America Under Invasion ... by Mexican Trucks

Author: Clayton B. Reid

NewsMax - America's News Page

Mexican trucks are rolling over the U.S. border, freely bound for anywhere in America, and it seems that nothing -- not furious Teamsters nor angry environmentalists, not even Congress -- can stop them.

Are the drivers properly licensed and sober or well-rested with the legal amount of down time? Do they speak English or understand U.S. road signs? Will the trucks be carrying illegal immigrants, drugs, terrorists, nuclear or biological weapons or other contraband? Will they belch tons of banned pollutants into America’s air? Will lower-paid Mexican drivers put American truckers out of work? Will the trucks gut the tax base which supports the U.S. highway infrastructure?

Frankly, no one knows. But, like it or not, the trucks are rolling. It’s a done deal.
When the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco denied an appeal from the Teamsters, the Sierra Club and other groups on Aug. 31, it opened the way for a “test program” pushed by the Bush administration to begin.

Initially, the Department of Transportation plans to allow 44 Mexican long-haul semis to participate in the first 30 days, but the program quickly will expand, to allow 100 Mexican trucking companies to send 1,000 trucks streaming across the border.

“This is a reprehensible proposal,” Todd Spencer, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association (OOIDA), told NewsMax.

“President Bush is following through on a promise he made to large economic interests that he would open up the border. I am astonished by the administration’s contempt toward the American public, Congress and the rule of law. They want to kick that border open and let the chips fall where they may.

“The Bush administration is determined to push these Mexican trucks down the throats of the American people and Congress.”

Teamsters President James Hoffa said, “This is a wrong decision for American working men and women. We will now proceed to litigate this case on the merits. We believe this program clearly breaks the law.”

Truckers already have begun to protest the project at the California border and a massive trucker’s protest drive on Washington has been rumored.

Opening the Mexican, Canadian and U.S. borders to free trucking was part of the North American Free Trade Agreement signed in 1994. Canadian trucks have free passage throughout the U.S. but the DOT has never certified Mexican trucks, until now, in response to a 2000 demand from a NAFTA tribunal which upheld Mexican complaints.

Mexican trucks, which make 4.5 million such trips over the border each year, have been limited to about a 20-mile zone where loads must be transferred to U.S. trucks for delivery. American-based trucks also are limited to a commercial zone. Under the pilot project, U.S. and Mexican trucks are limited to carrying cargo to and from the US and not between cities of the host countries.

On May 15, Congress passed the Safe American Roads Act of 2007 by a 411-3 margin, prohibiting the DOT from putting the “pilot program” into effect until a list of requirements were met, such as insuring full inspection of the Mexican trucks and allowing U.S. trucks to operate in Mexico beyond commercial zones.

Dr. Jerome Corsi, author of “The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger With Mexico And Canada,” told NewsMax, “The White House lobbied the Senate Transportation Committee to not hold hearings on the Senate version of the bill.

“It is clear that the Bush administration and the Department of Transportation are proceeding in complete defiance of the will of Congress and the American people.

“U.S. trucking regulations have no chance of being enforced in Mexico. For example, they say Mexican drivers have to be drug-tested, but there are no certified alcohol/drug testing facilities in the entire country of Mexico! There is no national criminal database in Mexico, to allow checking on the criminal histories of these drivers.

“The DOT is doing a poor job of inspecting American trucks, with only 40 percent inspected. How are they going to inspect trucks in Mexico? The DEA constantly finds Mexican trucks smuggling drugs, human beings and who knows what kind of contraband. There is massive organized criminal smuggling activity going on at the border. If al-Qaida gets into this mix, we will have a nightmare. You could have nuclear weapons, dirty bombs or terrorists in those trucks, and no one would ever know.

“Now it has started, it will never stop. The whole thing is a sham.”

The Bush administration argued “the critical bilateral relationship between the U.S. and Mexico would be placed under considerable strain by further delay in the demonstration project.”
However, Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, termed the program, “a calculated, cynical move intended to ensure that the border is open to all commercial traffic, regardless of the implications for highway safety.”

She termed opening the border, “a perfect storm. It is a predictable disaster.”

Claybrook noted that in 2005, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) stated that 17.5 percent of inspected Mexican trucks had bad brakes! One in four border-crossing drivers did not have a Mexican commercial license and 15 per cent had no logbooks.
The numbers involved are staggering. Seventy per cent of the $300 billion in trade between the US and Mexico in 2006 was carried by truck, according to Mexican Transportation Ministry figures.

Josh Dorner, spokesman for the Sierra Club, told NewsMax, “If you have a lot of new traffic in older, dirtier rigs coming into border areas, that will hinder our ability to meet clean air standards.”

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has said that allowing Mexican trucks into the U.S. would bring an additional 50 tons per day of polluting nitrogen oxide and 2.5 tons of other particulate matter into California. Mexican trucks are older, with 66 percent built before 1993, when cleaner electronic fuel injection began. In addition, Mexico doesn’t require use of low-sulphur diesel fuel.

Spencer told NewsMax Mexican drivers can be expected to fill up in Mexico, where diesel is not only dirtier, but cheaper. “Our average member pays $16,000 per year in state and federal highway user fees. How much will Mexico pay? They won’t be paying taxes on diesel fuel they buy across the border, and that may add up to 400 gallons per truck.

“There are no hours of service regulations in Mexico. You wouldn’t know when a driver got to the border whether he had been driving seven hours or seven days!

“There is no reliable way to do a meaningful background check on a driver from Mexico, because there is no reliable way to get data. Police are not going to be able to verify driver or vehicle licenses. When the DOT tried to check Mexican drivers’ licenses, they found that on 16 percent of them, there was no information available at all.

“The U.S. will pay a terrible cost in terms of safety and security.”

Spencer said that OOIDA intends to pursue legal action in appellate courts and to lobby members of the Senate to cut off funding for the DOT program.

“This is all being done to fulfill a promise President Bush made to (former Mexican president) Vicente Fox, that he would open the border with Mexico,” Dr. Corsi told NewsMax.

“Soon, there will be a thousand Mexican trucks on the road. There will be accidents. There will be pressure on U.S. truck drivers to lower wages. Hundreds, if not thousands, of American jobs may be lost.

"It is an assault on U.S. sovereignty and it needs to be stopped.”

Suicide Rate of Girls UP BY 76 Percent

What needs to be done?

Im MY opinion..

Get Title IV Federal Funding/incentices out of the way of parents raising/being there for our children!

Get the Drug Co's OUT, of our children's lives!

Let BOTH parents raise healthy happy children- short of PROVEN by a jury abuse of a child!

As usual in my Blogs, anything in RED within the story is MY personal opinion!

Suicide rate of girls up by 76%

Suicide rate of girls up by 76% www.tucsoncitizen.com ®

ATLANTA - The suicide rate for preteen and young teen girls has jumped 76 percent, a disturbing sign that federal health officials say they can't fully explain.
Or they don't want to admit?

For all people between ages 10 and 24, the suicide rate rose 8 percent from 2003 to 2004, the biggest single-year bump in 15 years.

A report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests a troubling reversal in recent trends. Suicide rates had fallen by 28.5 percent since 1990 among young people.

"In surveillance speak, this is a dramatic and huge increase," Dr. Ileana Arias said of the overall picture. She is director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

More research is needed to determine whether this is a trend or just a blip, said one child psychiatrist, Dr. Thomas Cummins of Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. "We all need to keep our eye on this over time to see if this is a continuing trend."
Sure lets let the stats rise again this year, that'll do a whole lotta good! (shaking my head)

The study also noted a change in suicide method. In 1990, guns accounted for more than half of all suicides among young females. By 2004, though, death by hanging and suffocation became the most common suicide method.

Four years ago, regulators warned that antidepressants seemed to raise the risk of suicide among young people, so stern warnings were put on the drugs' packaging. Now there is concern that some youths who need the medication aren't getting it.

(Wait wait wait hold up a minute here- how many of these children WERE on Psychotrpoic drugs- all? No no no let's NOT make this WORK FOR the pharma Co's people PLEASE!)
This reminds me of CPS saying it does not have enough workers to keep children alive- which is IMO a crock of *&% those workers are to busy taking children from homes where there is no abuse they can't possible focus on the truly abused child!)


Three comments so far -

2. Comment by Clouds 4. (customcloud) —

September 7,2007 @ 11:03AM

And now for the rest of the story...

Dr. Olfson acknowledged the potential harm for children in the Los Angeles Times:

"the mislabeling of children and adolescents with aggressive or irritable behaviors as bipolar, an illness that is treated with powerful psychotropic medications, many of which have not been tested in children."

He also acknowledged that the gender difference between the groups suggested that some boys with behavior problems or conduct disorders were being misdiagnosed as bipolar.

He noted that "irritability is a characteristic of bipolar disorder, but it is also a normal part of adolescence."

Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which funded the study, called the increase in bipolar diagnoses worrisome.

Manufacturers are not the only beneficiaries of the expanded antipsychotic drug market. Prominent child psychiatrists, such as Dr. Joseph Biederman and his disciples at Harvard and elsewhere, have extensive financial ties to drug manufacturers.

Harvard's child psychiatrists have been among the most ardent promoters of aggressive psychopharmacological intervention for children as young as two.

Already in 1998 the misdiagnosing of children as manic was a concern within psychiatry leading to a debate between Dr. Biederman and Columbia University psychiatrists, Drs. Don Klein, his wife, Dr. Rachel Klein, and Dr. Daniel Pine in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

http://www.bpso.org/debate.htm

Dr. Carlson said some parents seemed to prefer a diagnosis of the disorder because the illness, which is thought to be largely genetic, absolves them of blame. But she also acknowledged that "in some cases, providers would diagnose psychological problems in children as bipolar disorder to obtain insurance reimbursement for hospitalizations, a practice called upcoding.

"Even the director of the bipolar and mood disorders program at Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital, acknowledges "There's no question that there is misdiagnosis going on."

To gain insight into what propels this preventable potentially catastrophic phenomenon, one must examine the financial stakes and who the stakeholders are.

Bloomberg News reports, "The expanded use of bipolar as a pediatric diagnosis has made children the fastest-growing part of the $11.5 billion U.S. market for antipsychotic drugs."

And documents obtained from the Minnesota Attorney General reveal that psychiatrists have been greatly enriched by aggressive prescribing.

This report is on the link http://ahrp.blogspot.com/2007/03/minnesota-is-first-of-handful-of-states.html

3. Comment by Clouds 4. (customcloud)

September 7,2007 @ 11:04AM

The astounding 40-fold increase in bipolar diagnosis demonstrates that Dr. Biederman's view prevailed among US child psychiatrists. Some clinicians have laid moral responsibility for the psychiatry's loose diagnostic standards and irresponsible prescribing practices--such as prescribing lethal drug cocktails to two year olds-as was reported to have been the case of Rebecca Riley who died of a toxic reaction at age four - on the shoulders of Dr. Biederman

Bush seeks immunity for companies in spy case..

Bush seeks immunity for companies in spy case..

Verizon, AT&T face privacy suits for helping White House eavesdrop..

Updated: 4:35 p.m. ET Aug 31, 2007.

WASHINGTON -

The Bush administration wants the power to grant legal immunity to telecommunications companies that are slapped with privacy suits for cooperating with the White House’s controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.
The authority would effectively shut down dozens of lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies accused of helping set up the program.

The vaguely worded proposal would shield any person who allegedly provided information, infrastructure or “any other form of assistance” to the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. It covers any classified communications activity intended to protect the country from terrorism.

Republicans say immunity is necessary to protect the companies that responded to legal presidential orders to thwart terrorists in the years after 9/11. Yet some Democrats fear the administration’s proposal would do much more than advertised, potentially protecting anyone who gave broad categories of aid to the government as part of a spy program that monitors communications.

Because the administration does not want to identify which companies participated in the operations, it is asking Congress to let the attorney general intervene on behalf of any person or company accused of participating in the surveillance work, whether or not they actually did, two senior Justice Department officials said.
More than a dozen government officials interviewed for this story spoke on condition they not be identified because sensitive negotiations with Congress are ongoing.

Suits may bankrupt companies One of the officials said the defendants in suits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union — Verizon and AT&T — would be the key beneficiaries of the proposed legislation. Both companies are a central part of the U.S. communications grid, running networks that transmit both telephone calls and e-mails.

There is a divide among Capitol Hill’s majority Democrats about whether the companies deserve any protection. Some believe they were operating in good faith, on orders that appeared to be lawful. Others believe lawyers at the companies had a responsibility to ensure the requests weren’t an abuse of presidential power.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell considers the issue a key element of any legislation that Congress considers this fall to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA.

Trying to make his point, McConnell recently confirmed that the private sector assisted with the surveillance work — and faces lawsuits. “If you play out the suits at the value they’re claimed, it would bankrupt these companies,” McConnell told the El Paso (Texas) Times in an interview posted online last week.
The companies could face civil penalties of at least $1,000 per customer, for a total that would reach well into the billions.

Democrats say McConnell’s first draft of the immunity proposal is far too murky. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., an intelligence committee member, fears the language would go far beyond protecting private companies and their employees, also giving cover to any government officials who may have broken the law.

“I and others are going to make sure that anything that is done is done in a narrow, targeted way,” Wyden said.
Missouri Sen. Kit Bond, the intelligence committee’s top Republican, said, “The only question here is whether we should provide full liability protection to those companies that are alleged to have assisted the government in protecting the United States. The answer is a resounding ‘yes.”’

Legal battle brews In the weeks after 9/11, the White House launched a new surveillance program that allowed the National Security Agency to monitor communications between people in the United States and others overseas when terrorism was suspected. With legal directives in hand, the government asked a narrow group of telecommunications carriers to participate in a program.

Conventional wisdom has long been that the bulk of the surveillance operations — groundbreaking because they lacked judicial oversight — involved primarily telephone calls. However, officials say the Bush administration’s program frequently went after e-mail and other Internet traffic, which al-Qaida has embraced as a key means of communication.
After the highly classified operations became public in 2005, a wave of lawsuits was filed, including cases against AT&T and Verizon, two telecommunications providers alleged to have participated. The legal battles gave the telecommunications industry pause, government officials said.

David S. Kris, former associate deputy attorney general for national security issues, said the debate over immunity raises a broad policy question: “To what extent is the private sector supposed to be a check on government power?”

Answering that question is difficult, he said, because lawmakers and the public don’t know exactly how the government crafted its request for cooperation. “If the attorney general says, ’Your country needs you to do this to save lives,’ that may generate some sympathy for a company that cooperates,” Kris said.

Congress to debate surveillanceHow the government conducts surveillance during national security investigations is expected to be a leading issue when the Democratic-controlled Congress returns next week and contemplates changes to FISA.

Before leaving for an August recess lawmakers approved significant, but temporary, amendments to the law that governs when and how the government can conduct intelligence surveillance on U.S. soil. Many Democrats felt they were railroaded into a faulty law by Republicans who insisted on action because of heightened concerns about possible terror attacks.

Lawmakers will have to decide what, if any, changes to make permanent. The administration also plans to demand that telecommunications immunity is part of the debate.
Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., who has been briefed on the NSA’s surveillance work, said she’s open to a provision that would protect those who in good faith believed they were complying with the law. But “just adding on more ways in which this administration can police itself and make good on whatever deals it has made with the private sector, I think will not be supported in Congress,” she said.

The temporary changes to FISA, which will remain in effect until February unless they are changed earlier, limits how often the government has to go to the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get approvals for surveillance.

They say the government doesn’t need the court’s OK to monitor foreign suspects in national security investigations when the suspects are talking to Americans. Nor does the government need a court warrant to monitor conversations between two foreigners when the eavesdropping is done on communications that use U.S. networks.

A valid security purpose?Republicans and the Bush administration continue to argue that the changes were necessary because the law wasn’t keeping up with technology, the Justice Department was wasting precious hours on paperwork, and the secretive FISA court that oversees the law was overworked.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who presided over the 11-member FISA court from 1995 to 2002, believes judges play an important part of the process.
The value added by having judges in the process “is that we recognize the rights of the person who is not represented,” said Lamberth, who continues to follow FISA matters. “We’re ensuring there is some valid national security purpose. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want that value added.”

Maternal Alienation is Parent Alienation with a twist

I know that anyone that really knows me is positive that I believe this whole alienated parent thing is personality driven opposed to gender driven.

I do not for a min believe that Parent Alienation Syndrome is used as an excuse by abusive men!

I firmly believe that a parent or other that alienated an innocent child from someone they love has issues, big fat hairy ugly issues that may be to deep for even a psychiatrist to handle..

(Sociopaths- FYI many Dr's refuse to deal with them)

I firmly believe each case is individual and the driving force behind the need for these challenged adults ( Severe -alienators) is also different.

So in this blog only I'd like to take a min to look into Parent Alienation Syndrome from another angle. A very sick angle, an alienated child is an alienated child no matter what you chose to call it.

That said, in the instance where a true abuser is alienating for the purpose of sexually abusing the children I've found the following article..

It was very interesting reading..

What is Maternal Alienation-
Sometimes a man who is violent within his family alienated his children from their mother as part of that abuse.

He often isolates his partner from any sources of support, and is skillful at convincing her family, the neighbors, the children's school and any professionals involved with the family, that she is mad or bad. This type of abuse has been called Maternal Alienation by Ann Moris Senior Project Officer of the Maternal Alienation Project.

It generally occurs within a context of violence against women and/or children, and is a term for both.

+ The range of tactics used by men to deliberately undermine and destroy the relationship between a mother and their children to

+ The profound and often lasting alienation created in the relationships between mothers and their children by the use of those strategies.

Maternal Alienation

+ Is simultaneous abuse of women and children


+ Is a form of emotional abuse

+ Occurs within both domestic violence and child sexual abuse

Men who alienate children from their mothers usually manage to convince the children and all those involved with the family that they are blameless and misunderstood, and the mother is to blame for all the problems. In this way, maternal alienation successfully hides the man's responsibility for the violence and abuse, and directs peoples attention towards the so called bad mother. The man who uses these tactics remains "invisible".

What is the evidence for it?

...In the area of child sexual abuse

A number of researchers and practitioners in the 1990's researched the tactics used by child sex offenders to isolate and entrap the child he was abusing. They found that the offender's greatest concern was to break the child's trust in his/her mother.

"The most common tactic acknowledged by (sex offenders) was that of dividing mother and child" 9Lang, 1000, 147).

The abusive man had appeared to take over the child, drawing her into secrecy surrounding the abuse and excluding the mother" (Hooper, 1992)

"The offender's actions create a context in which the mother and child are blind to his role in creating the difficulties in their relationship"

(Lang & Kamsler, 1990, 169)

Children's descriptions of the victimization process illustrate the way in which such "special" relationships are constructed, with abusive men manipulating children's estrangement from pontential sources of support.. study of abusive men show's they are fully aware of this process" (Hooper, 1992, 38)

..In the area of Domestic Violence

Recently there has been concern about the damaging effects of domestic violence on children, and some understanding of the manipulation of the mother-child relationship by men who use violence and abuse.

"Many practitioners and women commented that the undermining of the relationship between women and their children is a common behavior perpetrated by men who are violent" (Irwin, Waugh &Wilkinson, 2002, 129)

Maternal Alienation is deliberate and intentional. This element of intention has long been recognized as an aspect of violence against women.

Gender violence is intentional and patterned, and aims at achieving certain outcomes (Dobash & Dobash 1988, 141; Ptacek, 1998, 150)

Through instilling of fear, the humiliation, the degradation, the assault on her idenitiy as a woman", (Ptacek, 1988, 147), to perpetrators of violence set out to punish, to inflict injury, to silence, to isolate and to maintain dominance against women, in a form that is directed also against her relationship with her child.

..From 1999 Research on Maternal Alienation

In 1999 a research project was carried out in notth of Adelaide to investigate what had been perceived as an aspect of violence against women and children, This phenomemon had not received adequet recognition, and during research, the term maternal alienation was coined to name it (Morris, 1999)

The research identified a number of tactics commonly used by men to destroy the mother child relationship. These were based on both<

+ Denigrating the mother as a figure to be despised

+ Elevating the father as both a victim and a hero (Morris, 1999, 1990/2000) Maternal

Alienation is a powerful strategy of abuse, Its power is drawn from the tendency in our society to trust and believe what men say over and above what women and children say. Its power is also drawn from the tendency to give more credibility to those who appear logical and calm, over those who seem distressed. People who have been traumatised usually convey their testimonies in emotional and apparently incoherent ways, and what they say isoften painful to hear (Herman).

On the other hand, those that use power and control over others often speak logically and articulately, and so many be more likely to be believed. Thus professionals and non professionals alike may take up a man's explanation that the mother is to blame for the problems in the family, while he has been misunderstood and wronged.

Indeed, the research found that, lacking an understanding of maternal alienation, service providers accross many services and sectors tended to believe the man and often acted to exacerbate the family situation (Irwin et al; Morris, 1999).

When and where does it occur?

It appears that maternal alienation is a common element of domestic violence, as well as a part of child sexual abuse.

The men who perpetrate maternal alienation may not be the fathers of the children involved, but are the perpetrators of abuse against that woman and her children.

In some families, men use maternal alienation as one of the modes of abuse that is ongoing in that family, so that children grow up continually exposed to these denigrating messages about, and behaviours to, their mother.

In other cases, maternal alienation begins when a couple separates, and a man may use maternal alienation as a strategy to gain control of the children, and to isolate and punish his ex partner.

Involvement in court processes such as those to determine contact and living arangements is one major forum for the use of these tactics.

It is also common when maternal alienation is used at these times, for a man to attempt to turn a woman's family and friends against her as well as her children, and to try to involve other services such as Child Protection against her as well.

This next part is called

"Dont Women Do It Too"

Here is a part I disagree with, like I'll say until the day I die; alienation IS NOT GENDER SPECIFIC!

So therefore I am posting this as the full article but making it clear that I FIRMLY believe a narcissist or BPD WILL ALIENATE a child for their own personal gain..

Sad part is that men and women are spending so much time arguing the validity of Parental Alienation Syndrome that our children are being destroyed.

Is it that hard to understand ALIENATION IS NOT GENDER SPECIFIC? If anyone were to combine this article with info from Parent Alienation Syndrome articles and combine them, maybe just maybe they would figure out it's BOTH!

(1) It CAN and IS being used by abusive men, who are using similar tactics for sexual abuse of the child. AS WELL AS...

(2) It CAN and IS being used by abusive women also who want the child for themselves for again personal gain, perhaps not for sexual abuse of the child, but for abusing their husband or to ensure they are the custodial parent as to not pay C.S. or simply to lock in C.S. from their husbands.

Once "they" wake up and combine Maternal Alienation and Parent Alienation Syndrome and admit that both sexes have been guilty of alienating, there will be hope.

(Men reading this keep reading- there's a but in here somewhere in RED)

That said here's the rest of the article..

which by the way can be found in its original PDF by clicking the TITLE of this blog

Dont women do it too?

Most Domestic Violence and child sexual abuse is perpetrated by men (Irwin and Thorpe).

Similarly, most "successful" perpetrators of parent-child alienaton are men. When women try to alienate their children against their father, societal structures and beliefs make this difficult for women to achieve successfully.

(Now here in the next sentance I agree) People are more ready to hear and act on negative and blaming stories about women than about men.

(Therein lies the biggest problem with children being alienated IMO- once DV is personality specific not gender specific- the next generation has a chance)

These views can be reflected by service providers that become involved with family members (Irwin et al; Edleson; Morris, 1999; Humphreys).

Below, I agree with this comment somewhat- IN MY UNPROFESSIONAL OPINION - once again it is personality specific I feel this study must have been done with truly abused women who are usually like their male alienated counterparts, doormats aka yes people aka what I want need comes after what makes YOU happy aka Co -Dependent/Co Narcissist personalitys we are/were more willing to be the nice guy, the one that does everything right- the one who only wants whats fair and just- the one who is willing to scarfice for their child- the peace maker. The one who was alienated the TARGET!

(I honestly don't feel they included any Borderlines (BPD) or female narcissists in this study.)

Important message - (Anything in RED should not be taken as medical or legal advice since it's only MY OPINION.)

Also making it less likely for women to act as alienators is their concern to support their children's relationship with their father, even at a cost to themselves.
(Irwin et al; Mullender et al)

The recent study by Mullender and colleagues reported that :

"What was remarkable ..was the extent to which mothers were willing to maintain a varity of forms of contact between the children's wishes and interests than their own saftey.

This finding is consistent with that in earlier studies..thus demonstrating a patern in women's decisions about contact that is at odds with what the courts frequently assume" (198)

My opinion on the above issue is..teach children in the JR High school years not to be "victims" of any kind. Teach assertiveness, teach personality disorders as part of the mandated cirriculum. As adults we need to make sure no child goes into H.S. not knowing what to watch out for in abusive relationships!

For those of us that are/were abused men and women, have others that have learned the difference between assertiveness, agressive behaviour, and door mats try to teach those that are comfortable in abusive/abused positions that until they change the nice guy, or the I come second attitude, things in their world will always be same ole same ole, and then they have no right to whine about it! Once someone is aware of the abusers tactics, and they themselves stand up and say OK ENOUGH, the abusers will walk all over you! Yes I learned this lesson the VERY HARD WAY!

I feel this information below is also the case in Parent Alienation when the abuser is the Female against the male..

Who is affected?

As maternal alienation is simultaneous abuse of children and women, both children and women are affected by it.

The effects can last a lifetime. Effects on the Children:

+ Children are divided from their mother, and are blocked from acccessing her as a loving nuturing parent + Children's trust in loving relationships is undermined

+ Children are affected in many ways by being used as "pawns" in the man's long campaigns against the mother and/or the child.

+ Children are trapped in a world created and controlled by the abuser + Children are often coached into perpetrating abuse and violence against their mother- and this may affect their later relationships with other women.

+ Children are punished for not participating in abuse against their mother.

+ Children often cannot heal from the effects of being subject to abuse while that are forced to adopt the "realities" of the perprtrator.

+ Children are caught up in primary relationship with a parent who is incosistent. tyrannical and puts his needs above those of his child. He may continue hsi abuse against the child.

+ Children often take up the role of the carer for their father, and subjugate their needs to his.

I feel this information below can be read as "effects on the victim" , and him and her after that can also be interchangable, but for the intention of "this article" I wont get into this part any deeper.

Effects on women:

+Women often blame themselves, and see themselves as the person others see them as-that is, as the person portrayed by the man who abuses her.

+Women are isolated and alienated from their family and community- sometimes for the rest of theier life.

+ Women feel enormous grief at "losing" their children.

+ Women find that they have little room to "move"- whatever they do, their words and actions are re-interpreted by the abuser (to children, family, community, professionals)

+ Women are traumatised by continual emotional abuse and the undermining of their relationships and attempts to communicate.

+ This constellation of effects impacts on a women's ability to represent themselves well in fourms as thej Family Court.

(My opinion once again - if the measures of assertiveness I mentioned earlier coupled with education in law- one has a better chance at defending oneself anywhere, if the card's aren't stacked against you with corruption or connections- But that stands with either sex)

I feel this can and should be used for both maternal alienation and Parent Alienation Syndrome..

What is being done about it?

Maternal alienation and it's devastating effects on children and women need to be understoof by more people. If more people and more services to families recognised it, something could be done about it.

These people and services include:

+ Families

+ Neighbors

+ Schools

+ Police

+ Community Health Workers

+ Jusges and Magistrates

+ Lawyers

+ Family Court Officials

+ Child Protection Workers

+ Child Care Workers

+ Child Health Workers

+ Domestic Violence Services

+ Religious Leaders People and services involved with the mother and/or childrencan make a positive difference if they

+ Support the mother to help her rebuild her realtionship with her children. This enables her to support and protect her children in the future, as well as helping her over come the effects of violence and abuse herself. The latest research points out that good practice for better child protection should be built on supporting the mother, (Irwin, Waugh &Wilkinson, 2003; Mullender, Hague et al 2002) not blaming or punishing her further (Edleson, 1998)

+ Understand and make visable the role of the man who uses abuse in this way. The invisablity of the perpetrator of abuse is an unhelpful, even dangerous tendency(Edleson, 1998) and is a strong factor in services not being able to address his continuing campaign against the mother and child.

A project called Maternal Alienation Project was set up in Adelaide in August 2002 to inform professional workers about maternal alienation and develop tools for addressing it's effects on children and women. This projectis set up as a partnership between Northern Metropolitan Community Health Service, Women's Health Statewide and University of Adelaide.

My last opinion on this subject is that if we can only bring this to America and incorperate it into everything I've mentioned above, Family Courts and CPS would be out of busniess and we all know that wont ever happen. But if my sharing this is able to help anyone- then it was worth all the work it involved.. in bringing it to you.

For more info on Maternal Alienation please see the link TITLE where I took all this info from to bring it to you- in hopes of saving at least one child!

http://www.whs.sa.gov.au/pub/Maternal_Alienation_Fact_S.pdf

Mp Wants Lie Detectors in Family Court

MP wants lie detectors in Family Court and- WE AGREE

An MP has called for compulsory lie detector tests for parents facingthe Family Law Court.

Click link for more - dad4justice: Lie Detectors Needed in the Family Court

Where you will also find her saying -

"On top of the dysfunctional family law system we have a corrupted child protection agency.," she said.

"We have children being coerced in interviews to support false allegations."

Court Says: Illegal Presence in US Not a Crime

Illegal Presence in US Not a Crime,
Court SaysBy Jeff Golimowski
CNSNews.com Senior Staff WriterAugust 21, 2007

(2nd Add: Includes comments from Janine Cox of the Kansas Appellate Defender's Office.)

(CNSNews.com) - If you can get past the border guards and into the United States, you're no longer violating the law, according to a Kansas Court of Appeals decision.

The ruling comes after an illegal immigrant, Nicholas Martinez, was sentenced to a year in jail after pleading guilty to possession of cocaine and endangering a child.

Court documents say Martinez was caught in an undercover sting by detectives in Barton County, Kansas (about 120 miles northwest of Wichita), using his young son to help sell cocaine.

Under Kansas law, the charges (and plea bargain) would have landed Martinez on probation. But the judge in the case said the defendant couldn't be put on probation because of his immigration status. "Mr. Martinez is illegally in the country and is in violation of the probation rules right from the start if I place him on probation," court documents quoted Judge Hannelore Kitts as saying. "He has to comply with all the conditions of the probation and he can't do that because he's in violation of the law not to violate any federal or state laws.

"The judge then rejected the plea agreement's sentencing recommendation and ordered Martinez to spend a year in jail. "I don't want to speak for her, but the judge obviously believed there was an inconsistency in placing him on probation when one of the first things he would have been told was to obey the law," said Barton County Attorney Douglas Matthews.

But on appeal, a three-judge panel threw out the sentence, based on an apparent contradiction in U.S. law. While it is illegal to enter the country without the proper documents and permissions, it is not necessarily illegal to be in the country.

In its opinion, the court explained that Congress had implicitly created the distinction: "While Congress has criminalized the illegal entry into this country, it has not made the continued presence of an illegal alien in the United States a crime unless the illegal alien has previously been deported," said the opinion.

The court also cited previous cases, including a 1958 Supreme Court case, which found that laws regarding illegal entry into the country "are not continuing ones, as 'entry' is limited to a particular locality and hardly suggests continuity. "Because the judge hadn't determined whether Martinez had been deported previously, the appeals court ruled she had no legal basis to deny probation, since simply being in the country isn't necessarily a crime.

A pre-sentence investigation by the court did not find any evidence Martinez had been previously deported. Martinez's appellate attorney, Janine Cox of the Kansas Appellate Defender's Office, said she and her client are happy with the ruling, but she said the case is far from over. "The case is still alive. The sentence has been vacated … (prosecutors) have 30 days to make a decision" about an appeal, said Cox.

"If the Supreme Court takes it up we'll do it all over again."Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the opinion is the way the court arrived at its conclusion. Cox noted neither she nor the prosecutor had made an argument saying Martinez's presence in the country was not a crime.

"We argued that (immigration) status wasn't enough of a reason to depart from sentencing guidelines," said Cox. "The determination of status is solely a federal government determination." Cox declined to comment on the potential ramifications of the ruling on other immigration cases.

Matthews said this is one of if not the first time this issue has been brought before a Kansas court, though similar cases have been heard in Oregon and Minnesota with similar results. He said he doesn't necessarily believe the ruling will have far-reaching effects, as the language of the opinion was extremely narrow. "The Court narrowed the conditions under which (Martinez) could be imprisoned for his violation of Kansas law," said Matthews.

"The mere fact that you're in Kansas illegally does not mean, at least according to this opinion, that one of our District Court judges can impose a prison sentence as opposed to probation after you've been convicted of a felony offense."Prosecutors have 30 days to appeal the ruling to the Kansas Supreme Court.
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6.4 Million Dollar Verdict

Children and Families hit with $6.4 million verdict

A circuit court jury in Hillsborough County has awarded a $6.45 million judgment against the Florida Department of Children and Families to the families of two children who were treated by an improperly licensed counselor and convicted felon.

The verdict Tuesday found that the long-troubled department failed to properly investigate Robert Taylor, who provided substance abuse and other counseling to minors despite not having a license to treat them.

Taylor was sentenced to 130 years in prison in 2000.

One of the children, Gregory Chapman, hanged himself May 31, 1998.

"The only protection (the victims) had was DCF doing its job, and they didn't do it," said Joe Magri of the Merkle and Magri law firm, who tried the case. "The verdict hopefully sends a strong message by the jury that DCF needs to be responsible." The verdict can be appealed, but a decision has not yet been made.

DCF leadership had not seen the verdict as of Wednesday because they were attending meetings in South Florida, said Al Zimmerman, the department's spokesman. "Within the next week," he said, "they plan to sit down and discuss the verdict."

According to Magri, the two children saw Taylor in 1997 and 1998. Chapman suffered from an attention-deficit disorder, while another girl who saw him had a substance abuse problem.

A couple years before, several of Taylor's former clients had accused him of defrauding them out of money. DCF is required to investigate such claims and do background checks and fingerprint counselors who have contact with unmarried minors.

According to Magri, DCF "claimed that it did all it could do when it asked Taylor if the complaints were true and he denied them." A background check would have revealed that Taylor had several felony convictions for fraud, including a adoption scam; had outstanding arrest warrants in Chicago; and had a consent degree entered against him by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation for the unauthorized practice of psychology.

DCF told Taylor that he needed to get a license to provide substance abuse treatment, and that he wouldn't need to go through a background check and fingerprinting to get a license to treat adults only.

Taylor provided the department with a fake Master's degree, which DCF failed to properly look into. Despite lacking the right license to treat minors, Taylor started seeing Chapman and the teenage girl, along with other minors.

According to the lawsuit against DCF, Taylor traumatized the children, pitting the girl against her parents while scaring minors such as Chapman into thinking they would be sent to a boot camp if they didn't "shape up" and stop causing trouble for their parents.