It seems that each animal species embodies some collection of traits that we humans have and/or recognize. Elephants have a lot of the best of us. Care, sacrifice, love, playfulness, stamina, endurance, determination--and grief, depression, and longing as well--if you don't admire elephants, get a check up. A recent PBS special on Nature was an emotional wellspring of insight into elephants.
mt kilimanjaro
A matriarch elephant, Echo, and her family are chronicled through many years including a heartbreaking famine near Mt. Kilimanjaro. Her wisdom leads to the survival of her family even after her death. The story of little Elijah is amazing. Born with poor legs, the elephants love him with great patience. he is speared in the rear haunch at age 8 but survives. the women of the preserve weep as he reappears many years later. (more about the women of the amboseli trust HERE did i mention you may weep most of the show? a good purge...
Watch this. you can see it all online here. more on elephants, their language, poaching, etc. HERE
"An intimate journey across the violent landscape of our cities through the eyes of those fighting to sow peace and security." There comes a time when one simply must step up. The lack of this sense of responsibility is what makes me so angry about Congo, and other neighborhoods. excerpts:
"On Sept. 24, 2009, Derrion Albert, a 16-year-old honors student, was walking home from school when he found himself amidst a violent confrontation between two rival groups from his school."
“Chicago has always been notoriously known for street organization, crimes and murders and all that, but what’s so profound for me is to see that, as I’m growing up, that death is inevitable and we’re not afraid of it.”
Order: Galliformes Family: Phasianidae Subfamily: Meleagridinae Genus: Meleagris Species: Meleagris gallopavo Subspecies: There are five subspecies of North American wild turkey: Eastern, Osceola, Rio Grande, Merriam’s, and Gould’s.
When I lived down south, the wild turkeys saw you a mile or two away; they did not let you see them. Here, I try hard not to hit them with my truck. (with complete success so far...)
"We Taliban will kill you in such a harsh way that no woman have so far been killed in that manner..." (This is beyond sadness.) K-State Leadership student James and others are bringing this to the Kansas State University campus before you can even watch it on TV.
watch extended preview HERE Save the date: Monday September 12, 2011 7-9 pm Leadership Studies Town Hall Free Popcorn
In Some Wars Today
It's More Dangerous To Be A Woman
Than To Be A Soldier
Hands On Kansas State.
click to view enlarged.
Created by Abigail E. Disney, Pamela Hogan, and Gini Reticker
The sadism and nonchalance are embittering. "Thousands of Iranians took to the streets in 2009 as part of the Green Movement to protest a disputed presidential election. The government crackdown that followed included some women being imprisoned, tortured and raped. This report shares some of their stories. It is a co-production with The Center for Investigative Reporting" from PBS HERE A gut-wrenching series of interviews -- transcript below I wish the Whole World was Watching.
The world remembers the murder of Neda ALga Soltaini, but things just get worse. (Lybia and Yemen, but ) No help in Iran, where intelligent modern women who want democracy are begging for help.
CORRESPONDENT: She said she was taken to a secret prison.
WOMAN (through translator): When the guard was shaving my hair, he was purposely shaving in a way that would cut my skin very painfully. And he left a little patch of hair in front just to bother me. I wasn't sitting in a chair as he was cutting my hair. He was holding me from behind and rubbing himself against me.
CORRESPONDENT: Next, she was blindfolded and gagged. Then, with her hands tied behind her back, she was dragged into an interrogation room. After being questioned for only a short time, Layla says her interrogator became physical with her. WOMAN (through translator): I was scared to death. The first thing he did was lick my face with his tongue. Then, he started touching my bra and all over my body. I was crying, "Please, please don't. I am innocent. I'm a virgin." He said, "No, you are not a virgin anymore."
Then he raped me. After he raped me, he urinated on me, on my whole body. CORRESPONDENT: Layla said her torture didn't end there.
WOMAN (through translator): Then I heard the sound of the whip in the air, and then felt it on my body. Then he untied my hands and he started caressing my arm like a lover. I felt something burning me just for a second. I screamed and he slapped me. He put out his cigarette on my left hand. He put out another cigarette on my knee. I was still lost in the first and second pain when I felt another cigarette on my chest, another cigarette on back of my feet, another, another, and another, a pack of 20 cigarettes put out on my body. CORRESPONDENT: Layla showed me the scars from the cigarette burns, but was too afraid to let them be filmed. As the protests continued in the streets of Tehran, Layla continued to be brutalized in the secret prison for nearly two months.
WOMAN (through translator): I don't know how many times a day I was raped. It wasn't just one person. There were different people. The whole time I was there, I was telling myself, be strong, be calm. The end of this is death, and death will only take a moment.
Death was like a desire for me. I wanted to die. CORRESPONDENT: Layla was released on several hundred thousand dollars bail, a price so high, that her parents had to sell the family business. She was never formally charged with a crime, and the secret police continue to monitor her. Layla was one of several women who have talked with me over the past year, even though all of us can face retribution from the regime for speaking out. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, "Rape was routinely practiced as a matter of policy to intimidate young ordinary people from ever coming out to protest again."
{I do not understand the squandering of all the good will and money sent to Haiti by millions who ASSUMED that "those in charge" would Make It Happen. The recent Hurricane threat brought embarrassing attention to the lack of efficient response to the quake.} [It reminded me of the death of Mother Theresa right after the death of Princess Diana. If we were to honor the Princess for her human rights work (no, not her beauty, celebrity, scandals, charm, etc,--it was her human compassion!) then we logically, MUST honor Mother Teresa as well. The networks had a t rick played on them by some Higher Power. and that was what the hurrican bearing down on the UNFINISHED or unstarted? work of Haiti.] Yeah, i know, get over there and help or shut up. Ok i will shut up. But listen to this guy! FABulous. His poems are made into auditory/visuals that are wrenching. Here is one. More on Haiti HERE and HERE There is another poem on the website; this clip below is the interview first with the Poem, Mother of Mothers at just after 7 minutes.
In October, PBS released a scandalous documentary about domestic violence titled “Breaking the Silence”. Despite studied science on the issue, the producers of the show intentionally censored all information contrary to their partisan mission, which we know now was to go to extraordinary lengths portraying fathers as batterers who take custody of children as the final act of abuse.
The tactical purpose of the documentary is to synthesize an epidemic of unrestrained male batterers who seize children from completely unprotected abused women. Perhaps if this documentary were about life in Sudan, they might have a point.
It did not take long for ombudsmen from PBS and CPB to agree with us. Ken Bode, the CPB ombudsman found that "there is no hint of balance in Breaking the Silence". The PBS Ombudsman, Michael Gettler opined “My assessment, as a viewer and as a journalist, is that this was a flawed presentation by PBS. I have no doubt that this subject merited serious exposure and that these problems exist and are hard to get at journalistically. But it seemed to me that PBS and CPTV were their own worst enemy and diminished the impact and usefulness of the examination of a real issue by what did, indeed, come across as a one-sided, advocacy program.”
PBS published an article in Current, glossing over the major flaws in the documentary. The focus is quickly shifted away from the core issues we raise –- which are that the documentary is deeply unbalanced, partisan, sexist, and a fakery of science. Current conveniently changes the subject, pretending that the brouhaha is merely over whether parental alienation syndrome (PAS) exists or not.
Censorship, Multiple Abuses of Science, and Absence of Journalistic Ethics
Dr. Richard Gardner defined parental alienation as ”any constellation of behaviors, whether conscious or unconscious, that could evoke a disturbance in the relationship between a child and the other parent”. Breaking the Silence is, in itself, an act of parental alienation aimed at all fathers. It is intended to cover for or rationalize-away the alienating behaviors of mothers -- even mothers known to be abusers – and generate irrational public fears and discrimination against fathers in public policy and law.
Dr. Murray Straus, the leading authority on domestic violence objected strongly to misuse of his research cited out-of-context in the NNEDV Guide to “Breaking the Silence”. The intent of the guide was to create an illusion that fathers are responsible for the substantial majority of spousal and child abuse.
Lasseur flatly justified censorship of all fathers perspectives (reasonable or otherwise), on the insupportable grounds that the fathers perspective is generically “destructive”. Read: when you are getting paid a half million dollars by radical feminists to do a partisan documentary, you only cite liturgy from the feminist “bible”.
Despite the torrent of valid criticism of the documentary, Dominique Lasseur, the producer of Breaking the Silence, clings defiantly to his indefensible film. He states in the Current article, “we believe that the comments and concerns that have come in so far [concerning the documentary] are often not based on the full and complete content of the program”. The reverse is true: the content of the program was intentionally not full or complete, as the producer has admitted in his prior two statements. We strenuously object to the fact that the producer intentionally censored information and perspectives that do not explicitly adhere to the radical feminist propaganda he attempts to transmogrify into social policy and jurisprudence.
The Current article also features an evasive exculpatory statement by the producers, but nothing by anyone legitimately criticizing the film. Here, the producer cites the long-debunked feminist myth “while women are less likely than men to be victims of violent crimes overall, women are five to eight times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner”, as his excuse for committing an hour of journalistic hate crimes.
Lasseur has generated a number of nebulous statements in defense of his film. None of them would win in debate class because he has never directly rebutted the points of our remonstrance.
Evidence Of Conspiracy
Our complaint is now much more serious than before. I have uncovered evidence that the producers of Breaking the Silence were aware that it was not an honest film.
Lasseur is planning another documentary aimed at establishing judicial accountability when judges do not acquiesce to the demands of radical women’s organizations. He is apparently working with Meera Fox, an attorney and executive Director of Abuse Solutions located in Berkeley, Ca, who among other things works the issues of domestic violence and child abuse as a trainer and presenter for public policy symposiums. Fox is evidently working with street-level women’s operatives, including the Mothers Research and Resource Center (MRRC), located in Gilbert, Arizona.
As is the case with most non-professional street-level feminist advocates, MRRC is rather loose-lipped about what it is doing, revealing feminist Schadenfreude that can often be witnessed when internal information accidentally falls into the public eye. The MRRC website demonstrates what the entire chain of actors was really thinking and doing behind-the-scenes of Breaking the Silence.
Both Meera Fox and Dominique Lasseur are apparently aware they are fabricating yet another false documentary, and that collecting supportive anecdotal footage might not be an easy task. The MRRC website contains an apparent confession [emphasis added]: “Dominique is passionately interested in continuing his work in this area, as he can see how raising the public's consciousness about this problem and indeed, creating a public outcry about it, will be key to achieving the reforms we seek in Family Court …. I know you will all agree that this is a project that would be worth its weight in gold if he [Lasseur] can pull it off. He envisions marketing a series on Family Court failure to Court TV, Frontline, America Undercover, or all three, if we can get him enough information, footage and support. The reason he met with me about this project is because I know all of you and he was hoping I could rally you troops to help him with his project.”
The phrase "worth its weight in gold" likely reveals Meena Fox’s end-goal as a feminist attorney in steering courts to liquidate fatherhood, seize family assets, and children. Is there any other substantial benefit she could possibly be chasing? We think not. "Pulling it off" is a term commonly used in planning bank robberies, political subterfuge, and other illegitimate activities. The statement that Lasseur is actively pursing the same target, and driving the execution of it all, suggests that he is on the same page.
We have archived this web page for future reference, since it will probably be deleted by the time you read this article.
The business relationships between the Mary Kay Foundation, the producers, PBS, and feminist activists appear to constitute a profitable conspiracy against men in marriage and society. The actors used the profits of cosmetics to finance a false and inflammatory documentary, transmitted via the federally-supported public television network, thus allowing feminists the largesse to easily end marriages behind the closed doors of courtrooms for arbitrary and even irresponsible reasons. This can be done successfully only if radical feminists can project all family problems on the husband, thus seizing chattel control of family, assets, and income.
Breaking the Silence plays into the larger multi-billion-dollar conspiracy of the “no-fault” divorce industry, that has bilked about half the fathers in America out of their earnings, savings, and social position as husbands and fathers. Divorce hurts far more women than it helps. In fact, divorce has left more women and children in poverty, without health insurance, and at risk than any other event in American history. CPB does not understand that it can help more women and children by helping spouses work through the normal problems and processes of marriage and aging than it does by perversely magnifying feminist agenda into a cause celebre for mass divorce.
Dissembling Science to Suit Feminism
Both MRRC and Meera Fox repeatedly refer to mothers as being the “protective parent” {archived copy]. In their usage, “Protective parent” means that motherly interference with the father-child relationship is expected to take place on ideological grounds alone. Read: parental alienation is “protective” when committed by a mother, but destructive and to women and children when committed by the father.
The conversion of parental alienation into a label with two vastly disparate meanings based solely on gender of the actor, and the tactical reason for using this label, has certainly been discussed with Lasseur given the fact that it is core terminology for Fox and MRRC.
In their review of Breaking the Silence, CPB and PBS must take note that “Protective parent” is a clearly fraudulent substitute label for parental alienation. This leaves Lasseur with no foundation in credibility to now justify the legitimacy of his recipe applied in Breaking the Silence.
MRRC makes wildly-expansive claims about the results of its “National Protective Parents Survey”, reciting many factoids about divorce and domestic violence known to be either unreliable or false. Elsewhere on the MRRC web site, Meera admits that the survey includes only 157 respondents (apparently all are women). As is the norm for feminist activists, the MRRC website is loaded with anectodal stories, emotion, and factoids; and lacks any evidence of scientific balance or credibility. It is quite clear that MRRC is a highly-unreliable partisan information source that any responsible journalist would immediately avoid, but which Lasseur is apparently actively engaged.
A major thrust of the pending documentary is to create the illusion that abusive fathers seizing control of children is somehow an American epidemic. This is absolutely false. According to The US Census Department, in 2003 single mothers represent 80% of all single-parent households, single fathers only represent 20%. If fathers seizing control of children in divorce is pandemic, the statistics would be reversed. If anything, the statistics prove that mothers seizing control of families is a problem – a fact reflected by the fact that father-absence has become our greatest social problem since 1960.
MRRC and the documentary attempt to create the illusion that men are responsible for all family violence. The vast majority of credible studies and papers prove that women initiate slightly over half of all serious spousal altercations, and are responsible for over 2/3 of all serious child abuse. Breaking the Silence takes a position opposite of these facts by citing a variety of unreliable feminist studies.
When observed from an aerial view, it is not unreasonable to conclude that Breaking the Silence was an act of parental alienation, collectively committed by all parties involved the creation and dissemination of the documentary. This places additional responsibility on CPB and PBS to make a robust and accurate documentary, to undo the damage it has done.
Many Organizations Expect Responsible Decision by PBS
PBS has taken a surprisingly long time to publish the results of its inquiry. At worst, this could be “stonewalling” (as they say in management science parlance). I do not see any justification for further delay. The issues are bright and clear.
There is no evidence suggesting that this documentary is well-founded either in truth, science, or balance. It is merely a question of whether PBS has the simple corporate candor to set the record straight and make an acceptable compensatory documentary to correct the damage it has done to public attitudes towards men.
PBS cannot take the position that it is innocent. At least on PBS affiliate was actively working with local feminist activists to place the film as training material to influence legislation and court decisions. PBS affiliates were also providing free advertising directing women to local feminist activists. CPB and PBS have done great damage by allowing Breaking the Silence to be aired on hundreds of stations, completely unvetted by leading experts on domestic violence and parental alienation.
PBS now has a distinct responsibility to issue a balanced documentary, which should feature balanced, well established scientists on family violence, such as Dr. Murray Straus. It should openly include the situations of fathers who are most often the target of parental alienation. PBS must also implement a stringent pre-release review policy for all programs covering marriage, divorce, domestic violence, and child abuse, since they have often been similarly misrepresented by both NPR and PBS in the past.
Given the seriousness of this situation, I anticipate PBS will respond responsibly. In the event they do not, we are all fully prepared to pursue this issue, using all ethical means at our disposal, for as long as it takes until PBS finds reason to be responsible.
Fathers will no longer sit for being abused by the media. Nine years ago, I organized the first national protest in the history of the men’s movement, over the movie “First Wives Club”. The protest, hastily organized in eight days and held in 26 cities across America, was covered briefly in Time Magazine. A segment was filmed for Hard Copy. Universal Studios immediately cancelled the sequel, which was already in progress, and has avoided these waters ever since.
If PBS fails to honor its public mandate, Congress should end all funding of CPB and PBS. CPB is using public funds to broadcast perverse feminist social re-engineering propaganda to illegitimately influence legislation and judicial decisions.
Secondly, if PBS fails to act appropriately, everyone considering membership or making a gift to CPB or PBS, should take note that their monies may be misused to spread hate and arbitrarily destroy marriage, fatherhood, and the futures of thousands of women and children.
David R. Usher is President of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, Missouri Coalition
