I actually am sorry this case was dismissed out-of-hand as I didn’t see it as being frivolous at all. In fact I strongly hoped this would cause some changes in public policy and the laws to benefit women and children.
As the laws now stand, a man who has any casual sexual encounters with a woman (even a one-night stand) that results in a pregnancy, he might not even know her last name or care, yet he is now given the exact same legal rights to a child as the mother from the moment of birth. Even though he has basically contributed, invested, risked NOTHING during the entire process, other then a recreational sperm deposit. Meanwhile a woman who has carried, nurtured, and invested herself for 9 months in producing another human being, not to mention a bloody and painful delivery at the end of the period, has her status downgraded to mirror that of a recreational sperm donor. Both have suddenly become equal in the eyes of the law.
Sorry but that is in no sense good, just, fair or morally correct for either mothers or children. Actually it can put children at risk of being forced into a relationship with a man who could be downright hostile to their very existence. Not to mention down the road, these kids could be ripped from their mothers custody to be used as pawns for financial gain, as many benefits flow if and when these so-called ‘fathers’ manage to wrestle custody/guardianship of a child from its natural mother. I won’t even bother going into the trauma that mothers go through when faced with separation from their own children, as I know the unprincipled and vicious gender neutralized monsters we are dealing with today, who are behind many of these laws and public polices, don’t give a rat’s ass about mothers. But can we at least examine the policy so that children don’t have to be used as bargaining chips by men trying to get out of paying child support? Or as a conduit for citizenship, tax and other public benefits which flow as they manipulate our system to get custody/guardianship of these innocent kids?
At least this man Matt Dubay had the common decency to be honest about his feelings here and I applaud him for that. He had little or no connection to this child’s mother OR her child, never planned on marrying her and certainly did not wish to create a family with her. The entire conception was an accident. Thus I believe he should NOT be given legal rights NOR have any legal obligations to this child and should be released from his obligation to pay child support. Going forward this rule should be made universal. No never-married man should be able to obtain legal rights or have obligations to a child unless BOTH he and the child’s mother agrees to it.
Now regarding a child who winds up needing public benefits after birth, then a man can and should be garnished for his one-half of the birth expenses and other tax-payer financed benefits. Yet he should have no legal rights to this child, unless again BOTH he and mother agree. I ‘m sorry but just because you are obligated to repay the taxpayers for the burden you imposed upon them should NOT give you any additional rights, especially to some innocent kid. Why should that kid be forced into a potential hostile relationship with a man and his new girlfriend/wife who could resent the financial burden placed upon their family by some earlier irresponsible behavior.
We need to revisit this case and come up with some modifications to the current laws that address these issues. That protect the mother and child from an unwarranted invasion by a potentially hostile relationship, ensures the taxpayers don’t get fleeced by irresponsible reproduction and that also protects men from having to assume the mantle of father, just to please various gender-neutralized feminists and fatherhood activists, before they are ready for it.
The Daily News
Online Edition
Roe vs. Wade for men case dismissed as frivolous
Wednesday, July 19, 2006 10:36 AM EDT LANSING
Attorney General Mike Cox announced Tuesday that Dubay vs. Wells, Thomas and Cox, often described as "Roe vs. Wade for Men," has been dismissed.
The lawsuit, filed by Matthew Dubay in U.S. District Court at Bay City, claimed that Michigan's paternity law is unconstitutional because the father is compelled to pay child support even if he did not want the child to be born.
"This is an important victory for the children of this state," Cox said.
"Both parents have a clear responsibility for the support of their child, no matter the circumstances surrounding conception. The court upheld that time-honored understanding today. Michigan will not become the state where parents can opt out of personal responsibility.
"U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, dismissed the Dubay vs. Wells case on Monday.
This case challenged Michigan's Paternity Act, which requires a parent to pay child support.
Dubay argued that he could choose not to pay child support because he told the mother of the child while they were dating that he did not want a child.
Dubay filed the action against the Saginaw County prosecutor for his enforcement of the Paternity Act.
Dubay also named the mother of the child as a defendant.
The attorney general intervened in the case to uphold the Paternity Act to protect Michigan's children.
In ruling in the attorney general's favor, the court stated that "(t)he fundamental flaw in Dubay's claim is that he fails to see that the state played no role in the conception or birth of the child in this case, or in the decisions that resulted in the birth of the child."
Thus, the court ruled that the state did not violate a constitutionally protected right to privacy that had been the underlying basis of his claim.
The court relied upon a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals case that rejected the notion that some sense of fairness ought to allow biological fathers to avoid the financial responsibility of supporting a child as a proxy for the loss of control of the events that naturally flow from sexual activity.
Accordingly, the court found that the Paternity Act did not violate the equal protection of the Michigan and U.S. constitutions either on its face or as applied to Dubay.The court dismissed all of Dubay's claims against all of the defendants.Cox also requested that the court find the case to be frivolous.
The court agreed, stating this action was "frivolous, unreasonable and without foundation and seeks to advance a theory that is foreign to the legal principles on which it is ostensibly based."
The court is allowing the attorney general to submit a claim for his office's attorney fees.
Since taking office in 2003, Cox has made enforcing Michigan's felony non-support laws and raising awareness of the problem unpaid child support causes to children in Michigan a priority.
To date, $26,637,755.16 in unpaid child support has been collected, helping approximately 3,030 children.
---------------------------------
This is a little odd...they've collected over $26 million and ONLY helped 3,030 children???? Hopefully a typo as that's a very small amount of children to help with 26 million dollars.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Another Father Caught Working the System
At the following link is a story outlining how a father worked the legal and religious system in Malaysia in order to try and get custody of a 2 and 3 year old from their mother. Which btw, under Islamic Sharia law young children are supposed to be left in the care of their mother, until about the age of 7 or so, thus he was already breaking the tenets of muslim law even though a recent convert.
The mother reponded by ‘abducting’ the children to another jurisdiction.
This is one of the primary reasons I am very conflicted about private citizens involving themselves in these supposedly ‘parental abduction cases’ particularly when they involve a mother with young children (and to be clear my definition of young children is any kid under the age of 10, which unless abuse or neglect is involved should automatically be in the care of their mother)…as we never know the true circumstances involved and could be returning children to men who have been enabled to work the legal system.
There are natural laws that are far older and wiser then the laws of men, who have passed many rules and public polices to mainly benefit each other. Thus, I don’t accept as legitimate any law, rule or public policy that condones separating a mother from her child, unless abuse or neglect is involved. God, nature or evolution, whichever you believe had the preeminent role in creating our world, has already chosen the best, most obvious and natural caretaker to raise the young of every species, as well as our own, and that being is known as a MOTHER…not father, grandparents, the village, state, etc., but a MOTHER.
Those who don’t like it take it up with your deity.
Men who wish to improve the lot of children in this world can make a far more significant contribution by working collectively to keep each other from starting wars, for instance, as opposed to trying to fight every mother the world over for custody of her children…
I guess the bottom line, as always, is that each person must follow their own conscious on these complicated issues.
http://www.lawasia.asn.au/uploads/images/FLMalaysia.pdf
The mother reponded by ‘abducting’ the children to another jurisdiction.
This is one of the primary reasons I am very conflicted about private citizens involving themselves in these supposedly ‘parental abduction cases’ particularly when they involve a mother with young children (and to be clear my definition of young children is any kid under the age of 10, which unless abuse or neglect is involved should automatically be in the care of their mother)…as we never know the true circumstances involved and could be returning children to men who have been enabled to work the legal system.
There are natural laws that are far older and wiser then the laws of men, who have passed many rules and public polices to mainly benefit each other. Thus, I don’t accept as legitimate any law, rule or public policy that condones separating a mother from her child, unless abuse or neglect is involved. God, nature or evolution, whichever you believe had the preeminent role in creating our world, has already chosen the best, most obvious and natural caretaker to raise the young of every species, as well as our own, and that being is known as a MOTHER…not father, grandparents, the village, state, etc., but a MOTHER.
Those who don’t like it take it up with your deity.
Men who wish to improve the lot of children in this world can make a far more significant contribution by working collectively to keep each other from starting wars, for instance, as opposed to trying to fight every mother the world over for custody of her children…
I guess the bottom line, as always, is that each person must follow their own conscious on these complicated issues.
http://www.lawasia.asn.au/uploads/images/FLMalaysia.pdf
Sunday, July 23, 2006
More Ground Loss by Mothers in Endless Custody Wars
I came across this story the other day of a couple suing a mother for custody AFTER she and her child just lived with them for a year, probably renting a room from them or something. I'd like to say this was unusual but you know it really isn't anymore. As everybody and his grandmother today has pretty much been given standing to sue for custody of your kids.
This couple won visitation only SO FAR, let's remember that. As this might not be the END of this litigation by any means but only ROUND ONE. For it's not uncommon for the more-monied person(s) in these 'custody wars' to be given the okay to continue a fight like this for years on end, until either they win or the mother just runs out of money and is forced to give up her child.
The mother commented towards the end of the article that she wanted West Virginia to clarify their laws, as right now anybody could sue you for custody of your child. Well guess what, EVEN clarification doesn't work as Judges continue doing exactly what they feel like no matter how much clarification is given. So even so-called clarification of the laws is pretty much meaningless at this point.
I mean didn't we have the Supreme Court ruling on Troxel just a few years ago supposedly clarifying just these sorts of situations? The Troxel case was not just about grandparents (who btw, could make a hell of a better case then landlords or family friends for visitation) but it included a boyfriend as well trying to get visitation and/or custody of his girlfriends' kids...Yet since Troxel there have been any number of cases totally ignoring that supposed 'sea-change' in family law. Including one mind-blowing case of a man getting custody of someone else's child, while the child's own mother and father were forced into the position of being visitors in their own kid's life. Even being court-ordered to pay him child support.
What really needs to happen is a mechanism by which Judges who continue either not enforcing the laws or as Bush likes to say 'legislating from the bench' be adequately punished when they ignore the law and if that doesn't work then their employment terminated and their law licenses revoked permanently.
I suggest a three-strike law similar to what we now have in California wherein a Judge with a ruling overturned THREE OR MORE times at the appellete level is subject to review for employment termination. Of course there is such a thing as differences of opinion on what a law/rule could mean. But when it's pretty clear what the law means even to an ordinary citizen; then there should be no excuse for this sort of ignoring of it and substituting personal opinion/feelings, likes or dislikes for mothers, etc., for the law as currently goes on.
The way it should work is a panel is set up composed of lawyers and civilians that reviews every ruling that is overturned on appeal. If the panel decides the law was clear and a Judge just ignored it, he/she is fined $10,000 the first time, personally payable btw. The second time this happens: $20,000, again personally payable. The third time: $30,000 and he/she is out.
Permanently.
AND by permanently I don't mean to go to another state and start wrecking their judicial system with their own personal biases, I mean loss of law license as well. In other words that person is no longer licensed as an attorney.
This appears to be the ONLY way left open to the millions of mothers, who would like these endless custody wars being waged against us to be brought to a close...
http://www.wdbj7.com/global/story.asp?s=4769018&ClientType=Printable
April 13, 2006
Mother violates judge's order allowing visitation by non-relatives and lands in jail
A Christiansburg woman says she cannot understand why Virginia law would allow someone who's not even related to her to seek custody of her child. She thinks other parents should beware.
Every Friday, for the last two weekends, Jennifer Stamm has come to the Montgomery County jail to serve out a 30 day sentence. Stamm denied visitation to Elizabeth and Robert Cannon. She lived with them for a year and says they were her child's babysitters, but the relationship turned sour. One day in 2004, the Cannons filed court papers seeking legal custody of her child, something the lead attorney in the firm that represented Stamm had never dealt with before. "I thought it was very, very unusual for a person that wasn't even related to the child to bring a proceeding like this," attorney Max Jenkins told News Seven. "I've never heard of it before."
After two years of battling and 6 charges of violating a court order Stamm was officially given custody and a jail sentence. Now she sits behind bars on weekends believing the system failed her. Stamm is urging parents to contact their legislators and ask them to clarify Virginia's Custody law, so outsiders can not sue for custody. "I want people out there to realize that Virginia has a law that the way it is written is just so open," Stamm says, "that anyone can sue for your child."
The Cannon's have 30 days to appeal the decision and opted not to participate in our story until they made a final decision. Over the phone, Elizabeth Cannon said she was more than a baby-sitter. She says she raised the child.
This couple won visitation only SO FAR, let's remember that. As this might not be the END of this litigation by any means but only ROUND ONE. For it's not uncommon for the more-monied person(s) in these 'custody wars' to be given the okay to continue a fight like this for years on end, until either they win or the mother just runs out of money and is forced to give up her child.
The mother commented towards the end of the article that she wanted West Virginia to clarify their laws, as right now anybody could sue you for custody of your child. Well guess what, EVEN clarification doesn't work as Judges continue doing exactly what they feel like no matter how much clarification is given. So even so-called clarification of the laws is pretty much meaningless at this point.
I mean didn't we have the Supreme Court ruling on Troxel just a few years ago supposedly clarifying just these sorts of situations? The Troxel case was not just about grandparents (who btw, could make a hell of a better case then landlords or family friends for visitation) but it included a boyfriend as well trying to get visitation and/or custody of his girlfriends' kids...Yet since Troxel there have been any number of cases totally ignoring that supposed 'sea-change' in family law. Including one mind-blowing case of a man getting custody of someone else's child, while the child's own mother and father were forced into the position of being visitors in their own kid's life. Even being court-ordered to pay him child support.
What really needs to happen is a mechanism by which Judges who continue either not enforcing the laws or as Bush likes to say 'legislating from the bench' be adequately punished when they ignore the law and if that doesn't work then their employment terminated and their law licenses revoked permanently.
I suggest a three-strike law similar to what we now have in California wherein a Judge with a ruling overturned THREE OR MORE times at the appellete level is subject to review for employment termination. Of course there is such a thing as differences of opinion on what a law/rule could mean. But when it's pretty clear what the law means even to an ordinary citizen; then there should be no excuse for this sort of ignoring of it and substituting personal opinion/feelings, likes or dislikes for mothers, etc., for the law as currently goes on.
The way it should work is a panel is set up composed of lawyers and civilians that reviews every ruling that is overturned on appeal. If the panel decides the law was clear and a Judge just ignored it, he/she is fined $10,000 the first time, personally payable btw. The second time this happens: $20,000, again personally payable. The third time: $30,000 and he/she is out.
Permanently.
AND by permanently I don't mean to go to another state and start wrecking their judicial system with their own personal biases, I mean loss of law license as well. In other words that person is no longer licensed as an attorney.
This appears to be the ONLY way left open to the millions of mothers, who would like these endless custody wars being waged against us to be brought to a close...
http://www.wdbj7.com/global/story.asp?s=4769018&ClientType=Printable
April 13, 2006
Mother violates judge's order allowing visitation by non-relatives and lands in jail
A Christiansburg woman says she cannot understand why Virginia law would allow someone who's not even related to her to seek custody of her child. She thinks other parents should beware.
Every Friday, for the last two weekends, Jennifer Stamm has come to the Montgomery County jail to serve out a 30 day sentence. Stamm denied visitation to Elizabeth and Robert Cannon. She lived with them for a year and says they were her child's babysitters, but the relationship turned sour. One day in 2004, the Cannons filed court papers seeking legal custody of her child, something the lead attorney in the firm that represented Stamm had never dealt with before. "I thought it was very, very unusual for a person that wasn't even related to the child to bring a proceeding like this," attorney Max Jenkins told News Seven. "I've never heard of it before."
After two years of battling and 6 charges of violating a court order Stamm was officially given custody and a jail sentence. Now she sits behind bars on weekends believing the system failed her. Stamm is urging parents to contact their legislators and ask them to clarify Virginia's Custody law, so outsiders can not sue for custody. "I want people out there to realize that Virginia has a law that the way it is written is just so open," Stamm says, "that anyone can sue for your child."
The Cannon's have 30 days to appeal the decision and opted not to participate in our story until they made a final decision. Over the phone, Elizabeth Cannon said she was more than a baby-sitter. She says she raised the child.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Too Little, Too Late to Save These Societies from Retribution for their Crimes Against Their Sisters
After observing the events in the mid-east and throughout Asia this week, I think it is a good time to repost this particular blog entry, less we forget the ultimate consequences of fooling around with nature's grand design. In every species, including our own, (until recently) females have always made up the bulk of the population. For anyone with any common sense whatsoever, it's pretty obvious why. Too many males = too many alphas: too much infighting within the species over territory, access to females, resources; too many dominance displays leading to death and injury, etc.,
When we attempt to play God, we ultimately only fool ourselves. Forgetting that we are JUST another group of living beings on the planet earth, more intelligent perhaps, but at the end of the day just another link in the evolutionary chain.
We forget the essence of humanity at our peril. We are not Gods but just another species of living beings on the planet.
India Sex Selection Doctor Jailed
A doctor in India and his assistant have been sentenced to two years in jail for revealing the sex of a female foetus and then agreeing to abort it.
This is the first time medical professionals have been jailed in such a case.
Under Indian laws, ultrasound tests on a pregnant woman to determine the gender of the foetus are illegal.
It has been estimated that 10m female foetuses may have been terminated in India in the past 20 years.
Dr Anil Sabhani and Kartar Singh were caught in a sting operation in the northern state of Haryana.
Government officials sent in three pregnant women as decoy patients to find out if the clinic would carry out abortions based on sex selection.
Audio and video evidence showed the doctor telling one woman that tests had revealed that she was carrying a "female foetus and it would be taken care of".
A cultural preference for sons over daughters has skewed India's sex ratio.
But convictions are rare due to lax and corrupt officials and the slow judicial system.
The government brought in laws 12 years ago to stop the practice of aborting female foetuses.
Social evil
The president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), a grouping of doctors, Dr Vinay Agarwal said the convictions were "historical".
"The medical profession is doing all it can though we have to address this as a social evil. People should be proud to have a girl child," he said.
The northern states of Punjab and Haryana have some of the worst gender ratios in India.
There are about 861 women for every 1,000 men in Haryana, according to the census. The national average is 927 women to 1,000 men.
The national average has gone down from 972 in 1901 to just 933 in 2001, according to reports.
Earlier this year researchers in India and Canada said in the Lancet journal that prenatal selection and selective abortion was causing the loss of 500,000 girl births a year.
If this is true, 10m female births may have been lost in India over the past two decades.
Indian doctors, however, disputed the report saying pre-birth gender checks had waned since a Supreme Court crackdown in 2001.
Tradition
Leading campaigners say many of India's fertility clinics continue to offer a seemingly legitimate facade for a multi-billion pound racket and that gender determination is still big business in India.
Experts in India say female foeticide is mostly linked to socio-economic factors.
It is an idea that many say carries over from the time India was a predominantly agrarian society where boys were considered an extra pair of hands on the farm.
The girl child has traditionally been considered inferior and a liability - a bride's dowry can cripple a poor family financially.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4855682.stm
This is good of course, but far too little, far too late.
Yes doctors and other medical personnel involved should be arrested. But the technology must be removed as well. As quite frankly that region of the world has demonstrated by their behavior, that they are not fully mature enough as societies to have free access to all technology since they behaved irrresponsibly with sonogram machines. They used them for sex selection MILLIONS OF TIMES and thus, created an inbalance of millions of men in their societies.
Thus a refusal to sell them sonogram machines or parts to repair the ones they currrently have as they break must be instituted. This boycott should include other technology as well, including military as if they couldn’t handle a sonogram machine, they can’t handle any military technology either, especially nuclear.
That’s for sure.
The other issue is I wish they would stop pointing to the dowry as being implicated in this, as the dowry tradition has NOTHING to do with this.
Nothing.
It’s a complete red herring, strawman, whatever…
As we in the west have the same dowry tradition and have more women then men in our society. Actually the dowry tradition here has morphed into women, if they wish a big wedding, to pay for most of it themselves and with the cost of a wedding today, well basically you are spending your dowry on the wedding with flowers, dress, reception, honeymoon, etc., It has NOT turned into parents trying to murder girl babies in order not to help them pay for their wedding. The whole assertion is ridiculous and just another attempt by men (in Asia this time, although our men do the same at every opportunity) to shift the blame from something they did themselves and try to put it on historical forces, over which they supposedly have no control.
Total and complete baloney.
Additionally China, which has NO dowry tradition (they have a bride price to be paid when they get married) is in the exact same situation as India. Actually I just had a dicussion a while back with a good friend of mine from China. She’s been here about ten years and was very excited, as she has a son and just found out that here the bride’s family pays for the wedding.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her with so many women marrying so late, that most of the women I know (myself included) pay for the wedding themselves AND frequently ask for some rather LARGE contribution from the groom and/or his family.
Oh well.
Anyway, both countries India and China (with two totally different traditions) have condemned themselves to years of social chaos by messing around with mother nature and causing an inbalance of men in their society. It’s not any tradition of either place that has done this, but the selfishness of modern-day men.
Well, what else is new.
Just reading “Bare Branches” by Valerie Hudson demonstrates how most of Asia shot themselves in the proverbial foot and now will be facing decades of civil unrest, high crime rates, wars, etc., Actually it’s no coincidence that many recruits for terrorism come from societies that have also done the same thing as India and China, places such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Perverting all of the technology western civilization sold them to monitor the health of mothers and using it to abort girl babies. Now the resulting overflow of young men with no wives around to divert them into family life are fertile ground to be recruited into every quirky movement from Al Queda to Prestor John’s ultra-religious revival.
One only has to look at the most recent TV newsfeeds featuring all of these surplus men in Asia created when they murdered their sisters, as they span the continent from the Gaza Strip right through to North Korea, chanting like idiots or marching in goose step to their doom. Asia is finally reaping the bloody harvest from the decades they continued spitting in the face of mother nature and now her terrible retribution has begun. The chaos this continent is descending into this week is just the beginning of their final agony.
Anyway, these regions are going to be living with their decisions now for the next couple of decades, maybe centuries. I just know one thing, they better not be trying to export the problems they have created to the west either…
The important thing for those of us in the west to remember is NOT to allow this part of the world to drag the rest of us down with them. They have brought this punishment on themselves THROUGH THEIR OWN INDIVIDUAL ACTIONS and must bear the brunt of it ALONE as well.
We have no idea where this will end, but we need to step back and let justice take it's hard but fair course without interference.
When we attempt to play God, we ultimately only fool ourselves. Forgetting that we are JUST another group of living beings on the planet earth, more intelligent perhaps, but at the end of the day just another link in the evolutionary chain.
We forget the essence of humanity at our peril. We are not Gods but just another species of living beings on the planet.
India Sex Selection Doctor Jailed
A doctor in India and his assistant have been sentenced to two years in jail for revealing the sex of a female foetus and then agreeing to abort it.
This is the first time medical professionals have been jailed in such a case.
Under Indian laws, ultrasound tests on a pregnant woman to determine the gender of the foetus are illegal.
It has been estimated that 10m female foetuses may have been terminated in India in the past 20 years.
Dr Anil Sabhani and Kartar Singh were caught in a sting operation in the northern state of Haryana.
Government officials sent in three pregnant women as decoy patients to find out if the clinic would carry out abortions based on sex selection.
Audio and video evidence showed the doctor telling one woman that tests had revealed that she was carrying a "female foetus and it would be taken care of".
A cultural preference for sons over daughters has skewed India's sex ratio.
But convictions are rare due to lax and corrupt officials and the slow judicial system.
The government brought in laws 12 years ago to stop the practice of aborting female foetuses.
Social evil
The president of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), a grouping of doctors, Dr Vinay Agarwal said the convictions were "historical".
"The medical profession is doing all it can though we have to address this as a social evil. People should be proud to have a girl child," he said.
The northern states of Punjab and Haryana have some of the worst gender ratios in India.
There are about 861 women for every 1,000 men in Haryana, according to the census. The national average is 927 women to 1,000 men.
The national average has gone down from 972 in 1901 to just 933 in 2001, according to reports.
Earlier this year researchers in India and Canada said in the Lancet journal that prenatal selection and selective abortion was causing the loss of 500,000 girl births a year.
If this is true, 10m female births may have been lost in India over the past two decades.
Indian doctors, however, disputed the report saying pre-birth gender checks had waned since a Supreme Court crackdown in 2001.
Tradition
Leading campaigners say many of India's fertility clinics continue to offer a seemingly legitimate facade for a multi-billion pound racket and that gender determination is still big business in India.
Experts in India say female foeticide is mostly linked to socio-economic factors.
It is an idea that many say carries over from the time India was a predominantly agrarian society where boys were considered an extra pair of hands on the farm.
The girl child has traditionally been considered inferior and a liability - a bride's dowry can cripple a poor family financially.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4855682.stm
This is good of course, but far too little, far too late.
Yes doctors and other medical personnel involved should be arrested. But the technology must be removed as well. As quite frankly that region of the world has demonstrated by their behavior, that they are not fully mature enough as societies to have free access to all technology since they behaved irrresponsibly with sonogram machines. They used them for sex selection MILLIONS OF TIMES and thus, created an inbalance of millions of men in their societies.
Thus a refusal to sell them sonogram machines or parts to repair the ones they currrently have as they break must be instituted. This boycott should include other technology as well, including military as if they couldn’t handle a sonogram machine, they can’t handle any military technology either, especially nuclear.
That’s for sure.
The other issue is I wish they would stop pointing to the dowry as being implicated in this, as the dowry tradition has NOTHING to do with this.
Nothing.
It’s a complete red herring, strawman, whatever…
As we in the west have the same dowry tradition and have more women then men in our society. Actually the dowry tradition here has morphed into women, if they wish a big wedding, to pay for most of it themselves and with the cost of a wedding today, well basically you are spending your dowry on the wedding with flowers, dress, reception, honeymoon, etc., It has NOT turned into parents trying to murder girl babies in order not to help them pay for their wedding. The whole assertion is ridiculous and just another attempt by men (in Asia this time, although our men do the same at every opportunity) to shift the blame from something they did themselves and try to put it on historical forces, over which they supposedly have no control.
Total and complete baloney.
Additionally China, which has NO dowry tradition (they have a bride price to be paid when they get married) is in the exact same situation as India. Actually I just had a dicussion a while back with a good friend of mine from China. She’s been here about ten years and was very excited, as she has a son and just found out that here the bride’s family pays for the wedding.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her with so many women marrying so late, that most of the women I know (myself included) pay for the wedding themselves AND frequently ask for some rather LARGE contribution from the groom and/or his family.
Oh well.
Anyway, both countries India and China (with two totally different traditions) have condemned themselves to years of social chaos by messing around with mother nature and causing an inbalance of men in their society. It’s not any tradition of either place that has done this, but the selfishness of modern-day men.
Well, what else is new.
Just reading “Bare Branches” by Valerie Hudson demonstrates how most of Asia shot themselves in the proverbial foot and now will be facing decades of civil unrest, high crime rates, wars, etc., Actually it’s no coincidence that many recruits for terrorism come from societies that have also done the same thing as India and China, places such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Perverting all of the technology western civilization sold them to monitor the health of mothers and using it to abort girl babies. Now the resulting overflow of young men with no wives around to divert them into family life are fertile ground to be recruited into every quirky movement from Al Queda to Prestor John’s ultra-religious revival.
One only has to look at the most recent TV newsfeeds featuring all of these surplus men in Asia created when they murdered their sisters, as they span the continent from the Gaza Strip right through to North Korea, chanting like idiots or marching in goose step to their doom. Asia is finally reaping the bloody harvest from the decades they continued spitting in the face of mother nature and now her terrible retribution has begun. The chaos this continent is descending into this week is just the beginning of their final agony.
Anyway, these regions are going to be living with their decisions now for the next couple of decades, maybe centuries. I just know one thing, they better not be trying to export the problems they have created to the west either…
The important thing for those of us in the west to remember is NOT to allow this part of the world to drag the rest of us down with them. They have brought this punishment on themselves THROUGH THEIR OWN INDIVIDUAL ACTIONS and must bear the brunt of it ALONE as well.
We have no idea where this will end, but we need to step back and let justice take it's hard but fair course without interference.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Hard Cases = Bad Laws
I have so many complicated feelings about this ruling. I mean ultimately it was a bad moral decision, but a good legal one. I guess that’s why they say hard cases make bad laws.
One of the biggest problems I had with this Mark D. was the fact that with no thought whatsoever he signed off on immigration papers for a child (and her mother). Let’s face it although that wasn’t mentioned in the piece, no one is going to let a child immigrate here alone. This was a package deal that Mark D. signed our names to.
So he enabled two new citizens to reach our shores; thus, guarantoring what exactly?
That the tax-payers of New York State would cheerfully assume the liability he so carelessly tossed upon us? I mean as soon as this child and her mother were here due to Mark D.’s initiative they have to be provided for. So this article leaves out a whole other angle here which is to wit: Who is providing for these two new immigrants who Mark D. has enabled to join our ever-growing family? Was the child’s mother working? Was she making enough to be able to provide housing for herself and the child? What about medical care? AND last but not least, who would be responsible for all of this if the child’s mother could not be; if she became unemployed or ill, decided to quit her job or any number of other things that could happen to cause this child to become a dependent and need taxpayer funded assistance?
Was Mark D. willing to foot the bill here?
The bottom line is that every child is guaranteed a certain standard of living once they cross our borders. There is no such thing as prorated rights for children once you are here. You’re in the game for a penny or a pound, same thing. Thus, someone has to pay to provide a certain standard of living: food, shelter, clothing, schooling, medical care, etc., if and when a parent cannot do so or refuses to do so for any reason.
I mean let’s extrapolate Mark D.s situation out to the millions of American men as tourists or even soldiers abroad if they decided to sponsor a child (they claim as their own) and it’s mother to the US. THEN turn around and claim it is NOT their child, so they are no longer willing to be responsible for the child’s upkeep? Can we just revoke the child’s and mother’s citizenship then? Or their immigrant status whatever it is? Sorry. No can do. We are not going to upend the entire American immigration apparatus and childrens’ lives to convenience foolish men, that’s for sure.
So the question is not really fairness to Mark D. vis-à-vis the child’s mother but what is fair to that child as well as fair to all the rest of us. Thus we cannot allow men (fathers or otherwise) to default on their financial obligations AFTER they have already established a child and it’s mother’s status here. Just remember a LOT of child support is reimbursement to the taxpayers’ for public benefits WE have expended on that child’s behalf. So that’s what we are leaving ourselves open to if we support the Mark D.s of the world, taxpayers getting stuck with the bill when fathers refuse to pay for any reason.
I’m sorry for Mark D. but he should have been more careful about sharing his precious citizenship rights with someone he didn’t appear to know very well. He seems to have given himself (and let’s make no mistake about this situation Mark D. GAVE the liability to himself, the courts just kept it where Mark D. initially placed it, at his own feet). Anyway he has given himself a liability of at least $200,000 over a 21 year period, maybe more as child support in NYS runs roughly about 10,000 annually…(factoring in all the add ons such as his prorated share of child care AND uncovered medical expenses). So Mark D. has given himself a tidy burden. But before we shed any tears for Mark D. let’s remember one thing: that burden could have easily morphed into a burden on ALL the rest of us in New York State IF the courts did not return it to its rightful place at the feet and in the wallet of Mark D.
Thus as I said legally the ruling was correct, although morally obviously it has some defects.
The only comfort I can think of to give Mark D. is that a few courts have allowed men who were victims of paternity fraud to sue in civil court for damages. This is a slow but steadily growing trend which some Judges are allowing to ease the burden on men in the future, if and when the child is no longer collecting public benefits. This way if the girl’s mother is working and he wins his case, he can collect from her salary each week, (maybe it will offset the child support). Or if the mother ever buys a house or some other asset at a later date (and it happens all the time immigrants come here and ten years later own property worth a few hundred thousands dollars, happens every day); anyway Mark D can use the judgment to confiscate the child’s mother’s assets and reimburse himself from that.
Otherwise if this mother NEVER works, NEVER buys any property or anything of value then it looks like Mark D. is simply out of luck. Hopefully he has learned, and other men have learned from this story, to NOT be so careless in trying to assign their 'little liabilities' to innocent NYS taxpayers in the future.
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1152534921526
N.Y. High Court Says Mistaken Avowal of Fatherhood Imposes an 'Equitable Paternity'
John Caher
New York Law Journal
July 11, 2006
He who acts like a father, is a father -- if not biologically than at least legally -- the Court of Appeals said Thursday in imposing "equitable paternity" on a man who wrongly assumed he had fathered a girl and acted accordingly.
The court in Matter of Shondel J. v. Mark D., 40, upheld the trial court and the Appellate Division, 2nd Department, in ordering a man to pay child support on behalf of a child he did not father. In doing so, it recognized the legislatively endorsed concept of "equity paternity," or paternity by estoppel (see Family Court Act §§ 18 [a] and 532 [a]).
Shondel J. centers on a Guyana native who, while living in New York, met a woman in Guyana while visiting family in 1995. After the man, Mark D., returned to New York, the woman, Shondel J., informed him that she was pregnant and carrying his child.
Mark did not dispute his paternity. Instead, he helped pay for Shondel's pregnancy, visited the girl he thought was his and made her a beneficiary of his life insurance. He also signed a letter affirming his fatherhood so the child could obtain immigration papers. In 1999, he married another woman, and they have children.
The next year, Shondel moved to New York and lodged a paternity petition in Brooklyn, and Mark filed a separate visitation petition. A court-ordered DNA test proved that Mark was not the father.
At that point, Mark attempted to sever ties with the girl. But he was equitably estopped from disclaiming paternity and ordered to pay child support. The child support amounted to $78 weekly, plus retroactive support of $12,859. Mark has had no personal contact with the child since March 2000.
On appeal, Mark argued that the imposition of "equitable paternity" effectively saddled him with an involuntary adoption, in violation of the Constitution and contrary to public policy.
But the 2nd Department, and now the Court of Appeals, focused not on whether Mark got a raw deal, but on the best interests of the child.
"In allowing a court to declare paternity irrespective of biological fatherhood, the Legislature made a deliberate policy choice that speaks directly to the case before us," Judge Albert M. Rosenblatt wrote for the 5-2 majority. "The potential damage to a child's psyche caused by suddenly ending established parental support need only be stated to be appreciated. Cutting off that support, whether emotional or financial, may leave the child in a worse position than if that support had never been given."
Like the lower courts, the Court of Appeals found that Mark had in every way held himself out to be the child's father -- buying her Christmas and birthday presents, referring to himself as "daddy," introducing her to his family, and regularly communicating with her. Mark had claimed he had rarely seen or had contact with the child, but none of the courts hearing his case believed him.
"The issue does not involve the equities between the two adults; the case turns exclusively on the best interests of the child," Judge Rosenblatt wrote. "The Legislature did not create an exception for men who take on the role of fatherhood based on the mother's misrepresentation ... [T]he mother's motivation and honesty are irrelevant; the only issue for the court is how the interests of the child are best served."
All four women on the court -- Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye and Judges Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, Victoria A. Graffeo and Susan Phillips Read -- joined Rosenblatt. Judge George Bundy Smith dissented in an opinion joined by Judge Robert S. Smith.
'COMPLETELY INNOCENT'
The dissenters objected to the application of estoppel against a "completely innocent litigant" who was misled by the child's mother. They noted that the woman swore in Family Court that she had not had sexual relations during the relevant time span with anyone other than Mark, an assertion that DNA analysis proved was a lie.
They said the decision rewards people who make no effort to nurture or support a child who may be their own while penalizing people like Mark who immediately assumed responsibility.
"With this decision, this Court supports a public policy that says a man should never take on a parental role unless he wants to be unconditionally responsible for the child's financial support," Judge Bundy Smith wrote.
Judges Smith and Bundy Smith concluded that it could not serve the child's best interests "to have an order of filiation declare respondent to be her father, a man, who in addition to having no biological tie, has no interest in continuing a relationship with her or her mother."
Mark was represented by Ann L. Detiere of Manhattan. Steven P. Forbes of Queens argued for Shondel while Barbara H. Dildine of Brooklyn appeared as law guardian.
One of the biggest problems I had with this Mark D. was the fact that with no thought whatsoever he signed off on immigration papers for a child (and her mother). Let’s face it although that wasn’t mentioned in the piece, no one is going to let a child immigrate here alone. This was a package deal that Mark D. signed our names to.
So he enabled two new citizens to reach our shores; thus, guarantoring what exactly?
That the tax-payers of New York State would cheerfully assume the liability he so carelessly tossed upon us? I mean as soon as this child and her mother were here due to Mark D.’s initiative they have to be provided for. So this article leaves out a whole other angle here which is to wit: Who is providing for these two new immigrants who Mark D. has enabled to join our ever-growing family? Was the child’s mother working? Was she making enough to be able to provide housing for herself and the child? What about medical care? AND last but not least, who would be responsible for all of this if the child’s mother could not be; if she became unemployed or ill, decided to quit her job or any number of other things that could happen to cause this child to become a dependent and need taxpayer funded assistance?
Was Mark D. willing to foot the bill here?
The bottom line is that every child is guaranteed a certain standard of living once they cross our borders. There is no such thing as prorated rights for children once you are here. You’re in the game for a penny or a pound, same thing. Thus, someone has to pay to provide a certain standard of living: food, shelter, clothing, schooling, medical care, etc., if and when a parent cannot do so or refuses to do so for any reason.
I mean let’s extrapolate Mark D.s situation out to the millions of American men as tourists or even soldiers abroad if they decided to sponsor a child (they claim as their own) and it’s mother to the US. THEN turn around and claim it is NOT their child, so they are no longer willing to be responsible for the child’s upkeep? Can we just revoke the child’s and mother’s citizenship then? Or their immigrant status whatever it is? Sorry. No can do. We are not going to upend the entire American immigration apparatus and childrens’ lives to convenience foolish men, that’s for sure.
So the question is not really fairness to Mark D. vis-à-vis the child’s mother but what is fair to that child as well as fair to all the rest of us. Thus we cannot allow men (fathers or otherwise) to default on their financial obligations AFTER they have already established a child and it’s mother’s status here. Just remember a LOT of child support is reimbursement to the taxpayers’ for public benefits WE have expended on that child’s behalf. So that’s what we are leaving ourselves open to if we support the Mark D.s of the world, taxpayers getting stuck with the bill when fathers refuse to pay for any reason.
I’m sorry for Mark D. but he should have been more careful about sharing his precious citizenship rights with someone he didn’t appear to know very well. He seems to have given himself (and let’s make no mistake about this situation Mark D. GAVE the liability to himself, the courts just kept it where Mark D. initially placed it, at his own feet). Anyway he has given himself a liability of at least $200,000 over a 21 year period, maybe more as child support in NYS runs roughly about 10,000 annually…(factoring in all the add ons such as his prorated share of child care AND uncovered medical expenses). So Mark D. has given himself a tidy burden. But before we shed any tears for Mark D. let’s remember one thing: that burden could have easily morphed into a burden on ALL the rest of us in New York State IF the courts did not return it to its rightful place at the feet and in the wallet of Mark D.
Thus as I said legally the ruling was correct, although morally obviously it has some defects.
The only comfort I can think of to give Mark D. is that a few courts have allowed men who were victims of paternity fraud to sue in civil court for damages. This is a slow but steadily growing trend which some Judges are allowing to ease the burden on men in the future, if and when the child is no longer collecting public benefits. This way if the girl’s mother is working and he wins his case, he can collect from her salary each week, (maybe it will offset the child support). Or if the mother ever buys a house or some other asset at a later date (and it happens all the time immigrants come here and ten years later own property worth a few hundred thousands dollars, happens every day); anyway Mark D can use the judgment to confiscate the child’s mother’s assets and reimburse himself from that.
Otherwise if this mother NEVER works, NEVER buys any property or anything of value then it looks like Mark D. is simply out of luck. Hopefully he has learned, and other men have learned from this story, to NOT be so careless in trying to assign their 'little liabilities' to innocent NYS taxpayers in the future.
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1152534921526
N.Y. High Court Says Mistaken Avowal of Fatherhood Imposes an 'Equitable Paternity'
John Caher
New York Law Journal
July 11, 2006
He who acts like a father, is a father -- if not biologically than at least legally -- the Court of Appeals said Thursday in imposing "equitable paternity" on a man who wrongly assumed he had fathered a girl and acted accordingly.
The court in Matter of Shondel J. v. Mark D., 40, upheld the trial court and the Appellate Division, 2nd Department, in ordering a man to pay child support on behalf of a child he did not father. In doing so, it recognized the legislatively endorsed concept of "equity paternity," or paternity by estoppel (see Family Court Act §§ 18 [a] and 532 [a]).
Shondel J. centers on a Guyana native who, while living in New York, met a woman in Guyana while visiting family in 1995. After the man, Mark D., returned to New York, the woman, Shondel J., informed him that she was pregnant and carrying his child.
Mark did not dispute his paternity. Instead, he helped pay for Shondel's pregnancy, visited the girl he thought was his and made her a beneficiary of his life insurance. He also signed a letter affirming his fatherhood so the child could obtain immigration papers. In 1999, he married another woman, and they have children.
The next year, Shondel moved to New York and lodged a paternity petition in Brooklyn, and Mark filed a separate visitation petition. A court-ordered DNA test proved that Mark was not the father.
At that point, Mark attempted to sever ties with the girl. But he was equitably estopped from disclaiming paternity and ordered to pay child support. The child support amounted to $78 weekly, plus retroactive support of $12,859. Mark has had no personal contact with the child since March 2000.
On appeal, Mark argued that the imposition of "equitable paternity" effectively saddled him with an involuntary adoption, in violation of the Constitution and contrary to public policy.
But the 2nd Department, and now the Court of Appeals, focused not on whether Mark got a raw deal, but on the best interests of the child.
"In allowing a court to declare paternity irrespective of biological fatherhood, the Legislature made a deliberate policy choice that speaks directly to the case before us," Judge Albert M. Rosenblatt wrote for the 5-2 majority. "The potential damage to a child's psyche caused by suddenly ending established parental support need only be stated to be appreciated. Cutting off that support, whether emotional or financial, may leave the child in a worse position than if that support had never been given."
Like the lower courts, the Court of Appeals found that Mark had in every way held himself out to be the child's father -- buying her Christmas and birthday presents, referring to himself as "daddy," introducing her to his family, and regularly communicating with her. Mark had claimed he had rarely seen or had contact with the child, but none of the courts hearing his case believed him.
"The issue does not involve the equities between the two adults; the case turns exclusively on the best interests of the child," Judge Rosenblatt wrote. "The Legislature did not create an exception for men who take on the role of fatherhood based on the mother's misrepresentation ... [T]he mother's motivation and honesty are irrelevant; the only issue for the court is how the interests of the child are best served."
All four women on the court -- Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye and Judges Carmen Beauchamp Ciparick, Victoria A. Graffeo and Susan Phillips Read -- joined Rosenblatt. Judge George Bundy Smith dissented in an opinion joined by Judge Robert S. Smith.
'COMPLETELY INNOCENT'
The dissenters objected to the application of estoppel against a "completely innocent litigant" who was misled by the child's mother. They noted that the woman swore in Family Court that she had not had sexual relations during the relevant time span with anyone other than Mark, an assertion that DNA analysis proved was a lie.
They said the decision rewards people who make no effort to nurture or support a child who may be their own while penalizing people like Mark who immediately assumed responsibility.
"With this decision, this Court supports a public policy that says a man should never take on a parental role unless he wants to be unconditionally responsible for the child's financial support," Judge Bundy Smith wrote.
Judges Smith and Bundy Smith concluded that it could not serve the child's best interests "to have an order of filiation declare respondent to be her father, a man, who in addition to having no biological tie, has no interest in continuing a relationship with her or her mother."
Mark was represented by Ann L. Detiere of Manhattan. Steven P. Forbes of Queens argued for Shondel while Barbara H. Dildine of Brooklyn appeared as law guardian.
Monday, July 10, 2006
More Propaganda against Mothers
Well I just spent a horrific weekend pouring through a hate-filled diatribe against mothers called Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection authored by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. I generally don’t even read these sorts of books knowing that my blood pressure is sure to go through the roof (and it did, it’s not down to normal yet); but I’ve decided that I can’t really ignore them either; since my blog exists to combat just this sort of hate-filled propaganda against mothers. Thus to not engage almost negates the mission, so to speak; not to mention the oft quoted: silence = assent.
AND since nobody else chose to say anything, I guess it’s up to me.
Anyway “to the chase Watson”, as Sherlock Holmes would say.
Basically Hrdy has produce over 500 pages of claptrap against mothers. She’s scoured the world over for the most marginalized groups of women from African-American mothers on crack in the United States to a tribe of indigenous peoples living in Papua New Guinea and used these marginalized groups to paint a picture of human mothers as being murderous to their infants and uncaring if our children lived or died.
Actually according to Hrdy human mothers are the worse in the world. It’s probably a freakin miracle that we’ve managed to produce any living descendents never mind the BILLIONS of little people scattered all over the world today. Hrdy really feels chimps, for instance, make far better mothers then human mothers do. By example Hrdy shows a picture of her favorite mother, Flo, a chimp who Jane Goodall studied and wrote about (see page 30). In Flo’s picture she sits surrounded by her family lovingly holding her youngest. By contrast the human mother on page 456 that Hrdy profiled is busy unburying her poor infant from a pile of old leaves and twigs after changing her mind about leaving the poor thing there to die. This, of course, is to illustrate what a typical human mother would normally do to her kids versus kind-hearted Flo, the chimp.
The other interesting question to me is would the photographer have picked the kid up if the mother hadn’t unburied her? Or like nature photographers do when photographing in the wild, would they have just allowed nature to take its course and left the poor kid buried there?
Anyway, don’t get me wrong I LOVE Flo. I saw all Jane Goodall’s specials, read all her books and Flo is my favorite of the chimp mothers as well. Nevertheless, I think there is someplace else on the bell shaped curve where most human mothers should fall other then in the last curve featuring the Eipo mother burying her kid alive (in the dead last percentile) no pun intended.
I hate to point out the obvious to Hrdy but this entire books reeks of good old fashion racism including the many pictures scattered throughout it. As every bleak mother who represents the supposed “humankind Pleistocene” Eve we are supposedly all descended from is either black or Indian and most are painted as either having murdered their kids or been so negligent that they killed them off through neglect.
What’s up with that Hrdy?
I mean one of Hrdy favorite profiled mothers is a Kung mother from the bush, who wasn’t able to raise even one of her children to adulthood. Yet Hrdy obviously doesn’t see the irony here in using this mother as an example of the quintessential Pleistocene mother that we all supposedly descended from. I mean in a world where human mothers have, if nothing else, fulfilled the prime directive to be ‘fruitful and multiple’ using this mother as a representative for most of the rest of us in our role as mothers is nothing more then a joke really. Clearly Hrdy picked this woman to profile since she fit what Hrdy wanted to paint as the profile of a poor mother, not like most of us normal mothers at all.
Hrdy constantly refers to mother committing infanticide. Yes, they do but she never mentions the society that demands a mother do this, frequently at the risk of her own life if she disobeys. I mean Augustus Caesar exposed his own infant grand daughter at birth because she was illegitimate and does Hrdy think ANY person would have defied him by trying to pick the baby up and bring it into shelter? Obviously she hasn’t read too much of the bible, one of our founding documents, as the story of Moses illustrates the conniving mothers were forced into, at the risk of their own lives, to keep their children alive when others decided they had to die for whatever reason. From an archaic mother forced to give up her youngest daughter to be sacrificed for a ‘fair wind’ to Troy, right up through our own American history of slavery with thousands of stories of the scheming mothers had to do trying to save their kids, there is no mention whatsoever of the outside forces driving mothers to commit these atrocities.
In essence Hrdy appears to be trying to give men a free pass.
Not to mention that after a couple of eons of having to submit to these horrors, yes probably most women do wind up accepting, justifying and eventually even perpetuating the very crimes against their nature that Hrdy writes about…but that is not the essence of human motherhood, not by a long shot. Anymore then a cocker spaniel today represents his distant ancestor the wolf. Human mothers are like lionesses in their natural state. It is the society and laws of greedy men that have turned them into the bastardized version of mothers that Hrdy profiles today.
Unfortunately I didn’t see any recognition of this fact in her book.
Hrdy bends over backwards actually to paint men in a far better light then they merit considering their leadership role in building the societies where many of these crimes against children have been written into custom and law. She deliberately gives them cover in many instances. Even going so far as to paint the current genocide that has taken place in Asia against women, with about 50 to 60 million missing girls either aborted or abandoned at birth, as having some logic to it. Hrdy claims that the upper classes abort or abandon girls while the lower classes do not in order to have girls that will marry up.
Clearly looking at the numbers of missing girls in the region, however, we can see that this is not the case. Every class must be doing the same thing for these sorts of numbers to appear. Reading Valerie Hudson, “Bare Branches” you can see that Hrdy is making an incredible leap of faith here in assuming there is any sense or logic to these society’s actions. It is almost as if they were on auto pilot to replicate their past history no matter how damaging it is to their present. Actually most animal societies, which Hrdy conveniently forgets to mention when they go against her thesis, have far fewer males then females. It’s pretty obvious the reasons why. Too many males = too many aggressive alphas fighting for hunting territory, access to females, dominance displays ending in death and injury, etc. A few alpha males and many females is the usual equation in nature. Now too many males and few females in any society, animal or human, is probably going to wind up being a recipe for disaster as Hudson points out in her much better book “Bare Branches”.
Well I have to wrap this up now, but before I do I’m going to take one more shot at this author as she deserves it for the many many mothers she denigrated with this piece of vicious propaganda trashing mothers that she wrote. Just because Hrdy, herself, abandoned her own kids to paid minders and had no problem being away from them, sometimes for weeks at a time, doesn’t mean every other mother is cut from the same cloth. I think one of her professional colleagues had her number down when he said and I quote: “My own view is that Sarah ought to devote more time and study and thought to raising a healthy daughter. That way misery won’t keep traveling down the generations.”
A word to the wise is usually sufficient.
AND since nobody else chose to say anything, I guess it’s up to me.
Anyway “to the chase Watson”, as Sherlock Holmes would say.
Basically Hrdy has produce over 500 pages of claptrap against mothers. She’s scoured the world over for the most marginalized groups of women from African-American mothers on crack in the United States to a tribe of indigenous peoples living in Papua New Guinea and used these marginalized groups to paint a picture of human mothers as being murderous to their infants and uncaring if our children lived or died.
Actually according to Hrdy human mothers are the worse in the world. It’s probably a freakin miracle that we’ve managed to produce any living descendents never mind the BILLIONS of little people scattered all over the world today. Hrdy really feels chimps, for instance, make far better mothers then human mothers do. By example Hrdy shows a picture of her favorite mother, Flo, a chimp who Jane Goodall studied and wrote about (see page 30). In Flo’s picture she sits surrounded by her family lovingly holding her youngest. By contrast the human mother on page 456 that Hrdy profiled is busy unburying her poor infant from a pile of old leaves and twigs after changing her mind about leaving the poor thing there to die. This, of course, is to illustrate what a typical human mother would normally do to her kids versus kind-hearted Flo, the chimp.
The other interesting question to me is would the photographer have picked the kid up if the mother hadn’t unburied her? Or like nature photographers do when photographing in the wild, would they have just allowed nature to take its course and left the poor kid buried there?
Anyway, don’t get me wrong I LOVE Flo. I saw all Jane Goodall’s specials, read all her books and Flo is my favorite of the chimp mothers as well. Nevertheless, I think there is someplace else on the bell shaped curve where most human mothers should fall other then in the last curve featuring the Eipo mother burying her kid alive (in the dead last percentile) no pun intended.
I hate to point out the obvious to Hrdy but this entire books reeks of good old fashion racism including the many pictures scattered throughout it. As every bleak mother who represents the supposed “humankind Pleistocene” Eve we are supposedly all descended from is either black or Indian and most are painted as either having murdered their kids or been so negligent that they killed them off through neglect.
What’s up with that Hrdy?
I mean one of Hrdy favorite profiled mothers is a Kung mother from the bush, who wasn’t able to raise even one of her children to adulthood. Yet Hrdy obviously doesn’t see the irony here in using this mother as an example of the quintessential Pleistocene mother that we all supposedly descended from. I mean in a world where human mothers have, if nothing else, fulfilled the prime directive to be ‘fruitful and multiple’ using this mother as a representative for most of the rest of us in our role as mothers is nothing more then a joke really. Clearly Hrdy picked this woman to profile since she fit what Hrdy wanted to paint as the profile of a poor mother, not like most of us normal mothers at all.
Hrdy constantly refers to mother committing infanticide. Yes, they do but she never mentions the society that demands a mother do this, frequently at the risk of her own life if she disobeys. I mean Augustus Caesar exposed his own infant grand daughter at birth because she was illegitimate and does Hrdy think ANY person would have defied him by trying to pick the baby up and bring it into shelter? Obviously she hasn’t read too much of the bible, one of our founding documents, as the story of Moses illustrates the conniving mothers were forced into, at the risk of their own lives, to keep their children alive when others decided they had to die for whatever reason. From an archaic mother forced to give up her youngest daughter to be sacrificed for a ‘fair wind’ to Troy, right up through our own American history of slavery with thousands of stories of the scheming mothers had to do trying to save their kids, there is no mention whatsoever of the outside forces driving mothers to commit these atrocities.
In essence Hrdy appears to be trying to give men a free pass.
Not to mention that after a couple of eons of having to submit to these horrors, yes probably most women do wind up accepting, justifying and eventually even perpetuating the very crimes against their nature that Hrdy writes about…but that is not the essence of human motherhood, not by a long shot. Anymore then a cocker spaniel today represents his distant ancestor the wolf. Human mothers are like lionesses in their natural state. It is the society and laws of greedy men that have turned them into the bastardized version of mothers that Hrdy profiles today.
Unfortunately I didn’t see any recognition of this fact in her book.
Hrdy bends over backwards actually to paint men in a far better light then they merit considering their leadership role in building the societies where many of these crimes against children have been written into custom and law. She deliberately gives them cover in many instances. Even going so far as to paint the current genocide that has taken place in Asia against women, with about 50 to 60 million missing girls either aborted or abandoned at birth, as having some logic to it. Hrdy claims that the upper classes abort or abandon girls while the lower classes do not in order to have girls that will marry up.
Clearly looking at the numbers of missing girls in the region, however, we can see that this is not the case. Every class must be doing the same thing for these sorts of numbers to appear. Reading Valerie Hudson, “Bare Branches” you can see that Hrdy is making an incredible leap of faith here in assuming there is any sense or logic to these society’s actions. It is almost as if they were on auto pilot to replicate their past history no matter how damaging it is to their present. Actually most animal societies, which Hrdy conveniently forgets to mention when they go against her thesis, have far fewer males then females. It’s pretty obvious the reasons why. Too many males = too many aggressive alphas fighting for hunting territory, access to females, dominance displays ending in death and injury, etc. A few alpha males and many females is the usual equation in nature. Now too many males and few females in any society, animal or human, is probably going to wind up being a recipe for disaster as Hudson points out in her much better book “Bare Branches”.
Well I have to wrap this up now, but before I do I’m going to take one more shot at this author as she deserves it for the many many mothers she denigrated with this piece of vicious propaganda trashing mothers that she wrote. Just because Hrdy, herself, abandoned her own kids to paid minders and had no problem being away from them, sometimes for weeks at a time, doesn’t mean every other mother is cut from the same cloth. I think one of her professional colleagues had her number down when he said and I quote: “My own view is that Sarah ought to devote more time and study and thought to raising a healthy daughter. That way misery won’t keep traveling down the generations.”
A word to the wise is usually sufficient.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish
Well I'm happy to see that at least one case out there of judicial misconduct was dealt with appropriately. This woman's employment was terminated and hopefully she won't be able to commit more mischief through employment in the legal field again.
What really worries me is that two judges up in Albany actually voted in her favor.
I mean the woman knew a police officer was waiting outside her courtroom with a warrant for Derek Sterling, a robbery suspect. Robbery, one of the most dangerous crimes there is, as any resistance or miscalculation can lead to serious injury or even death of the victim. Yet this Judge had the audacity to order another court officer to escort Sterling out of the courtroom using an elevator reserved for employees only. Thus aiding and abetting Sterling to avoid another officer of the court performing his duty.
Yet two judges doubt if she should have had her employment terminated????
Huh????
I don't know. But New York is definitely overdue for a thorough house-cleaning of our court system.
This story is just ONE example of the reasons why.
http://ny.metro.us/
Metro
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Queens Judge Kicked off Bench
Albany N.Y. A state Supreme Court justice accused of helping a suspect evade arrest in 2004 was thrown out of ofice yesterday by the state's highest court. But two judges on the Court of Appeals said Justice Laura Blackburne's actions, while a mistake, did not merit removal from the bench. The State Commission on Judicial Conduct voted 8-2 last year to remove Blackburne from her post in Queens county after she told a court officer to escort robbery suspect Derek Sterling out a rear door to an elevator reserved for judges and out of sight of a detective waiting for him.
What really worries me is that two judges up in Albany actually voted in her favor.
I mean the woman knew a police officer was waiting outside her courtroom with a warrant for Derek Sterling, a robbery suspect. Robbery, one of the most dangerous crimes there is, as any resistance or miscalculation can lead to serious injury or even death of the victim. Yet this Judge had the audacity to order another court officer to escort Sterling out of the courtroom using an elevator reserved for employees only. Thus aiding and abetting Sterling to avoid another officer of the court performing his duty.
Yet two judges doubt if she should have had her employment terminated????
Huh????
I don't know. But New York is definitely overdue for a thorough house-cleaning of our court system.
This story is just ONE example of the reasons why.
http://ny.metro.us/
Metro
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Queens Judge Kicked off Bench
Albany N.Y. A state Supreme Court justice accused of helping a suspect evade arrest in 2004 was thrown out of ofice yesterday by the state's highest court. But two judges on the Court of Appeals said Justice Laura Blackburne's actions, while a mistake, did not merit removal from the bench. The State Commission on Judicial Conduct voted 8-2 last year to remove Blackburne from her post in Queens county after she told a court officer to escort robbery suspect Derek Sterling out a rear door to an elevator reserved for judges and out of sight of a detective waiting for him.
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