he) has to deal with that upheaval FIRST, and appeal, if possible — second.
OK, stop, look, and listen. HALF had domestic violence (excuse me, “a history of physical violence” .. “family violence.”) Don’t think it’s an accident that the word “domestic violence” (which might point one to somewhere in the family, or criminal code, with defining terms…) is NOT used here. But MORE than 50% had a history of physical violence, and of those, only 15% had a CURRENT restraining order. So, who didn’t get restraining orders, or who took them off?
Family court judges, after these cases went through mediation, right? . . . . . Get it??…..
Overall, parents reached agreement in slightly less than half of cases. Agreement rates were higher for parties who were working on initial orders than for those who were working on modified orders.
OK — over 50% had a history of physical violence “between” (i.e., two sets of attacks met mid-air, collided, and none hit another body?? That’s “between” — or, blows were equally exchanged, like in the movie Crouching Tiger, til both lay exhausted?? ??? I don’t think so.) And UNDER 50% (“slighty less than half”) “reached agreement.” In any classroom, this would be a definite fail-rate on the part of the mediator. This means that in less than half the situations, one parent took a stand on some issue.
Reading further on this pdf report, it seems that mediators spent more time on the study than they did per client (15 minutes, average).
Clients rated their experiences in mediation very positively. For example, three-quarters or more of the clients provided favorable ratings on items related to procedural fairness.
What about other items? Which 3/4 or more (which — was it? 75% or more than 75%? Is this summary typical of how accurate a mediation report is?)
“
Parent Survey
This survey was completed by parents prior to their mediation session. The Parent Survey covered topics such as the purpose of the mediation session, issues to be discussed during the session, family violence history, legal representation, and parent demographics. Parent Surveys were completed by 3,176 clients representing 1,741 families. One or both parents completed a parent survey for 95 percent of sessions for which a mediator survey was completed.”
One OR Both parents in a litigation proceeding, lumped together, consisted in 95% of the sessions for which a survey was completed, which resulted in 75% satisfaction.
Well, in my case, the father was satisfied (and subsequently tried to derail my fact-finding in the courtroom to “the mediator’s report,” which recommended an overnight custody switch despite recently felony child-stealing, reported, by me, and obvious from the facts). I was dissatisfied, obviously. This is why I think vendor payments are more relevant than any organization receiving millions of $$ to increase noncustodial parenting time THROUGH mediation, in reporting on the results of Mediation. Of course they are going to give a positive report — if not, they’ll have to go find some other nipple to nurse off, than these access/visitation grants program, administered through the OCSE to the State of California Judicial Council, etc.
From this 2008 pdf, still, look at what they are attempting to discuss in the FAMILY law venue:
Table 2: What Issues Are You Here to Discuss?
Parent Issues N %
Visitation arrangements not working3 717 41%
Other parent not following order 615 35%
Other parent should be supervised during visitation 294 17%
Other parent’s alcohol abuse 282 16%
Other parent’s drug abuse 279 16%
One person is moving 216 12%
Child abduction/taking child without permission 197 11%
THE ABOVE ARE “PARENT ISSUES” AND NOT “CHILD ISSUES” — Except the first “visitation arrangements not working” which is too vague to mean much, and “should be supervised” which indicates (a) report of abuse of child during visitation, or threats to abduct OR (as equally possible) (b) Parental Alienation claims to counter (a)…an underlying criminal issues as to the first, and NOT as sto the second) and “is moving” (move-aways, which also will fall neatly under “parental alienation” claims) — ALL of these issues involved contempt of a court order (“not following is the degradation of the word “contempt of”) substance abuse — which is bad parenting — and the last one is either (a) a crime or (b) what sure looks like one, “taking child without permission.”. These are not “parent issues” as so labeled. They are contempt of court order issues.
ADD TO THIS — the court orders typically, when DV has been outed, or Child Abuse, are StiLL written so vaguely as to ensure constant negotiation needed by (when DV has occurred) a custodial parent with her (yeah, her) former abuser, which was my case. I have never seen a more vaguely written court order, I had to go to court years later to even get a location written in. Holiday exchanges had no location AND no time of exchange. Summer Vacations had no stipulation and resulted in our children not being able to attend summer workshops and events which would’ve helped their college vacations, in areas of already identified interests. I was able to do these while the RO was on, and had to stop once it hit family law, thanks to this mediator’s version of reality. Basically, mediation is going to remove a safety boundary for the custodial parent. Add to this, joint legal with sole physical means, there is no end of argument possible. I cannot imagine any business, sports team, investment, or performance oriented group that would be able to operate under such circumstances, with no enforceable rules when a chaotic individual wants to pre-empt the field. Add to this the impact of the child SUPPORT factor — which mediation refuses to address, although it’s a hot topic — and you have utter, complete, disorder — designed to bring business to the courts after one failed mediation session, to another.
Then, on the basis of “overburdened” and “overcrowded” they can ask for more grants.
Child Issues
Child emotional adjustment 513 29% Child behavior problems 355 20% School problems 331 19% Child refuses to visit 233 13% Child medical needs 213 12% Delay in child growth or development 99 6%
Violence/Abuse Issues
Domestic violence 318 18% Child neglect 306 18% My safety with other parent 304 17%
Child physical abuse Child sexual abuse. 159 9% 40 2%
Note: N = 1,741 families. Percentages sum to more than 100 because respondents were able to check more than one item.
I find that every single one of those items relates to children, and many of them are LEGAL issues and CRIMINAL issues. Mediators should not be handling such matters, but they are. These matters also should not be before family court judges, with their HUGE amount of discretion, but they are.
That said, District Attorneys have the discretion to not prosecute. All in all, it’s a joke, basically.
And a “joint legislative audit” isn’t going to fix that.
This is where to look, for starters:
California’s Access to Visitation Grant Program (Fiscal Year 2009–2010)
REPORT TO THE CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE MARCH 2010
Then do the follow-up, whether in your state, or if you are California, here.
[I am in a real rambling, ranting mode today. So be it! 01/2011]
“Parental Alienation” is Sign Language….Like “Domestic Violence”
leave a comment »
Don’t ask me why I decided to post this draft, revealing my thoughts the other day. I don’t feel like telling. Hope never dies that exposing verbal idiocy might result in a net reduction of it.
At least on the part of the consumers — the marketers, well, this language use is wise.
PART 1:
PARENTAL ALIENATION
The words “Parental Alienation” signify that somewhere on this earth, a certain business sector, playing on human emotions, is prospering. As does “domestic violence” “child abuse” “Children and Families” and “Fatherhood” (enough syllables, seems to roll well off the tongue), and “false allegations,” “resource center” and “batterers’ intervention,” “supervised visitation,” and the like. These noun phrases are now just part of the landscape, and have developed their own specialized biosphere, with flora and fauna.
If you were a fine-feathered, raptor, and could soar with piercing vision, specialized hearing (and feathers) and incredible adaptations for dive-bombing your prey from on high in spirals, like the peregrin falcon, or hearing it underneath the snow, like certain owls (obviously I’ve been watching PBS here), and your prey were compromised populations, you JUST might be an initiative, a conference, a collaboration, a task force, a commission, or a nonprofit organization part of one of the above.
RAPTOR FORCE: Eagles, Falcons, Hawks, and Owls
I already brought up the concept of the Family Law System as a Giant Squid, fearsome tentacles lurking in the dar, able to tear apart ships, the stuff of mythology. Now it’s time to get the view from on high, the “Task Force” viewpoint, the elite, all-seeing, dive-bombing, never-see-it-coming social policy collaboratives (etc.).
Well, like raptors, they come in different flavors, and target different prey. But they’re all aerial artists. Some are solo, some fly in woods, some even work in teams, I learned through this show.
The owl uses sound — its ears are uneven. Its specialized facial feathers help with that.
The peregrin falcon is a dive-bomber. Specialized eye covering deflects flying sand particles, which at high speed, could sure hurt.
With birds, you can see this by their shapes, although closer look gets a finer appreciation. With humans, one has to be more sensitive to language and behaviors to figure out whether they are distressed prey, congregants meeting to figure out what to do about distressed prey, or raptors coming in for those lower on the food chain.
Some go for distressed Dads. Some go for distressed Moms. So long as the conciliation code (at least in my state) rules that ANY couple having a squabble about custody, that squabble per se gives jurisdiction of their young to the raptors. Excuse me, Conciliation Courts, a.k.a., later, Family Courts. Now, what typically distresses said Dads, or Moms, is generally the other Parent. Which brings us to “Parental Alienation.”
(1)
“Parental:”
Define “Parental.” Go ahead — I dare you.
For that matter, define “Parent.” Go ahead. I dare you, find an all-purpose word that fits all definitions, starting with the noun, before it became verbified (to parent) and adjectified (“Parental”), specified as to who has the kids (Custodial/noncustodial — a term also associated with prison, i.e., “taken into custody” as well as with winning a court debate, i.e., “custody granted.”), and finally market-niched (“Parenting classes”).
The word is already de-gendered, as if the world were not, or any of its 3 Abrahamic world religions were not.
(meaning includes “obeying.” This can get complicated in practice, as in:
In this case, the parent is childified…. and the prosecutor, in behalf of the education establishment, is parentified. Ironically, the word “educare” has a root meaning of Lead Out, not Box In (or, Stuff in, as in knowledge into people’s heads).
PARENT:
Now, like they say Eskimos have different words for snow, we have diversified words for “parent” — step-, bio-, surrogate- foster- adoptive- in addition to the older “grand-” (indicating biological). Whoever the kids in custody are living with at the time, they had better obey the Residential Parent, or the court may just switch them to the other one, or to another type of breeding ground called Juvenile Hall.
Such a diversity of language indicates a thriving business, and that obviously some parents are absent, or incompetent, or need supervision, etc. Which just goes to show who the “real” parent is as to assigning custody, but the real “parents” are as to assigning responsibility for any screwups.
Occasionally the word “father” or “mother” will show up in a new sarticle, or in a grants application, but generally, to say it’s neutral, it’s about custody rights, which means “PARENTAL.” Glad I established that. This word does NOT stand on its own when challenged — by anyone, almost — but it does mean, someone is open for business.
(2)
Alien-ation
Alien-Nation, etc.
Let’s keep this one short. I keep thinking about Arizona, where “aliens” are bad and you can be arrested for being alien improperly. So, I’d have to say that “alien” is bad in connotation, even though much business is done by resident “illegal aliens,” and in fact, some business would close were it not. Now, apart from UFO space-ship variety (promoting a different set of businesses, much of it digital, but also involving conferences…)
“Parental Alienation” is bad if a parent does it, but good if you’re in the business of protesting it, or running seminars for judges about it. The call “Parental Alienation” indicates a resonance to the AFCCNET.org philosophy that the goal is to reconcile marriages for the good of the nation. So the net value is neutral (one group of parents and affiliated associations use this term, an opposing group opposes the use of this term. This extends up into the stratosphere, where raptors flying around the Federal Aeyrie (?) can snag some grants to handle the problem, and plummet to street level with demonstration projects and initiatives. So, it’s good for them. Bad for taxpayers, I’d have to say.
============
WHO SETS THE DEBATE? The debate is not “PARENTAL ALIENATION” v . “CHILD ABUSE” any more than it is, categorically, Fathers v. Mothers, or Conservatives v. Liberals.
I see it as “teachers” vs. “taught.” My point in that last post is that I am no longer interested in the verbiage (pro/con) surrounding “alienation.” I am more interested in dishonest usage of the word “Parent” to obscure gender bias, but beyond that, I think it’s time to figure out the profit motive, and think seriously about the role of wealth (as opposed to jobs) in the larger picture. Then the networks become a little more plain to understand, beyond the rhetoric. ALthough I may not communicate it too well, an attempt is at the bottom of today’s post.
Meanwhile . . . .
Words are understood in their usage and in context, including who is speaking.
Parental Alienation is essentially a term coined to get certain things done, including therapists into the legal process, and conferences training judges (etc.) about it, into certain people’s resumes. Perfectly reasonable and pre-existing terms to describe the same thing aren’t as good a market niche. For one, “Stockholm Syndrome” or “traumatic bonding” or “custodial interference” in context might do as well. Or “brainwashing” or “child abuse.”
The debate about “Parental Alienation” is at a stalemate, but the field is full-throttle ahead, regardless of what any organization pronounces about it. It’s derailing the more important questions, and the distraction is intentional, I”m sure of it.
PART 2:
“Domestic Violence”
Domestic Violence Industry Awareness Month – My Comments on this site, responding to another Press Article, by DV Nonprofit responding to a family (he killed his kids) fatality surrounding Battered Shelter & “Unsupervised Visitation” and judge “just not understanding.”
After writing that comment (post-length, actually), I went back to TAGGS.hhs.gov and looked at how many (millions$) were going to Family Violence Prevention and Marriage/Fatherhood Promotion — in the same state. What a shocker. The real question is who is tracking BOTH sets of funding, and why not shut BOTH of them off, leaving some more funds at the local level, and perhaps some marriages might be less economically stressed, which might save lives (though poverty is no excuse for murder, nor is family “honor” !)
This blogger “gets” the grants racket. Needless to say, this POV is not circulated prominently by the DV experts.
Suggest just read the page. In case anyone wonders, I have never spoken to that blog author, I just happen to share many of the Points of View she reports (not all — for example, I’m not in favor of GPS ankle bracelets…). I suspect this will make sense to someone who has experienced some of the types of events she reports on.
It’s a long page, worth scrolling all the way through (and reading).
“Www.FamilyLawCourts.com/Domestic.”
or
To Discipline an Unethical Judge, Just Establish a Commission to Consider Whether To..
“Parental Alienation” & “Domestic Violence”
Street Level — this shows which infantry you are in.
Strategic Level – either way, it’s profit, but this is how task forces are delegate to one area or the other.
Another blogger gets this — same as above, on the business of DV — now she weighs in on “Parental Alienation” (although, the Lauren & Ted case, last 2 posts, she took the opposite side I did), it just might be worth a read.
A Nation of Stockholm Children (Aug. 2009, on Open Salon):
. . .(KEEP READING . .. . )
I’m not sure media blackout is the issue, but media spin, and a public so overwhelmed with info, they cannot process it. We do not know how the critical “operating systems” of the country actually work, including courts, law enforcement, government, and the role of religion in all this, child support systems, and the increasingly tightening of networks through the Internet.
Note: I cannot continue “teaching” (publicizing) through posts until my Internet access is up to speed (i.e., MHz very slow!). Just continue to keep in mind: The U.S.A. is the world’s largest per capita jailor, and captive audiences are captive for demonstrations of the latest theories, behavioral management techniques, or justification for (yet more) grants.
I saw a poster on a blog that says what to do, well enough:
It’s time to remember what this man did, and how he did it.
Also, to understand the INNATE characteristics of money — which is to congregate at centers of wealth, and drain from the extremities. That’s the kind of money the U.S. (at least) has, i.e., that which we BUY at interest, which will never be paid off, from the Federal Reserve. There are reasons we “have” to become a nation of consumers, and that failing to consume enough of what we really don’t need (and makes us sick, in some cases) has become an indication of “treason.” In examining the courts from the roots up, it does go to Washington, D.C., and to understand the monetary setting of policy by super-wealthy foundations and families (through government, through universities, etc.), it’s also necessary to grasp, even if dimly, that the North/South (?) division of the globe into countries forced to become export economies, rather than self-sufficient, to pay off THEIR debt — means that those products have to come back to the more industrialized countries. Yeah, I”m an armchair economist, but search “Susan George” on this blog (or just get the book) for a clue.
The Internet flattens, but access (or restricted access) to it also further segments society. The section in Maroon in yesterday’s post bears follow-up (if you can).
Here, is a description of what centrally based (and non-bona fide) money does to communities:
Now let’s think a little bit about TIME. If a person is earning an hourly wage, then TIME in court is wages lost, to say the least. What about their “psychic” emotional and other energy. including creative and thought energies, which would otherwise be put into taking care of their own basic needs, and their family’s (such as it may be, if in a divorce or custody situation). It’s GONE from the mix. In waltzes in (federally, state, then “local” meaning, a child support agency at the county level) – and says we are going to transfer income from A to B. Consider the bureaurcarcy in that, and the antagonism it creates. Families have died over this. Let me repeat. I have yet to hear of a mother murdering over child support, but their is no lack of newsprint on fathers, in this context. His basic authority and social credibility — income producing — has been challenged by the government. Meanwhile, this same Child Support agency waltzes into the newly single mother’s life, perhaps (and if abuse was involved, likely newly poor single) and says, we will interface for you. And yet, this entire system, it later develops, has been co-opted as a custody-switching agency. A federalization of basic life processes. So I say, boycott it. It’s got the power to incarcerate — or not. At will, if a mother has signed over her rights as a result off initially going on welfare. (A fact not typically made much of — but in years to come, will figure highly in any contested case…).
So, here are all these taxes going to socially engineer the country, and causing a lot of strife, and competition for working in the fields supported by this social engineering. How many of the services provided are the most basic ones that we couldn’t do without, and how many of the infrastructures and institutions created are transparent enough for the average participant to actually comprehend
I am certainly not a go-back-to-the-farm proponent, but the codependency here is too much, upon JOBS. The key difference between “job” and “business” is who keeps the profits, and who gets to deduct expenses before taxes.
People who were raised to just love what they do, and specialize in it, are called “professionals,” often, which brings up — who is going to pay for them to do what they love doing, and market it, contract it, do administration, etc. (unless people wish to “do it all” and “keep it small”?) One of the safest places to be a professional in a field that will rarely go away, is to do it for the US Government (I think). And in the courts, too.
Well, there’s a lot more to all this, but the key in the courts is where is the money moving around to, whether through professional referrals, trainings, or simply directly from litigants to fees. Multiply that to all contested custody cases involving children, per state, be aware there are 50 states (and US territories), and think about it.
There is, FYI, a two-tier court track:
1. Can afford fees. They will be “soaked;” one party may be bankrupted later, or up front, to inspire more fights.
1a. Then the therapists can come in and counsel how to reduce conflicts.
2. Can’t afford fees. These will be the revolving door cases, but because there’s such an easy way to get INTO court again, any old OSC almost will do it, and most litigant’s aren’t smart enough to move to dismiss up front (on any of a variety of grounds), these will repeatedly be brought back to court — and possibly produce a candidate for food stamps, SSI, or some other part of the welfare system to continue justifying its existence. Their data will be mined for further studies by social scientists (etc.) in remote locations.
2a. Occasionally a 1a or a 2a may result in someone going off the deep end, with a weapon. However, as this eventually causes social and economic deterioration, over a period of decades, no lack of new, fresh faces for the family law system (and associated professions).
Just a little more on “interest”:
Basically this site is reminding us that, compounding interest or not, what about taxes?
(co. 2004-2008, Evans Financial Group)
My point being, OK, OK,
be aware of the rhetoric,
but pay attention to common “cents” on where the “dollars” are going.
In some respects, could any ex be worse than this system long-term? The answer in many cases is, yes. But, maybe a civic duty is to get the field reports out, for posterity.
What are ALL the relevant elements of any situation — as best you can ascertain them.
Which of those are actionable — now, and in the long run.
What can you do not to overwhelm your personal comprehension system into “Paralysis”?
The human psyche can absorb a LOT of information (varies with individuals), but to act on it is natural. I think that overload jsut builds up tension and frustration, and a sense of powerlessness. To know what to act on, with purpose towards a certain goal, is critical to humanity. Being in systems of such chaos (and corruption) as these family law systems, is dangerous to the health. It tests character to handle it.
To give this post a semblance of structure, I’d like to conclude the way I started:
“Don’t ask me why I decided to post this draft, revealing my thoughts the other day. I don’t feel like telling. “
SHARE THIS POST on...
Like this:
Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up
October 21, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Posted in AFCC, Biosphere, Business Enterprise, Cast, Script, Characters, Scenery, Stage Directions, Context of Custody Switch, Designer Families, Domestic Violence vs Family Law, etc., Giant Squid, in Studies, Metaphors for Family Law, My Takes, and Favorite Takes, Organizations, Foundations, Associations NGO Hybrids, Raptors, Vocabulary Lessons
Tagged with "Parent" explained- perhaps, AFCC, Alienation, Education, Jaycee Dugard, Linguistic Dissonance, obfuscation, social commentary, Studying Humans, U.S. Govt $$ hard @ work..