Yes I was totally marginalised seeing my children 19 times in 15 years. Thank you Family Court.

So why am I writing now? After many years I have discovered my eldest son working as a shop assistant in a cut price discount store. He is grossly overweight, has a low self esteem, I have not approached him yet and I am seeking advice how to approach him. Financially I have succeed in life, I would love to make his life better however I need him to know that despite everything he has been told I never deserted him.

Three years ago I saw him in Collins Street and approached him. After some minutes he walked away saying “No, No, No”

Please help

Why was H.C. Brown, Australia’s Ambassador to Sweden and his posting abruptly curtailed mid term from overseas service?

Brown might have assisted Mamdouh Habib’s expeditious predicament form Islambad to Cairo. Typical of Brown’s style, get ‘em out of here, away from my watch.

It’s understandable to screw someone over as head of mission at post, unforgiveable to lie on oath.

Mr Howard C Brown: pig killing violence in Tonga, black market money laundering in Nigeria, possible lying in Australia’s courts.

We will never know the complete truth because verbal correspondence between Pakistan and Brown or other non written discussions between government officials and Brown were probably and conveniently not reported, except for anything to promote suspicion of Mr Habib.

Read what Brown said in court appearances: ‘we were short staffed at the time etc. before a likely invasion…’ yeah, yeah – heard it all before sport, 9 years on the gravy train trot and still the same old waffle. We were suspicious of Habib said the High Commissioner. Yep and Habib likely became an immediate non-Australian citizen and guilty in this particular High Commissioner’s eyes and influence on the consul’s responsibilities.

Anyone who has worked overseas closely with Brown would not be surprised by his predictabe comments in court appearances with regard to Mr Habib.

My son’s 3.5 and we’ve been co-parenting for 18months. (4 nights per week with me). At my ex-partners insistence.

My ex-partner works very long hours and relies on his partner to look after my son before and after creche. A few months ago my son told me she hit him in the face, and he talked to me about it a few times, and also told my sister. But CYFS waited a full month before talking to him, and by then he hadn’t spoken of it for weeks.

I’ve given up my career so I can be with him constantly during the days he’s with me.

We’re going into lawyer-led mediation shortly (at his insistence, even though I’ve done nothing wrong but try to protect my child!)
I’ll be aiming for my son to stay with me weekdays, and with his dad weekends.
Wish me luck…

A two-week coronial inquest into Mark Holcroft’s death in custody begins on Monday, 18 July in the
Wagga Wagga Local Court.
Mr Holcroft was a low security inmate who died of a heart attack while travelling in a NSW prison
van between Bathurst Correctional Centre and Tumbarumba on 27 August 2009.
The Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) is representing three members of Mr Holcroft’s family
at the Inquest.
‘Mr Holcroft’s death again raises questions about the transport of prisoners, especially over long
distances,’ said PIAC chief executive officer, Edward Santow.
‘The Holcroft family have waited two years for this Inquest.
‘PIAC and the Holcroft family hope the Inquest will shine a light on the conditions of long-distance
transport for prisoners and lead to changes that will prevent such deaths occurring in future,’ Mr
Santow said.
The Inquest is before his Honour Magistrate MacMahon, Deputy State Coroner.
It will be held in Wagga Wagga Local Court from 18 to 22 July, and in the Coroner’s Court in Glebe
from 25 to 29 July 2011.

All this was done after a violence free relationship and fairly amicable split by my parents.

The fathers in Australia can look forward to their children HATING them for what they’ve done.

Good on you Mens’ groups. By the way, do you think your daughter is going to be proud of the fact her father ignored basic evolutionary science to get his own way? HAHAHAHAHA.

This is amazingly thorough, but harsh. But, I don’t know any different, and have heard other more recent criticisms.

Are you suggesting that all of these people you mentioned have a “Hitlerian” agenda on their back burner, or just Doug Coe and other leaders of the Family?

I know of some really good people working non-violently for peace in the most hostile places in the world, who attend the National Prayer Breakfast. I would bet my life on their integrity and good motives. They are followers of Christ.

I would suggest, that there is no more possibility of the USA becoming a Christian Theocracy than a Muslim Republic..which many others fear.

I guess anything is possible, but hardly.

I really like what your Prime Minister said this year about Australia’s foundations of faith. Australia isn’t going to be a Muslim nation, and we’re pretty clearly holding our own as secular also, despite some who protest.

Obama attended the breakfast this year, as did my friend from Palestine.

What is your point about Muslim leaders attending? The people I’ve met who attended the Breakfasts, are very Muslim friendly. If we can get Muslims, (and hopefully Jews) and Christians praying together..why not.

Who would be taking over whom?

How about just getting along?

Thanks for reading.

All we want is what is best for the children.

Competent fathers should be able to have joint custody, if the kids cope well. However, it seems that most non-controlling and non-violent men don’t mind the kids being primarily with the mother (I have friends like that – they LOVE their kids and know they do best with their mum). Research shows that abusive men litigate for sole custody at a higher rate than non-abusive men, so its seems they do treat them like property. Which is part of the abusive mentality – family members are just property.

In an ideal world, I would love for the father of my kids to have more time, and have given him more time than I feel comfortable with. He is unhappy and wants a lot more contact, accusing me of parental alienation. But he has a criminal record when it comes to domestic violence and assault of kids. I am still forced to go through mediation, even though he can intimidate not just me, but the mediators too, who are trying to get me to appease him so he doesn’t screw me in court.

I know from the experience of friends and reading the Family Court judgments that if we went to court, he would get a lot more time than the children want. He would probably get Friday night to Monday drop-off every other weekend and a few hours in between. He wants more, I want less.

Why does he want more? To prove that he is a good dad. He thinks he owns them and he has a right to have them. He probably thinks they will suffer without him.

Why do I want less? Because my children are already traumatized and spending more time when I am not there will be detrimental to them. At least when we were together they could come to me. Now they see him unsupervised there are no restraints.

There are no safety nets for abuse. His lawyer told me that domestic violence is not something one can prove and his assault will not stop him getting time with the kids. I can’t get a restraining order now because we have separated and incidents more than 6 months ago don’t count.

Ash, I don’t know about mothers being more responsible than child deaths than any other group, I just know that if the kids get shared care, they are more at risk at physical and psychological harm than if they were with me. Heck, they are already suffering from soul murder and years of putdowns, invalidation, mistreatment, etc.

They are now healing and if I allow their father to have more contact with them, society will pay the price. Angry young people, unable to trust adults because they were never protected, boys who will abuse their wives, girls who will either quietly submit to abuse or hate men because of what their father did to them – all because some policy-makers thought they needed their father. Actually, some lobby groups I should say…

PS – I LOVE my father. And my brother. And my brother-in-laws. They’re great dads. Their wives think so too.

The UNHCR representative who interviewed him was an ethnic Vietnamese, Mr Nguyen Anh. I was NOT permitted to attend the interview but had to remain outside on the street because the entrance to that part of the UNHCR offices is locked after each refugee enters or leaves.

The refugee I accompanied to the UNHCR offices later told me that he was asked for his family’s details, the address of where he was staying in Bangkok and who I was and my address. He said that he managed to avoid answering those questions to avoid being arrested, to having his family questioned and to avoid implicating me.

He came out of the UNHCR offices quite shaken following the questioning.

The UNHCR Representative in Ha Noi is Mr Vu Anh Son, another ethnic Vietnamese.

I reported the above to the UNHCR on 14 May 07 but received no reponse.

It amazes me that the UNHCR uses ethnic Vietnamese as representatives, particularly in other countries, to interview Montagnard refugees who fled Viet-Nam because of persecution by the Vietnamese authorities in the Central Highlands of Viet-Nam.

I feel sad when I’m reading this statements. It’s also happens to my family. Every human being had a right, include disabled person. They have a right to get happiness. Sometimes, I feel like they do discriminated disabled person because the reasons that they gave to us is my brother will use a lot of cost if he got a PR. The amount that they stated is not logic because my brother can manage himself, can talk, can walk, can write, plus he can work and help my father repaired a car (my father is a mechanic) and he doesn’t harm people. But, it’s just because of he is a slow learner person???

If my brother needs treatment because he is sick, my parents will pay because my brother is their son, their only son; or we can go back to our country to get a treatment. We already apply a PR for 4th times since 1985 until 2010 and the results still the same even my father is an Australian. I feel so sad because we have being apart from 1982 until now. 28 years. Can u imagine it? Is it fair for us? Even God doesn’t separated their people; (normal people and disabled people).

I’m agree with Stephen Lunn; ” So what exactly did the federal medical officer do when he assessed Lukas? Did he watch him play cricket and footy in the back yard with his brother? Did the officer see Lukas in primary school, giving his classmates some exposure to disability and, by extension, tolerance? Did the officer watch as Moeller came home, his heart lightening with his son’s greeting?”

Ok, if its not a discrimination, and it’s all about cost and money, why don’t the officer assess them through a month to get an actual result either disabled person can manage himself or not. It’s really fair because we have to get to know the applicant by theory(PR form) and practical(applicant’s real life).
We cannot judge a book by it’s cover right?

Some instances could refer to St John of God for example where 100% were classifiable as pedophile according to the psychologist treating them.

Some instances could also refer to x (an undefined number or percentage) of the now more than 6,000 convicted/credibly accused priests in the US or it could refer to the number of priests (once again unknown) in the Melbourne diocese who were permitted to continue in ministry or does ‘some instances’ refer to the implied fact that this action was detrimental to the priest?

re not understanding why NGOs, human/childrens rights do not speak out – mostly that seems to be because these things are not against the law – as in there is not law to cover this particular aspect. History shows that the Catholic church in particular has a long history of involvement in the making of the laws of the country – just as the lawyers for pedophile priests employed by the church are aware of innocence or guilt they are also aware of the requirements for the existence or non existence of particular laws or regulations – a review of the global history of the support by the church towards the implementation of statute of limitations laws, of course they spoke out in support of the victims – they always do that publicly while at the same time their lawyers and lobbyists were working overtime to see them implemented as well as fighting any endeavor since to have them removed or to open up windows for the victims.

When you become involved in the sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy within the confines of politics you realize that political correctness is not its name, rather it is the political manipulation of government and politicians. We unfortunately have the notion of separation of church and state and our governments attempt to display that through not passing legislation in those areas – this is overcome through the use of Catholic (and other) religious bodies as providers of extension of government services bringing to the people proxy religious regulation – all done without a single piece of legislation.

The church on the other hand (and many of its followers) see nothing amiss even though the church’s canons are littered with references to civil/criminal matters (theoretically the preserve of the state if both parties are to hold with a separation of church and state). What that brings to the people of Australia is a dualistic law/legal system.

The two views are diametrically opposed in many ways, they cannot harmoniously exist with one another. The religious philosophy is that the religious teachings are right/correct/biblical etc and therefore they must be implemented (hence the lobbying/politicking/buying etc) whereas the opposing view is that religious belief/philosophy should be a personal matter and should not be permitted to organize to the point where they can lobby/politic/buy etc. What we have today is the result of more than 100 years of this and what we have today is a series of health/community/political/legal/services etc crisis as a result.

_Political Power of Western Jews in Israel in the 1950s and 1960s: Voices from Arabic-Speaking Minorities_

by Dr Dennis Walker, Monash Asia Research Institute, Australia

Left Zionism in East and Central Europe and in Palestine was a superbly-crafted state-instrument to lift working-class and lumpen Yiddish-speaking Jews up to bourgeois status and modernity. The Zionist settlement (Yishuv), kibbutzim (collective farms) and trade unions and their socialist facilities firstly in Palestine then from 1948 in the Jewish state of Israel were designed to offer education, health, empowerment and political power to Ashkenazi Jews. The power that once down at heel and bullied Jewish populations from Europe exercized over oriental Jews and Arabs in the state of Israel, though, was not much designed to help those other groups grow in wealth and power.

_Oriental Jews in “Israel”_

The Jews in the Iraqi-Syrian Fertile Crescent, Egypt and the other Arab countries lived in peace and harmony with their Christian and Muslim compatriots for many generations. Syrian-Iraqi Liberalism and tolerance made the Syrian-Iraqi Jews most unwilling to go to the Zionist state. Iraqi Jewish residents in “Israel” charged that the Western Zionists and their emissaries organized bombing campaigns in Iraq under the monarchy to terrorize Iraqi Jewry into migrating to Israel.

Iraqi and Egyptian Jews charged that the Western Jews who received them in “Israel” had racist attitudes. As a group of Iraqi Jews stepped from their plane the only person waiting for them on the tarmac was dressed in anti-septic medical clothing, wore a sanitary mask and sprayed them with insecticide as though living in “Arab country had polluted them and made them unclean.

The militant spokesmen for Oriental Jews in Israel charged that the white Western Jews in charge of Israeli education were straight racists who wanted to deculturize and degrade the Oriental children they taught.

Michael Selzer was a militant Oriental Jewish activist in the 1960s. He voiced his rage in an article “The Trouble with Israeli Education” published in the _New Outlook_ of October 1965. He observed bitterly that “the Israeli educational network is, evidently, incapable of meeting the educational requirements of children of Oriental Jewish stock whose number (proportionally to the population of their age groups) in secondary schools and at universities are only a half and a quarter respectively of what they should be.” Selzer argued that this fact was fraught with the most alarming implications for Israel. It was clear that the identification of “poor and backward” with “Oriental”, so dangerously noticeable in the current generation of immigrants, was already destined to apply to the next generation as well. “The feelings of frustration and discrimination, the tensions and hostilities generated by this phenomenon, so inimical to the healthy evolution of Israeli society are, it seems, likely to continue as an enduring feature of Israel’s social scene. The fire under the Israeli educational melting pot is flickering dangerously”. As regarded Western Zionist educationalists “we find a kind of white man’s burden. Norman Bentwich’s cultural ethnocentrism and that of the educational system of which he writes is no less than fantastic.”

Selzer wanted an educational system in “Israel” that would transmit literary Arabic to new generations of Oriental Jews, but in vain. “It is indicative of the way the Ministry of Education is preserving the image of each community that, apart from the evidence presented above, three percent of Israel’s Jewish school children are currently learning Arabic”. For Selzer, literacy in Arabic would give young oriental Jews access to their own ethnic heritage and to the wide Arab world. “Hebrew University’s John Dewey School of Education announced that it was launching a large research project to discover ways in which Oriental children “might better be adapted to the Western orientation of Israel’s school program”. In response to this cultural genocide, Selzer observed bitingly that “Israelis are avid cultural pluralists – but only in defending the rights of Soviet Jewry or in persuading American Jews not to ‘assimilate’ “. In Israel itself, the ruling Western white Jewish minority mercilessly crushed the discrete cultures of all other ethnic groups.

The greatest pain was that felt by the Oriental Jewish intellectual “graduating (despite obstacles) from high school and perhaps university and forced to the explicit realization that his own identity and that of his ancestors has no validity in the state of Israel and that his only hope is to renounce his own identity still further and to assume the habit of the European Jew. Israel’s education system is playing a major part in ensuring the new generation will feel no less alienated and resentful. It is not only perpetuating the communal clash, but in placing it on a more profound and permanent basis”.

A few bolder Israelis charged with “hypocrisy” the Israeli governments that until 1973 sent developmental experts to Black African countries while leaving Oriental Jewish migrants to vegetate in squalor in Israel itself. One such critic was David Hardom, who in 1965 wrote that “the word, backwardness, gave me a shock”. “He was quite right, of course: backwardness, in our own backyard. We send people without end to far away countries in Asia and Africa – instructors, doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers, all kinds of experts. There is less of a rush to go to the backward immigrant settlements in Galilee and in the south – and where are the people who will bring development and progress to the Arab villages amongst us?” (David Hardon: “Meeting With Young Arabs”, New Outlook, March 1965, pp 37 – 38].

The Israel government kept some oriental Jews caged up without jobs in the mavarot (transit camps) for as long as seven years, dependent on meager state charity. One alarmed article published in the West was “Jewish Gap Widens” from the Tel Aviv office of the Jewish Telegraph Agency. “The education gap between Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews in Israel has widened in recent years and Sephardim even lag behind Israeli Arabs in academic degrees, according to a survey by Dr. Yaakov Nahon of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies”.

Nahon found that only 6.1 per cent of Sephardic Jews between the ages of 30 – 35 had attended institutions of higher learning by the mid-1980s compared to 28.3 per cent of Ashkenazic Jews in the same age bracket. Among young Arabs, 8.8 per cent held bachelor degrees as opposed to 6.1 per cent of Sephardic Jews. According to Nahon the gap was narrower for the older generation, where 2.7 per cent of Sephardim had an academic background compared to 10.7 per cent of Ashkenazim.

_The Arab Minority_

An impartial and first-hand account of the conditions of Arabs in Israel was given by the Nigerian traveler Olabisi Ajala, _An African Abroad_ (London 1963).

He visited Taiba village, one of the more advanced of the Arab settlements in Israel. “It was thirty five miles off the main highway, over a dusty stony road. The general condition of the village was disgusting. Barbed wire encircled the entire place. The first impression I got was that of a bombed area, neglected and uninhabited. Yet human beings lived here”.

“There was no fresh water, pump, clinic or even an elementary school. The narrow lanes of the village, not proper streets, were untarred. Not a single dwelling had electricity. Falling and dilapidated houses with leaking roofs dominated the scene. I saw dirty, naked children playing a game of hide-and-seek as they dashed from one house to another. This was a sight of horror and poverty at its worst”.

The only presentable building in the village was the newly built police station. Lingering on its steps were a number of Arabs, over whom stood Israeli soldiers, brandishing rifles.

“An ageing, leading member of the community, whose name I cannot disclose, unhappily commented: ‘Before we were brought here, most of us were living in our own homes and on farms in the richer parts of palestine. Then the Jews captured our land and here we are, living like cattle. Our mosques were burnt to the ground by the Jews. Our houses were destroyed and valuable property was confiscated. We became homeless and helpless. Today we are living on the border of starvation not knowing where our next meal will come from… We can’t use the land around here for farming, and the police watch us all the time”.

Ajala saw segmentation and atomization typical of totalitarian race-states. The old Arab told him that they were not allowed to visit other villages or see their relatives around them. “Special permission is needed from the police before anyone can leave the village to buy food. We also have to be accompanied by two Jewish policemen to the city when we have any reason to go there.” (pp 175-6)

A Negev bedouin, Abdul-Muhammad Dahi, told Ajala that “he and the members of his tribe were shipped like a herd of goats from Bersheeba and taken to a remote area where there was no farms and the land was not fertile. ‘We live in camps, tents and broken houses surrounded by barbed wire’.”

The Israeli governments’ policy of starving the segregated Arab schools of text-books, funds, and even buildings in which to hold classes persisted over the decades. In 1980 Muhammad ‘Abri Nassar, Chairman of al-’Arrabah’s local council, vented the anger of the Arab minority in Israel at the state’s failure to build classrooms for Arabs. “It would be pointless to yet once again state the lethal shortages of buildings and classrooms which on the Ministry of Education’s own admission has now reached 1,300 rooms. It would be equally inane for the Government to keep on talking about the grant of 80 million Israeli lira released for this year when it was really supposed to have been allocated for last year and has now lost more than half its real value” (through inflation). “Nor do we stand to get anything in the end as the Government talks on about releasing any portion of what the Minister called ‘the Reduced Emergencies Budget’ which has no actual existence. Our central demand is that [the Israeli Government] meet the deficit and draw up a properly studied and scheduled plan to solve the problem within a period not exceeding five years. We will not be satisfied with an admission of the problem and declarations of good intentions. Until today… we have not heard of any practical decision to solve this problem”. ["Muhammed 'Abri Nassar to al-Ittihad: We will Not Feel Any Reassurance Before we See Realistic Solutions to the Crisis of Arab Education", _al-Ittihad_ 15 June 1980 p. 6].

Israeli courts kept the rapidly increasing minority population hemmed in within the existing housing. The courts could slap savage fines even for minor extensions of existing buildings: in 1980 the al-Afulah court fined villager ‘Ali Mahmud Darawish 100,000 shekels for adding a 74 square metre building to his private house, immemorially the property of his forefathers and within the precincts of Aksal village. ["Haramat Bina' Bahizah fi Aksal" (Severe Building Fines in Aksal), _al-Ittihad_ 15 July 1980 p. 3].

Alister Stone – a Brit, living in France

Everyone knows what little girls in KOKOPo get up to, this is no suprise, and say this as a Papua New Guinean.

She should be ashamed of herself…everyone knows about the deep dark beauty of Kokopo when the sun goes down….there is no such thing as unconsensual sex there…if anyone says different then they’re full of shit…!

This is the heart of the matter.

With so much blame and mud slinging caking over our eyes, how can we see clearly what the real issue is?

The real issue is the children, their health, SAFETY and well-being.

These are questions we should ask ourselves when considering problems like Kwaso and others that Solomon Islands is facing at the moment. As a Solomon Islanders myself, I don’t think that kwaso problem is a problem of its own but is a symbol of a much bigger one. If we look into individual’s lives, we will see that they have various problems. Some have social problems, some finacial, some even to meet their basic needs, they can’t afford, and for some is just sheer laziness to do something worthwhile.

I know every solomon Islander has the right to own a piece of land and that they can work to earn a living. Why not they get creative and use that creativity to creat job opportunities? At this point, one may say that creativity might come from education, which for some Solomon Islanders, they can’t afford it because its expensive. However I think in every problem there is a solution and that is what we as Solomon Islanders need to find out.

We need to get out of the excuse of saying we are not capable of doing things that can benefit our lives in a positive way. There instilled in every man and woman created an ability to initiate change. Only if he or she discover it, change can come.