“10,000 march against violent crime”. “Mayor wants gangs crushed by army”. “75 percent of children bullied at school”. “Toddler in Starship Hospital with critical head injuries”. These recent newspaper headlines highlight the deep-seated social crisis New Zealand is facing.

It is the ugly side of our country: children being brutilised and killed by adults who should be protecting them; escalating levels of bullying in schools; hordes of disorderly youths causing mayhem on the streets; gangs in control of a lucrative drug trade that has infiltrated deep into communities all around the country. These are problems that are now so serious they cannot be ignored.

The reality is that increasing violence is destroying lives on a daily basis. Hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money is being spent on mopping up the damage with massive human resources needed for front-line crisis work. Endless minds are engaged in devising strategies to deal with the problems, but while many well-meaning people come up with many well-meaning ‘solutions’, few – if any – are prepared to deal with the real root cause of this social crisis.

The fact is that endless studies show that virtually every major social pathology we face can be linked back to the breakdown of the family: violent crime, drugs and alcohol abuse, truancy, unwed pregnancy, suicide, psychological disorders – these all correlate more strongly to the absence of a biological married father in the home than with any other single factor.

The majority of prisoners, juvenile detention inmates, high school dropouts, pregnant teenagers, adolescent murderers, and rapists come from fatherless homes. The connection between single-parent households and crime is so strong that controlling for this factor erases the relationship between race and crime as well as between low income and crime.1

New Zealand’s Principal Youth Court Judge, Andrew Becroft, recently released figures from a study of youth crime that confirms that the majority of serious youth offenders – a staggering 82 percent - have lost contact with their father: only 12 percent of the offenders who came through the court were living with both parents, 28 percent were living with one parent (usually their mother) and 60 percent were not living with either their mother or their father.2

That is clearly not to say that every child being raised without a dad ends up in trouble, or that every child raised by a married couple does well, but on the balance of probability, children raised without their natural father, will face greater difficulties in life, than children brought up with their dad to love, guide and protect them.

Fathers play a vital role in bringing up their children. From the rough and tumble play with toddlers, to the crucial task of setting boundaries, enforcing discipline and challenging children to accept responsibilities and become more independent, a father’s influence is crucial. It is especially the case in the socialisation of teenagers, where a father will provide a role model of what men are supposed to be like on the job, in the home, with women, and with children.

Judge Becroft has described the deep-seated need that boys have for a father figure in this way: “14, 15, and 16 year-old boys seek out role models like ‘heat seeking missiles’. It’s either the leader of the Mongrel Mob or it’s a sports coach or it’s Dad. But an overwhelming majority of boys who I see in the Youth Court have lost contact with their father. …What I’m saying is that I’m dealing in the Youth Court with boys for whom their Dad is simply not there, never has been, gone, vanished and disappeared”.

It is this collapse of fatherhood that is at the heart of New Zealand’s social crisis. There are now hundreds of thousands of New Zealand children growing up in fatherless homes. Too many live in crime-ridden neighborhoods where violence is the norm, where alcohol and drug abuse are commonplace, and where disaffected dropouts roam the streets instead of being meaningfully engaged in school.

According to Judge Becroft an astonishing 80 percent of teenage offenders who go through the youth court have drug or alcohol problems and a staggering 70 percent aren’t enrolled in any form of education!3

This crisis is of the government’s own making. While the seeds of family disintegration were sown by the Labour Government in the seventies - with policies designed to progress the feminists’ agenda of independence for women - successive National governments allowed the situation to get worse.

At the core of the problem is the Domestic Purposes Benefit. Labour introduced the DPB in order to provide unhappy mothers with an alternative to a husband. The DPB gave an unconditional state guaranteed welfare benefit to any woman who wanted to raise a child on her own. Over the years the DPB has become a way of life for hundreds of thousands of women and their children. Many of these are now caught up in a cycle of intergenerational welfare dependency to become part of New Zealand’s growing dysfunctional underclass.

This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator is renowned author and commentator Sir Bob Jones. In his opinion piece Homo Degeratus, Bob describes - in his forthright way - how a “welfare-sated under-class … is now thriving in New Zealand; slobbering, tattooed, illiterate, pig-ignorant, prolific breeding, drug-infested, alcoholic, welfare dependent, murdering and robbing, barbaric filth and it is all traceable solely to welfare excess and the DPB in particular. I for one have had enough. Disproportionately Maori, their existence is a disgrace, not to Maoridom but to the human race”.

Bob echoes the despair of many New Zealanders when he states: “I sense and personally feel, a widespread sense of hopelessness about the current state of affairs. The solution lies with our politicians but what odds on a set of political circumstances which would throw up another Douglas to embark on a radical social reform as Roger did on the economic front?

He explains, “Ironically, when I write that the solution lies with politicians I could just as easily say that the problem stems from them. Primarily motivated by the pursuit of power, once in office the record shows that politicians driving modus operandi is not to rock the boat”. To read Homo Degeratus, click the sidebar link>>>

Bob is right, of course. It is difficult to find any political will to reform the welfare system in general and the DPB in particular - even though the politicians are well aware that children are the major victims of a system that is supposed to protect them.

No other country has a benefit payment that is as unconstrained as New Zealand’s Domestic Purposes Benefit. As Bob Jones mentions in his article, when the US realised the damage to children – and society - that was being caused by their equivalent of the DPB, President Clinton abolished it. He replaced it with a system that prioritised getting mothers off benefits and back into the workforce. Independence from the state was seen as the key goal. And in spite of a plethora of dire predictions about the consequences, the results have been very positive for all concerned.

New Zealand desperately needs politicians with the courage to do what is right for the country and replace the DPB with a system of temporary support based on work - similar to that found in many other developed countries. Hardship payments should be available for deserted or mistreated spouses, and the parents of teenagers should realise that the responsibility for supporting their teenager to have children of their own, will largely fall on their shoulders.

Most importantly, it should be signalled loud and clear that it is simply no longer acceptable to bear children if they are not going to be properly raised and supported. Children need a mother and a father who will love, nurture and support them, if they are to have the best opportunity at leading a successful and fulfilling life. That means encouraging marriage, since, despite its intrinsic faults, marriage still remains the bedrock institution of civil society providing the glue that binds mothers and fathers together for the common purpose of raising their children well.

Of course, much more needs to be done to support those parents with children who are presently running amuck: special schools with live-in facilities to give these children the routines and boundaries that they will be missing in their home-life may have a place. More than anything, the priority must be to connect these children with the education system, because no matter how bad a child’s home-life may be, an education can provide a life-line to a better future.

There is also much that needs to be done to fight the growing crime and violence within our society – but that is another subject for another day.

While none of this is simple, what we categorically know is that if we carry on as we have in the past, we will end up with a future that is far more violent and problematic that the one we face today. Doing nothing is not an option.

New Zealand urgently needs political leadership in the area of welfare reform. The DPB needs to be replaced as a priority and fatherhood needs to be restored. It is time the political parties stepped up to this challenge.

Political research

Wesley Smith charges the explicit point of the move is “revolutionary - to demote human beings from the uniquely valuable species and into merely another animal in the forest.

By John Jalsevac

Spain, June 26, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - What began fifteen years ago as a fringe cause of the most extreme wing of the environmentalist movement has just yesterday been given an unprecedented level of recognition by the government of a developed Western nation.

A Spanish parliamentary committee yesterday gave its support to a resolution that would grant so-called “great apes” the rights to life, liberty and freedom from torture.

According to numerous mainstream reports, the environmental committee’s resolution is supported across party lines and is expected to be passed by parliament, thereby coming into effect as law.

“This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defense of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity,” said Pedro Pozas, Spanish director of the Great Apes Project (GAP). “We have no knowledge of great apes being used in experiments in Spain, but there is currently no law preventing that from happening.”

Should the committee’s resolution become law a major new animal rights precedent would be established making it illegal in Spain to use apes, including chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans in experiments.

According to a Reuters report, it will also become illegal to keep apes in circuses, or for the purposes of television commercials or filming.

The movement to grant apes human rights began in earnest fifteen years ago with the founding of GAP in 1993. Peter Singer, the same Princeton bioethicist who has argued that doctors should be permitted to kill newborn infants up to the age of 30 days old, has been one of the primary intellectual forces behind the movement.

Since it’s inception GAP has lobbied in favor of a UN Declaration on Great Apes. That Declaration demands, “the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes: human beings, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans.

“The community of equals is the moral community within which we accept certain basic moral principles or rights as governing our relations with each other and enforceable at law.”

The list of “moral principles or rights” includes the three “rights” included in the Spanish parliamentary committee’s resolution. Currently, however, it is not clear what penalties, if any, would be levied against an ape should an ape violate these moral principles by, for example, killing or injuring a human being or another ape in a case where it was not necessary for self defence.

To those who have been observing events in Spain these last several years under the socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, it comes as no surprise that such an unprecedented resolution would be passed first in Spain.

Prime Minister Zapatero’s Socialist government has taken Spain from being one of the most conservative countries in Europe, to being one of the most “progressive.” Since coming into power the Zapatero government has legalized homosexual “marriage”, marginalized the Catholic Church and the nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage on the whole, opened access to abortion, and otherwise embraced nearly every anti-life, anti-family, anti-tradition and anti-religious trend currently making its way through the West.

Spain, however, is not the only Western country to take seriously the movement to grant legal rights to beings other than humans. In fact, the push for legal rights for non-humans took a step into new territory within the last several months with the release of a report by the Swiss Ethics Committee on Non Human Gene Technology (ECNH). The ECNH, which had previously released reports on primates and animals, broke new ground by exploring the “dignity” of plants.

ECNH’s study of plants stated, “The Committee members unanimously consider an arbitrary harm caused to plants to be morally impermissible. This kind of treatment would include, e.g. decapitation of wild flowers at the roadside without rational reason.” A majority of the committee also concluded that plants, “are excluded for moral reasons from absolute ownership. By this interpretation no one may handle plants entirely according to his/her own desires.”

While traditional Judeo/Christian morality has always acknowledged that God’s creations, or nature, be always treated with respect, GAP, Peter Singer, and the like are instead promoting a utilitarian philosophy that denies the very distinction between plants, animals and humans, putting them on a fundamentally equal footing.

As bioethicist Wesley Smith explains on his blog in a post on the Spanish resolution, “Of course the purpose of this isn’t to merely improve the treatment of great apes - which could be accomplished as it already has been in some places via normal animal welfare statutes. Rather, the explicit point of the GAP is revolutionary - to demote human beings from the uniquely valuable species and into merely another animal in the forest.

“Once people accept that premise,” he continues, “Judeo/Christian philosophy goes to the guillotine allowing the utilitarian agenda to proceed unhindered, leading in turn to the moral value of the weak and vulnerable among us becoming archaic, resulting in their loss of the right to life and being used instrumentally for those deemed more valuable. (Lest you think we exaggerate, check out Peter Singer’s writings, and who can deny that his values are triumphing?)”

Smith concludes, “In the world being born out of the ashes of the sanctity/equality of human life ethic, value will be subjective and rights temporary - depending on one’s individual capacities rather than humanity. And we will see apes - animals (and eventually other animals), which are completely oblivious about the hue and cry being mounted against human worth in their names - being viewed as more important than some humans.”

“Transgendered” Driving Instructor Not a Woman - Muslim Husband Threatens Suit

By Hilary White

SHEFFIELD, May 23, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A Muslim husband from Sheffield England, has launched a complaint that an all-woman driving school has sent a man to teach his wife to drive. The teacher in question, Andrew Sherdley, who now calls himself "Emma", is legally considered a woman by the British government. 

Sherdley, who was married with two children, has obtained a legal birth certificate and "gender recognition certificate" even though he has yet to undergo surgery. He called the complaints "hurtful, offensive and deeply upsetting". The man who complained, who remains unnamed in the press, called the school and accused management of assigning his wife a male teacher, "disguised as a woman" and "with a deep voice", because he was a Muslim. In traditional Muslim communities, it is considered improper for a married woman to be alone with a man who is not a relative.

Read the rest of this entry »

Quest to Have Chimps Declared Persons Rejected by Austrian Supreme Court

Appeal taken to European Court of Human Rights

By Thaddeus M. Baklinski

VIENNA, May 23, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Austrian animal rights activists who tried and failed to get a chimpanzee legally declared a person have taken their battle to the European Court of Human Rights.

Austria’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling in January that rejected a request to appoint a legal guardian for the chimp, who has been given the human-sounding name Matthew Hiasl Pan.

Read the rest of this entry »

We all know what a pain viruses, worms, trojan horses (to name a few) can be when we get them on our computer. It can cause you to lose everything and the only way you can get past them is either formatting your hard drive (starting all over again from scratch) or protecting you computer with Anti Virus software.

I have tried AVG, AntiVir, Spydoctor and many other free downloads. In the end I preferred to pay Telecom $7 a month for their brand. But now I have found Anti Virus software that is free only for private and non-commercial use.

And it is good.

ANTIVIRUS KERNEL

* Almost 100% detection
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USER INTERFACE

* Memory test during the program startup
* Very intuitive Simple User Interface
* Testing whole disks or selected folders
* Working with the scan results - actions with infected files
* Virus encyclopaedia
* Log Viewer
* Various appearances - skin support
* Running from Explorer context menu
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UPDATES

* The system of incremental updates guarantees low traffic
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RESIDENT PROTECTION

* Standard Shield protects the file system
* Generic SMTP/POP3/IMAP4 scanner
* Specific MS Outlook plugin
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REPAIRING

* Limited capability of direct repair (especially macroviruses)
* Repairing files using automatically generated Virus Recovery Database (VRDB)

PLATFORMS

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Free antivirus - avast! 4 Home Edition dowload

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List member Heather Roy from the Act Party has written a nice piece on the plight of single parent fathers.

This week saw the issue of Child Support raised in Parliament, with National MP Judith Collins using the term ‘deadbeat dads’ to describe those fathers who fail - or refuse - to fulfil their obligation to contribute financially to the raising of their children.

On the whole, New Zealand is a ‘can do’ nation with ‘can do’ people: we can, and do, fulfil our responsibilities; we can, and do, pay our own way; we can, and do, stand up for fairness over discrimination. With such a pervading and upstanding social view, New Zealanders on the whole have no time for ‘deadbeat dads’.

So why, then, do we allow the odds to be stacked against fathers who are at the opposite end of the scale - who want nothing more than to play an equal or larger part in the lives of their children?

In 2006 the Care of Children Act came into effect, designed in part to shake up the Family Court and to dispel the ‘myth’ that the Court was biased against men and preferred sole maternal custody as the outcome of its hearings. Under the Act, ‘Custody and Access’ were replaced by ‘Shared Parenting’ - meaning that, ideally, both parents share equally the responsibility and joy of their child’s day-to-day care; neither parent has full control and neither parent can be left out of their child’s life. On paper, it seems wonderfully fair.

Changing legal terms, however, is a far cry from changing attitudes and it is the same judges making the final decision - often with the same gender bias they used before. An example of this lingering attitude can be seen in the case of one father who, having been left with sole care of his child for several months following the breakdown of his relationship with the mother, filed proceedings in the Family Court for an Interim Parenting Order.

Now, one might say that - as it were he who initiated proceedings - the father cannot complain about the treatment he received from the Family Court. However, this man went to the Court after indications that his former partner was about to take the child to live with her in an unstable environment. There were also indications that his former partner would not be keeping to the equal care arrangement they had previously agreed on as she required Majority Care of the child in order to qualify for the DPB. His fears were:

* That his child’s living arrangements while with her mother were far from settled - ie the child’s mother had no fixed abode and was relying on the generosity of friends to provide a roof over her head on a day-to-day basis.
* The mother would not make the effort to keep the child in Early Childhood Education
* With an informal agreement, the mother would use the child as a weapon or leverage whenever she wanted/needed something (as had happened on at least one occasion)

He also suspected that, once in receipt of the DPB for having Majority Care of their child, it would be HE who had the child for the bulk of the time - while having to pay Child Support to the mother.
Having remained in the family home, and having kept to the stable routine his child was used to, this father felt it best for his child’s wellbeing that the child remained with him in the interim until such time as his former partner was in a more suitable situation. He also assumed that the Family Court would feel the same way.

He was wrong. Within minutes of the preliminary hearing, this father realised he was quite possibly on a hiding to nothing. His former partner accused him of keeping their child from her for months, labelled him controlling and domineering, accused him of prolonged domestic abuse and insinuated that he put his career ahead of all else - all without a single shred of evidence.

The judge responded by suggesting to the mother that she had grounds to limit the father’s time with the child to Supervised Access, and accepted that the child had been withheld from her mother for months - despite the father providing written proof of dates and times that his former partner had refused to see the child due to social engagements.

Both parties were then given time to come to some kind of access agreement; once this was done and ratified the judge recommended that the father attend a parenting education course - a suggestion that was not made to the mother, whom he thanked for coming along.

And, so, the bias against fathers continues.

The fact is that politicians are right: ‘deadbeat dads’ DO need to lift their game and be more responsible for the welfare of their children. But at the same time there needs to be more equality for those fathers who truly want to be involved and are doing all they can - spending thousands upon thousands of dollars in lawyer fees - to do just that.

It is time for some real change. Politicians - indeed, New Zealand society as a whole - must take a closer look at the plight of these fathers. Perhaps if we improve the incentives for estranged fathers - and take away the unfair challenges that leave many left out of their children’s lives - we would see a drastic reduction in the number of fathers who are so beaten down by the system that they give up completely and play no part in their children’s lives.

I was asked about this test and what it means. I thought I would explain here because many of us are unsure how politics work. And our vote is going to be important this year.

The test has 6 pagers of questions which are about issues today from the left of politics and the right of politics and the authoritarian and the libertarian stand. Yet this test will not give you an accurate picture of what you believe in. It will not tell you who to vote for. You must decide that yourself.

The left is Labor in NZ. The right is National. These are the 2 main parties. We have other smaller parties which tend to lean left or right over issues and are mostly there so to put their views and wants forward that are unique and may not be included with the left and right parties policies. These small parties make deals with the bigger parties by giving their support for the bigger parties to make changes and gain a move they wanted. Winston Peters wanted extra money for the pensioners so he bargained with Labour. He gave his support to them to pass something and his party got what they wanted.

United future did the same. They wanted a families commission so they bargained with Labor the same way. The Maori party has done the same and so has the Greens.

The talk of politics is full of talk of the left and the right, but what exactly is the difference between the two?

How To Tell Left Wing From Right Wing In Politics

Well, the right wing tends to be associated more with ‘conservative’ values (with a small ‘c’)… the status quo and tradition. They tend to be more tougher on law and order than the left, and emphasise the importance of free trade and low taxation policies, often cutting tax when in power. A welfare state may be seen as important, but not the extent as for a more left wing society.

The right essentially plays up the role of the individual, and in an extreme right wing view, like atomism, there may be no society, but only a collection of individuals. Extreme right wing views are those such as fascism. Most governments these days move away from the right to the centre.

The left wing, on the other hand, is associated much more with what may be termed more liberal values, the role of society, and the community as a whole. Law and order policies tend to be more relaxed, taxation is increased by large amounts as they look to create a safety net and look after the poorer members of society through a more robust healthcare system etc.

The autonomy and role of the individual is undermined much more in such a system, and the state plays a larger role in people’s lives. Many governments of today occupy a centre-left position. These governments are more likely to experience poor law and order records, and declining success of businesses, due to the taxation policies and more relaxed approach to law and order.

An extreme left wing view is something like communism, which looks exclusively at the community as a whole, to the detriment of the individuals that constitute that community. Both extremes lead to very unpleasant systems under which to live.

We in NZ are on the left at the moment and we have very extreme left wing people running the show. Many of these people are behind the scenes and are known to be associated with communism back in Russia. In fact Helen Clarke (our Prime Minister) herself attended a course at a communist school in Russia.

But don’t let that be a reason not to lean to the left. You need to use your vote carefully and think what is best for you as a parent and for your children because you are raising children. They are your concern. Labor is not just socialists but very strong feminists. And feminists do stand up for women and for children. Yet they are biased to men and boys.

If you are a working mother or father who is paying taxes you may want to vote for National to get a tax break. And if you are in business for yourself you will find National gives the best deal for business. The left tends to take from the well off to give to the poorer community. And they are prone to put more pressure and laws on business.

What is an
Authoritarian?

Authoritarianism describes a form of social control characterised by strict obedience to the authority of a state or organisation, often maintaining and enforcing control through the use of oppressive measure. Authoritarian regimes are strongly hierarchical.

In an authoritarian form of government, citizens are subject to state authority in many aspects of their lives, including many matters that other political philosophies would see as erosion of civil liberties and freedom.There are various degrees of authoritarianism; even very democratic and liberal states will show authoritarianism to some extent, for example in areas of national security. Usually, an authoritarian government is undemocratic and has the power to govern without consent of those being governed.

This is the type of Government form we have now. Labor does not listen to the people but pushes laws onto them against their will. We have had the ‘No smacking bill’ this year with much protest from parents and the ‘Electoral Finance bill’ which has stopped free speech and soon we will be under the “No hate laws” and many others to follow an ideology that is socialism through the Western countries.

Other laws have come through the Human Rights Commission such as children being able to choose their own sex at school and free choice in religion and other non discriminative laws.

All this is the state being the parent to the people and telling them how to live.

What is a libertarian?

Libertarianism is, as the name implies, the belief in liberty. Libertarians strive for the best of all worlds - a free, peaceful, abundant world where each individual has the maximum opportunity to pursue his or her dreams and to realise his full potential.

The core idea is simply stated, but profound and far-reaching in its implications. Libertarians believe that each person owns his own life and property, and has the right to make his own choices as to how he lives his life - as long as he simply respects the same right of others to do the same.

Another way of saying this is that libertarians believe you should be free to do as you choose with your own life and property, as long as you don’t harm the person and property of others.

Libertarianism is thus the combination of liberty (the freedom to live your life in any peaceful way you choose), responsibility (the prohibition against the use of force against others, except in defence), and tolerance (honouring and respecting the peaceful choices of others).

Live and let live. The Golden Rule. The non-initiation of force.

This type of life style follows that people are paid for their value and not the same as every one else. It allows people the chance to better themselves and gain from being better. It is like being able to be competitive. The best person for the job. And not a quota of 50% women and so much % of each ethnic group. It means that what you own belongs to you and not the community. People who are well off would want to be libertarians while those on benefits would want to receive the same as the one who puts the effort in to make their life style better.

These people do not want to be told how to be parents. They want the right to decide for themsleves. They want the right to have their children follow their traditions and not be educated to be like everyone else. Today they would be the parents who don’t want their children being taught homosexuality and trans-gender sexuality at school. They would also be the parents who do not want the state running their lives.

You can be a left libertarian also and you can be a right authoritarian.

I am hoping this has been helpful.

Grab a coffee for this one.

It is a little long but well worth the read. Every part of it is an eye opener.

It discusses Eastern women’s plight for freedom and equality and asks and answers why feminists are not caring about these women.

Be aware there are some brutal things to read.

But what astounded me the most is that brown men are not bad men. Only white men. You see, if brown men beat their women it is because white men oppressed brown men.

It doesn’t say this part but I bet feminists agree with it …. if brown men beat white men then that is fair. That is for past grievances.

Go figure!!! I guess, brown women have a free pass to beat me too because I am a white woman.

stand your ground

Oh, and it describes the UN utopia and the genders feminists and much more.

I thought I would find out if I was left or right. Am I a Labour supporter or a National supporter? even though it doesn’t matter that much any more under socialism.

My political compass
Economic Left/Right: 0.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 2.31

Romano Prodi is the person that I am like politically. I quite like that because I do have an interest in economics and business.

And yet I am socially concerned for the people.

You will find this test interesting and you will enjoy the questions.

Take the test yourself (click on the words)