Wednesday, September 3, 2014


News Clips For The Day


Russia, Ukraine Distance Themselves From News Of A Cease-Fire Deal -- NPR
by EYDER PERALTA
September 03, 2014

The morning started on a hopeful note: The office of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin the two had agreed on a "permanent cease-fire."

But that was short-lived. As the state-funded Russia Today reports, the Russians quickly pointed out that they had reached no such agreement, because "Russia is not party to Ukraine conflict."

That, the Kiev Post reports, was followed by a partial walk-back from Ukraine. The Post explains:

"In a revised statement, Poroshenko's press service said that such an agreement was reached over the phone. The original statement indicated a 'permanent' ceasefire agreement was reached for Ukraine's east, but made no details available. Later the word 'permanent' was removed.

"Poroshenko spoke to Putin on the phone on Sept.3, according to a statement on the president's website. 'As a result of this conversation, an agreement was reached on a permanent ceasefire in Donbas. An agreement was reached about mutual vision of steps that will promote peace,' the press statement said."

The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reports that a rebel leader in eastern Ukraine also rejected news of a cease-fire.

"This is some sort of a game by Kiev," an aide to Andrei Purgin, the self proclaimed prime minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, told the news service. "This was completely unexpected. This decision was made without us."

As Reuters reads the confusing tea leaves, the "statements appeared to indicate a degree of progress that could influence European Union leaders as they consider introducing new sanctions against Russia as early as Friday."

Reuters adds:
"In a contradictory signal, Moscow simultaneously announced plans for huge military exercises this month by the strategic rocket forces responsible for its long-range nuclear weapons. It said the maneuvers in south-central Russia would involve 4,000 troops and extensive use of air power.

"The timing was clearly calculated to throw down a challenge to NATO and the United States, hours before President Barack Obama was due to deliver a speech on the crisis in Russia's neighbor Estonia.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk issued some tough words against Russia.

"Russia is a terrorist state, it is an aggressor state and will bear responsibility under international law," Yatsenyuk said, according to Reuters.

Russia has always denied that it is taking direct action in Ukraine. The U.S., NATO and Ukraine have said more than 1,000 Russian troops are directly involved in the fight.




This article is interesting in its portrayal of "the fog of war." Poroshenko needs to be more careful what he says. The situation is still at a stalemate, apparently.




Amid Warnings Of Ethnic Cleansing, A Yazidi Man's Suicide Resonates – NPR
by PETER KENYON
September 03, 2014

With so many members of Iraq's Yazidi religious minority killed, abducted or left homeless in recent weeks, one more death – due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound – might almost pass unnoticed. But friends and family of 33-year-old Naif Khalif Omar say his suicide is resonating in a community that sees only a bleak future ahead.

In a long white funeral tent in Deraboun, a haphazard collection of makeshift encampments lining the road to Syria, Omar's father, Khalil Omar Khalifa, sits with family and friends who hail from one of the Yazidi villages around Mount Sinjar that were brutalized by Islamic State fighters last month. On the question of why Omar killed himself, opinions are divided.

Some say the final straw happened at the camp at Deraboun. Omar had survived the worst of the violence and hardship, and had landed a job in the camp's kitchen. But when the World Food Program closed the kitchen, Omar was out of work. His father, though, says it was the senseless, random killings, the abduction and abuse of women, and the terror-stricken flight up Mount Sinjar and then back down again that caused something to snap in a once-healthy young mind.

"By the time we got here he was psychologically hurt somehow," says Khalifa. "He didn't eat much, he stopped talking. It was just too much for him."

In An Instant, Lives Scarred Forever
While Iraqi officials celebrate military gains against the militants calling themselves the "Islamic State," human rights advocates warn of perilous circumstances for hundreds of thousands of displaced people in the north, especially those from the Yazidi religious minority, a group that has been persecuted for centuries for its unusual beliefs. Omar's suicide is a stark example.

Khalifa says his son was fine back in the village, working as an Iraqi border guard and preferring to spend much of his spare time at the family farm, tending crops and working the fields. Another villager who knew Omar, Ibrahim Fundi Ibrahim, is a 30-year veteran of the Iraqi army. He blames the security forces for abandoning the village, bringing on the chaos and trauma that claimed Omar's life.

"We left with nothing, just our lives," Ibrahim says. "And when he came here he sees the children crying, every time the TV is on people are being shot or beheaded."

"Now we're sitting in his funeral tent," he adds. "This is like a five-star hotel compared to where other people are – look over there, people living under a truck. This isn't right."

Women And Girls Abducted, Rumors Fly
Omar's father wants to return to the village, if it can be made safe. Many others, like Ibrahim, don't think it's possible.

"OK, maybe they'll take Sinjar back but what about our women?" he asks. "They've been sold! They're in the Arab Gulf countries, they bought our women, can you believe it? How can we stay here?"

Ibrahim and other Yazidis call it genocide. Human rights advocates say the evidence points to war crimes. Donatella Rivera with Amnesty International says what happened to the Yazidis in the Sinjar region is a "momentous" example of ethnic cleansing.

But as for the anecdotes about Islamic State fighters being modern-day slave traders, she treats those allegations cautiously, believing most are being held in Iraq.

"We know where the overwhelming majority of the women who've been abducted are, there are communications," says Rivera. "But some of them are missing, and those are the ones that obviously we're particularly concerned about. Certainly the families are very concerned about the possibility that these women and girls may be subjected to sexual abuse, and to be forcibly married, for example to fighters."

Rivera doesn't believe that has happened yet in most cases, but says the plight of these women and girls remains dire.

Trying To Find Normal Again
Some semblance of normal life can be found amid the lean-tos and blankets lining the streets near the Syrian border. In a concrete irrigation trough, young boys splash about, striking goofy poses for passersby.

But Yazidi families wonder how many young people will bear lasting scars from what they've witnessed in the past few weeks. Others wonder about the international response to this crisis, which Rivera describes as "extremely slow."

In a better world, Naif Khalil Omar would have received psychiatric as well as basic medical care. He might have decided that he did have a reason to live – perhaps for his wife and infant daughter, who were not among those taken by the Islamic State.

But on a dusty roadside in the desert, where people sleep under trucks or do whatever it takes to get through another day, one young man who survived unthinkable horrors had no one to help him survive his own memories.




“With so many members of Iraq's Yazidi religious minority killed, abducted or left homeless in recent weeks, one more death – due to a self-inflicted gunshot wound – might almost pass unnoticed. But friends and family of 33-year-old Naif Khalif Omar say his suicide is resonating in a community that sees only a bleak future ahead..... Ibrahim and other Yazidis call it genocide. Human rights advocates say the evidence points to war crimes. Donatella Rivera with Amnesty International says what happened to the Yazidis in the Sinjar region is a "momentous" example of ethnic cleansing. But as for the anecdotes about Islamic State fighters being modern-day slave traders, she treats those allegations cautiously, believing most are being held in Iraq.”

This is a story about one young man who became depressed and committed suicide, and is undoubtedly just an indicator of the amount of stress these people have been under. Donatella Rivera of Amnesty International describes the aid from international sources as 'extremely slow.' Western governments may get involved in a real war against ISIS fairly soon, but in general the only aid for the Yazidis is the US air drops of supplies. Iraqi forces and the Kurds are still fighting ISIS, but so far are not quelling their onslaught. There is no place for these Yazidis to go.





Old Ship Logs Reveal Adventure, Tragedy And Hints About Climate – NPR
by BRIAN NAYLOR
September 03, 2014

What can yesterday's weather tell us about how the climate is changing today? That's what an army of volunteers looking at old ships' logs is trying to answer through the Old Weather project.

One of those volunteers — or citizen scientists, as the project calls them — is Kathy Wendolkowski of Gaithersburg, Md.

Sitting in her kitchen, she uses her laptop to read from the logbook of the Pioneer, a ship that was out measuring ocean depths near Alaska on July 15, 1925. An image of the Pioneer's log from that day was posted online by the National Archives at the website OldWeather.org. Her task is to transcribe the logs' handwritten notes, from their elegant cursive script to something that can be digested by computers.

It's harder than it might seem. She remembers chatting with one of her fellow transcribers: "One poor guy said, 'Every day in the logs at 6 o'clock they have "suffer" in the logbook.' So I'm like, wait, no, that's 'supper,' because there's a tall thing on the 'p,' so it looks like 'suffer.' "

Mariners have long kept meticulous logbooks of weather conditions and descriptions of life onboard, and the National Archives in Washington, D.C., has pages and pages and pages of them recorded by sailors on Navy and Coast Guard vessels.

Along with the basic weather observations, the logbooks contain amazing stories of adventure, survival and mystery. A bouquet of dried flowers was sandwiched in one logbook. Another log describes a 1,600-mile overland journey to bring reindeer to some stranded whalers. And then there are the logs of the USS Jeannette. Its journey began in San Francisco in 1879, an ill-fated attempt to find an open-water passage to the North Pole. Two months later, the Jeannette was surrounded by ice north of Siberia.

Pack ice has always been a grave danger to ships. The Jeannette's engineer called the "roar and crash" of the ice around the ship blood-curdling. The logbook reads: "Calm light airs from the northeast. All hands employed cutting the ice away from the rudder."

Archivist Mark Mollan says the Jeannette was trapped in the ice for nearly two years before the sailors were forced to abandon ship.

"They all had to make for small launches dragging their scientific equipment and all the records they kept for those 21 months while they were drifting in the ice. So all of these logbooks and the equipment were part of that expedition, and they rest on our shelves today," he says.

It's a great story, but what does any of this have to do with weather now?

The Old Weather project is the brain child of Kevin Wood, a research scientist with NOAA and the University of Washington. He says the weather observations in the Jeannette's logbooks and in all the other logbooks tell their own stories and fill in the gaps of our climate knowledge. Take the observations of the ice, for instance. Wood says the ice that trapped the Jeannette in September all those years ago doesn't occur at that time of year anymore.

"As we recover more and more data and we can reanalyze the global weather patterns for those years, we're going to understand more about the way the arctic ice drifts and moves about in those days, which it may or may not do today," he says.

Scientists are able to do another cool thing with those long-ago climate observations, Wood says. They can plug them into a computer and produce a detailed weather map for that time.

But Wood says what's really important is what this tells us about the climate and its effects — from storms to ice floes — today. "Whether those kinds of events have stopped happening, whether they're going to happen more often or less often — that's the power of having a very long-term, complete reconstruction of the Earth's atmosphere," he says.

For volunteer Kathy Wendolkowski, a historian by training, transcribing the old logbooks is a way of honoring those who served on the ships and collected the data. She finds the project hard to resist: "It's just the human stories that are in these log pages, that just — how can you not?"




Old Weather project's Kathy Wendolkowski of Gaithersburg, Md. sits at home with her laptop reading the logbook of a ship from the year 1925. She is part of “an army” of volunteers who are tediously transcribing handwritten notes at the website http://www.oldweather.org/, which invites the reader to join in as a volunteer. The website has photographed logs from as far back as the mid 1800's – originally from the National Archives in DC – and published them. The volunteers then read them and and type in the data.

It looks like a wonderful long-term project for anyone who is unemployed and looking for an interesting activity. Records from the ship Jeannette, which was trapped for two years in 1879 (how the sailors survived that long is not told) in pack ice, gives evidence of climate change, because the ice no longer forms at that location and time of year. NOAA scientist Kevin Wood began the project, choosing logs from Navy and Coast Guard vessels, which are permanently stored at the National Archives. Wood says that the transcribed data can be used to feed into a computer, creating a weather map of the time period. Wood intends to merge the data with that from modern times to create “a very long-term, complete reconstruction of the Earth's atmosphere.”





Some Accused Of Campus Assault Say The System Works Against Them – NPR
by TOVIA SMITH
September 03, 2014

After years of criticism for being too lax on campus sexual assault, some colleges and universities are coming under fire from students who say the current crackdown on perpetrators has gone too far.

Dozens of students who've been punished for sexual assault are suing their schools, saying that they didn't get a fair hearing and that their rights to due process were violated. The accused students say schools simply are overcorrecting.

More than 70 campuses are under federal investigation for violating the civil rights of alleged victims, and some students say schools are running so scared that they're violating the due process rights of defendants instead.

"Right from the start, they treated me like I was the scum of the earth," says one young man, who was a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst this past fall when he was told he was being investigated for sexual misconduct — and had just hours to move out of his dorm.

It started at a party. He says a classmate invited him to her room, asked him to bring a condom, texted her girlfriends about it, gave no signs of being drunk and repeatedly indicated that she wanted to have sex.

So, he says, they did.

"Then we kissed and fooled around for a few more hours, and then eventually she told me her roommate was coming back at some point and that I should leave, but that she had a lot of fun," he says.

In her version of events, according to a university report, she started to "freak out" shortly after he left. She began to feel pain throughout her body, and realized that something had happened, but she didn't know what. She told the school she had been drinking and had no memory of most of the night — until a day later when she remembered "him having sex with me and holding me down."

She told a friend, who told a dorm adviser, and two days later the school launched an investigation that he says was rigged from the start.

"They were going through the motions," he says. "I felt like I was just trapped in the tidal wave."

Dark Days

This student is one of several dozen now suing. He filed as John Doe, fearing damage to his reputation, and agreed to talk on condition of anonymity. The lawsuit identifies the victim as Jane Doe.

In his complaint, the male student alleges that the hearing process was inherently biased against men, and violated Title IX by denying his rights to equal protection. The university, he says, withheld information he needed for his defense, and wouldn't let him have an attorney to speak for him.

He says he was grilled by a hearing board that he says was hostile and poorly trained. The panel ruled against him and he was expelled, which he says was emotionally devastating.

"I had some dark days," he says. "It's hard, you know? It hurts down to your bones."

UMass Amherst officials won't comment on pending litigation, but they say that due process for all parties is "central" to their procedures, and that all board members are trained thoroughly.

Columbia, Williams, Vassar, Brown and other schools being sued by students who say they were victims of a rush to judgment haven't commented, either.

Universities Are 'Jittery'

Attorney Andrew Miltenberg, who represents about a dozen men suing their schools, says UMass Amherst officials knew that the school was being investigated by the federal government, and they were desperate to prove it was not soft on sexual assault.

"I think 'witch hunt' is a dramatic phrase, but I would tell a group of young men right now, 'woe is to you if someone makes an allegation,' " Miltenberg says. "This young man was in the wrong place at the wrong time, in the sense that there was an attempt by the university officials to say, 'Oh, yeah? Well, watch how we do this one!' "

Some rush to judgment is inevitable, says Robert Dana, dean of students at the University of Maine, speaking generally about the current climate on campuses.

"I expect that that can't help but be true," he says. "Colleges and universities are getting very jittery about it."

But to some, the growing number of lawsuits against universities only goes to show that school administrators should not be in the business of playing detective, judge or jury in the first place.

"Colleges need to understand their limitations," says Robert Shibley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. "When it comes to felony crimes, that should be the task of law enforcement."

Victims may be more comfortable taking a complaint to school administrators than to the police, Shibley says, but if the criminal justice system is seen as re-traumatizing or otherwise failing, then the answer should be to fix the criminal justice system, not to make schools do the job.

Shibley says going through the courts would guarantee accused students basic protections, including the right to have an attorney and to cross-examine their accusers.

On campus, he says, accused students effectively are presumed guilty; instead of requiring accusers to prove they were assaulted, the accused students have to prove they had consent.

It's also troubling, he says, that on campus, cases hinge on the very lowest standard of proof — "preponderance of the evidence" — which Shibley calls little more than a "hunch" that a person is guilty.

Still, he concedes, it's not easy to rally support these days for accused perpetrators.

Students Are 'Deluding Themselves'

Attorney Colby Bruno, who represents victims, says that just because a lot of young men are suing their schools doesn't mean the process is actually unfair — only that it suggests some students are having trouble adjusting to the changing norms on campus sexual assault.

"I don't have sympathy for the guy who assaults somebody and thinks he's been railroaded," Bruno says. "The cases where students are deluding themselves into thinking that what they did wasn't rape and sexual assault? I think those are 85 percent of boys coming forward saying, 'I was railroaded.' "

While numbers are hard to come by, she says there are still far more perpetrators getting away with a slap on the wrist than innocent students being wrongly expelled. She says false accusations are rare; far more often, real crimes go unreported.

Annie Clark, a student survivor turned activist, says everyone wants the process to be fair. But, she says, more due process doesn't automatically advance the cause of justice.

For example, she says, giving alleged assailants the right to cross-examine alleged victims would make victims even more reluctant to report assaults.

"If a survivor is told that they would have to face their rapist, and that person would be allowed to interrogate them, that could absolutely have a chilling effect," Clark says.

Ultimately, the courts will weigh the costs and benefits of more due process and decide whether schools have struck the right balance. With all the cases now pending, experts say the answer may well be "it depends."


For example, a student accused of misconduct, who might only be required to change dorms, may be entitled to less due process than someone facing the more severe punishment of expulsion — which might permanently mar his record and impact his life.

In other words, higher stakes would demand greater protections.




This article is a followup from one on a federal investigation into the prevalence of rape on college campuses. The article centered on the new rule of thumb for college administrations as to how to decide when an incident is indeed a rape, based on whether or not the woman “gave consent” and what constitutes consent. There is a basic problem on college campuses as long as coed dorms are allowed. It really “muddies the water,” and throws doubt on the woman's word. There was a series of articles on this about two months ago.

I read this whole article today. There does seem to me to be a case for “a rush to judgment” and I think it is not a good idea for college administrations to be making the decision in the first place. It should go to the police and the courts, and the penalty should be ten or more years in prison rather than expulsion from college. As soon as the college is apprised of the woman's claim, especially if a perpetrator is named, the police should be called in. It's like the Catholic Church administering punishments to priests who are accused of sexual assault or molestation – they shouldn't be handling the cases at all, but rather turning the man over to the law.





For Men's Rights Groups, Feminism Has Come At The Expense Of Men – NPR
by JOEL ROSE
September 02, 2014

Mike Buchanan gives his presentation, "Let's Get Political," at the International Conference on Men's Issues, held in June near Detroit. Buchanan founded a political party in the U.K., Justice for Men & Boys, in 2013.

This summer, a few hundred men and a handful of women gathered in a VFW hall near Detroit to attend what organizers billed as the first International Conference on Men's Issues.

The crowd wasn't huge, but it was enthusiastic. The event was a real-world gathering organized by the website A Voice for Men, part of an informal collection of websites, chat rooms and blogs focused on what's known as the men's rights movement. Speaker after speaker insisted that history would remember this moment.

"It's happening here. It's happening now. It's happening with us," Warren Farrell, one of the keynote speakers, told the crowd. Farrell, who published The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex in 1993, is often described as the intellectual father of the men's rights movement.

Leaders in the movement say they want to bring more attention to the problems of men and boys. Critics worry, however, that these sites are a breeding ground for misogyny.
For his part, Farrell actually tries to avoid the phrase "men's rights."

"It's like somebody saying we're in favor of the king's rights," he says. "The average person thinks that men are already at the top of the political structure. They have all the rights, they made all the rules, [and] if anything is going wrong with men, it's their fault, because after all, it's just a consequence of men's rules."

But that perspective, Farrell says, is "just completely missing the point."

'Cries Of Pain And Alienation'

Farrell doesn't deny that men make up the vast majority of members of Congress and corporate boards. But he says that fact tends to obscure the problems facing millions of men and boys that don't get enough attention: that fathers are often separated from their children by the family court system, that there is no White House council on men and boys, and that there are women's studies — but not men's studies — departments at universities.

Boys also drop out of college and commit suicide at higher rates than girls, Farrell notes.

"We need to know not only why are our sons committing suicide, but also why are our sons much more likely to be the ones to shoot up schools?" he says. "We're all in jeopardy if we don't pay attention to the cries of pain and isolation and alienation that are happening among our sons."

This is a dramatic turnaround for a man who was once a leading voice for feminism. In the 1970s, Farrell served on the board of the National Organization for Women in New York City. But he broke with the feminist movement when it strayed, in his view, from the idea that men and women should be equally involved in the workplace and the home.

Now, men's rights advocates argue, feminism is more concerned with promoting the interests of women — often at the expense of men.

"Once we can establish that, by the way, men are human beings — so are boys — it is OK for us to stand and talk about their issues," says Paul Elam, who founded the website A Voice for Men in 2009. "[We can] seek solutions even if, God forbid, they're not solutions that are prescribed through the feminist lens."

Elam, who organized the Michigan event, says his site draws 20,000 to 30,000 visits a day. But critics say the site, and others devoted to men's rights, generate more heat than light.

"The vast majority of men's rights activists don't actually seem to be that interested in doing anything about the issues that they talk about all the time," says David Futrelle, a Chicago writer who blogs about the men's rights movement on We Hunted the Mammoth.

Futrelle says the leaders of the movement have done little to discourage misogyny in their ranks.

"Essentially, the issues they bring up are little more than an excuse or an opportunity for them to attack women and blame women for pretty much everything that goes wrong in the world."

Futrelle's not the only one who's concerned about men's rights groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center — which normally tracks white supremacists and other hate groups — says the men's rights movement has attracted a "hard-line fringe" who endorse violence and hatred against women.

Even Warren Farrell concedes that the movement includes some angry people, but he insists they're a small minority. He says there was plenty of outrageous and even violent rhetoric during the early years of the women's movement, too.

"But that didn't stop me and many others from saying: Wait a minute, let's get to what is needed here. There's some truth," Farrell says. "When a voice is crying out — sometimes distorted, and sometimes painful — it's important to understand that anger is often vulnerability's mask. It's so crucial for us to see the vulnerability of the men that are hurting."

'Why Is It That The Claims Aren't Resonating?'

The organizers of the men's issues conference in Michigan made an effort to keep the tone civil. They invited a diverse group of speakers, male and female.

Still, there were some remarks that many people might consider offensive. Barbara Kay, a conservative columnist with the National Post in Canada, addressed the growing number of sexual assaults reported on college campuses.

"The vast majority of female students alleging rape on campus are actually voicing buyer's remorse for alcohol-fueled promiscuous behavior, involving murky lines of consent on both sides," she said. "It's their get-out-of-guilt-free card, you know, like in Monopoly."

In some corners of the Internet, the language of the men's rights movement gets even uglier when it's directed at critics — especially female ones — and at media reports.

Observers say the anonymity of the Internet has changed the tone of the discussion. Even so, complaints about feminism are nothing new. Men have been making these arguments since the late 1970s, says Gwyneth Williams, a professor of political science at Webster University.

She agrees that some of the problems that men's rights activists talk about are real. But the argument that feminism is to blame simply hasn't taken root in mainstream culture.

"You have to ask yourself, why is it that the claims aren't resonating, you know, in a broad-based way with a lot of men, the way feminism did?" she says.

But men's rights advocates insist the movement is growing. Paul Elam says he's making plans to hold a second conference on men's issues next year in Washington, D.C.




Mike Buchanan is the creator of the International Conference on Men's Issues and Justice for Men & Boys. Another spokesperson for men's issues is Warren Farrell, who published The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex in 1993. Farrell is of two opinions about the men's organizations, stating that though they point up disaffection and alienation in our society among men and boys, they also foster to some degree anti-feminism and even hate against women. "We need to know not only why are our sons committing suicide, but also why are our sons much more likely to be the ones to shoot up schools?" he says. '… that fathers are often separated from their children by the family court system, that there is no White House council on men and boys, and that there are women's studies — but not men's studies — departments at universities.” Futrelle complains that the organizations that have developed “do little to discourage misogyny in their ranks.” … "Essentially, the issues they bring up are little more than an excuse or an opportunity for them to attack women and blame women for pretty much everything that goes wrong in the world." The Southern Poverty Law Center has begun to study the men's rights movement, saying that it has attracted a 'hard-line fringe' who endorse violence and hatred against women.”

http://j4mb.wordpress.com/ – Justice For Men And Boys (And The Women Who Love Them) – This website consists of a long list of writings with various hostile and anti-feminist titles. The articles are short and informal, some of them merely anger-filled rants, but others are interesting. The one I thought had some truth in it was about how the law deals with both women and men in the UK when they are charged with crimes. At any rate, I couldn't agree more that boys who are without a steady, responsible and loving father have more trouble than boys from stable home lives at growing up into mentally healthy adults. According to the article on men and women under the law I mentioned above, the writer states “Yet it’s been known for 30 years that a majority of incarcerated (male) rapists were sexually abused when they were children by one or more women, usually their own mothers – here.” This is in argument that women do sexually abuse children. I agree with the writer that most people are unaware of that fact. The following is from Wikipedia. After reading this, I will stop saying that there aren't a serious number of female abusers; and it is clear to me that any sexual abuse by any person is very damaging to a child.


Female child molesters
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Statistically, females prosecuted for the sexual abuse of children make up a comparatively low percentage of convicted child molesters[citation needed]. However, due to issues relating to the reporting of sexual abuse and societal views of female sex offenders, trying to ascertain an accurate number of female child molesters is challenging.

Recidivistic female sex offenders make up such a small percentage that little is known about them as a group.[1]

Sexual abuse is defined by C. D. Kasl (1990)[2] as:[3]
Chargeable offences such as oral sex, sexual intercourse and/or masturbation
Offences such as voyeurism, exposure, seductive touching, sexualized hugging or kissing, extended nursing or flirting
Invasions of privacy including enemas, bathing together, washing the child beyond a reasonable age, excessive cleaning of the foreskin or asking intrusive questions about bodily functions
Inappropriate relationships created by the adult such as substituting the child for an absent partner, sleeping with the child, unloading emotional problems on the child or using them as a confidant for personal or sexual matters

Prevalence[edit]

“Research attention is now being directed towards women who sexually abuse children.”[4] It is not uncommon for a male who has been sexually abused by a woman in his youth to receive positive or neutral reactions when he tells people about the abuse.[5] Males and females sexually abused by male offenders, on the other hand, are more readily believed.[6]

According to a study done by Cortoni and Hanson in 2005, 4-5% of all recorded sexual abuse victims were abused by female offenders.[6] However, the Cortoni study numbers don't match the official statistics by The United States Department of Justice which found a rate of 8.3% for “Other sexual offenses” for females and The Australian Bureau of Statistics found a rate of 7.9% for “Sexual assault and related offences” for females.[citation needed]

Other studies have found rates to be much higher. For example:
In a study of 3,586 of the cases of childhood sexual abuse, 9% had a female-only perpetrator and other 9% had both male and female perpetrators.[7]

A separate American study found that the sexual abuse of children by women, primarily mothers, constituted 25% (approximately 36 000 children) of the sexually abused victims from a population of over one million abused children. This statistic is thought to be underestimated due to the tendency of non-disclosure by victims.[8]

According to a major 2004 study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education - In studies that ask students about offenders, sex differences are less than in adult reports. The 2000 American Association of University Women(AAUW) data indicate that 57.2 percent of all students report a male offender and 42.4 percent a female offender with the Cameron et al. study reporting nearly identical proportions as the 2000 AAUW data (57 percent male offenders vs. 43 percent female offenders).[9]

Some have even suggested that a greater degree of child molesters are female, estimating as many as 63% of sex abusers may be female.[10]

According to a 2011 CDC report there are an estimated 4,403,010 female victims of sexual violence that had a female perpetrator.[11]

Female sexual abuse of children is frequently hidden in the daily task of care giving. It can happen during bath time, dressing and undressing, and diaper changing. But the abuse is not restricted to care giving; sexual abuse of children can happen any time of the day or night under any number of circumstances. “Women who sexually abuse children can be of any age, social class, intellectual ability, and marital status, and can be involved in any type of employment. They can perpetrate any form of sexual act and can behave seductively or sadistically towards their victims.”[12] In the book, Women Who Sexually Abuse Children: From Research to Clinical Practice, the female offenders were classified into three main groups: women who initially target young children, women who initially target adolescents, and women who are initially coerced by men.[12] There were “atypical” perpetrators, however, who did not fall into any of these categories.

“Traumatic sexualization includes aversive feelings about sex, overvaluing sex, confusion of sex and nurturing, andsexual identity problems.”[6] Sexually abused children have the potential to be sexually active with their peers at an earlier age and be sexually promiscuous.[6]

Another effect is stigmatisation. This “leaves victims feeling different from their peers and damaged, leading to feelings of shame and guilt, especially in relation to disclosure.”[6]

In addition to stigmatisation and confusions about sex, victims may also experience a feeling of powerlessness.[1][6]





http://www.npr.org/2014/09/02/342494225/mraps-and-bayonets-what-we-know-about-the-pentagons-1033-program

MRAPs And Bayonets: What We Know About The Pentagon's 1033 Program – NPR
by AREZOU REZVANI, JESSICA PUPOVAC, DAVID EADS and TYLER FISHER
September 02, 2014

Amid widespread criticism of the deployment of military-grade weapons and vehicles by police officers in Ferguson, Mo., President Obama recently ordered a review of federal efforts supplying equipment to local law enforcement agencies across the country.

So, we decided to take a look at what the president might find.

NPR obtained data from the Pentagon on every military item sent to local, state and federal agencies through the Pentagon's Law Enforcement Support Office — known as the 1033 program — from 2006 through April 23, 2014. The Department of Defense does not publicly report which agencies receive each piece of equipment, but they have identified the counties that the items were shipped to, a description of each, and the amount the Pentagon initially paid for them.

We took the raw data, analyzed it and have organized it to make it more accessible. We are makingthat data set available to the public today.




This article is too long and detailed to deal with in this blog, but I suggest you read it for yourself. Two comments – the program started as a part of the “war on drugs” in 1989, but is not being implemented any more strongly in the border areas where the “war” has its' front lines; and the surplus goods are being sent to specific cities by request only, and therefore reflect on the local community if there is any conspiracy involved. The reasons for the different cities ordering army surplus items would be interesting to know, especially in the following cases.

The items that have been received by local police forces are below:
“79,288 assault rifles, 205 grenade launchers, 11,959 bayonets 3,972 combat knives $124 million worth of night-vision equipment, including night-vision sniper scopes, 479 bomb detonator robots, 50 airplanes, including 27 cargo transport airplanes, 422 helicopters, More than $3.6 million worth of camouflage gear and other 'deception equipment.'”

Why do they need bayonets, grenade launchers, combat knives, airplanes, camouflage gear and other “deception equipment”? That really does look more like equipment for a localized militia which might indeed be used to fight off government officials, as in the case of the right-wing “militias” that have cropped up mainly in rural areas across the country. Those people get together in the woods and have war games, supposedly in preparation for an assault by federal government forces. They are reacting to the Waco, TX raid by federal ATF and Texas law enforcement forces on the Branch Davidian compound. It is also an outgrowth of the NRA emphasis on guns and militias, I think.

I hope a thorough investigation is conducted, and that the law which put this system into place is dismantled. The Pentagon shouldn't be discarding their barely used equipment just in order to buy more, anyway. It's wasteful. Also, it seems to me that if local authorities are to be armed in this manner that it should be done firmly under the control of Homeland Security and based on need only, rather than by unsubstantiated local requests. For Instance, New York City is more likely to need a heavily armed unit to fight a hypothetical “sleeper cell” of terrorists than Thomasville, North Carolina is. The police departments that make these requests should have to justify their application by citing severe local crime problems. Beyond that, I just don't think a police force needs any grenade launchers, bayonets, airplanes or combat knives in order to fight off any conceivable public threat. If ISIS comes to get us here in the US they will come one or two at a time and not as an army. There should be limits within the law on what types of weapons are allowed to be passed down to city police departments.