Media Release

International Men's Day - 19th November 2008

International Men's Day will have its inaugural celebration in Australia on 19th November 2008.

Russian President, Mikhail Gorbachev, first called for an international day to celebrate men in 1999 at the United Nations in Vienna. International Men's Day is celebrated on many different dates around the world with varying degrees of success.

To help standardize International Men's Day and increase its success the Indian 'Save the Family Foundation' launched an international campaign and called for the celebration of International Men's Day on 19th November along with Pakistan, Trinidad and Tabago.

Australia is joining with India, which has the second largest male population in the world, to call other countries around the world to make 19th November 2008 a day to honour men for the contribution they make to their family, friends, work, community and nation.

Via email: JPMorgan Chase is a major contributor to the Family Place the sponsor of the DART bus ads. Please send an email to elaine.agather-at-jpmorganchase.com and ask that she ask the Family Place and DART to remove these offensive ads immediately. Hitting the sponsors of an organization is a great way to get their attention. Elaine will be back to read her emails by Thursday I am told.

--Paul Clements, US Activist

--------------

From http://www.familyplace.org/Page.aspx?pid=246:

Our Partners

JPMorgan Chase

Chase, the presenting sponsor of The Family Place Partners Card 2007, is a leading corporate citizen in Dallas, building long-term partnerships with nonprofit organizations whose success is vital to the prosperity of our communities. Each year, Chase provides financial resources, technical assistance, investments and loans, and volunteer support to a broad range of organizations in three key areas: community asset development, youth education, and arts and culture.

Story here. Excerpt:

'Love is blind — at least in the case of a wealthy Irish businessman who today pleaded with a judge not to jail his partner when she was sentenced to six years for hiring a hitman to kill him and his two sons.

Sharon Collins used the pseudonym “Lying Eyes” when she contracted a Las Vegas poker dealer to kill her partner PJ Howard, a property tycoon, and his sons Robert and Niall.

But in a bizarre twist during today’s sentencing in Dublin's Central Criminal Court, Mr Howard appealed for the judge to spare Collins, a 45-year-old divorcee with two children from a previous relationship, declaring: "I will not give up on Sharon".'

Article here. Betrays the "men tend to be less hygienic than women" stereotype, yes? Won't see this on JunkScience, er, I mean, LiveScience, any time soon. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON – Wash your hands, folks, especially you ladies. A new study found that women have a greater variety of bacteria on their hands than men do. And everybody has more types of bacteria than the researchers expected to find.

"One thing that really is astonishing is the variability between individuals, and also between hands on the same individual," said University of Colorado biochemistry assistant professor Rob Knight, a co-author of the paper.

"The sheer number of bacteria species detected on the hands of the study participants was a big surprise, and so was the greater diversity of bacteria we found on the hands of women," added lead researcher Noah Fierer, an assistant professor in Colorado's department of ecology and evolutionary biology.'

An analysis[1] of the data in the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services "Child Maltreatment" reports from 2001-2006, shows that:

• 70.8% of children killed by one parent are killed by their mothers
• 70.6% of children abused by one parent are abused by their mothers
• 60% of the victims are boys

This week Glenn Sacks [2] and Ned Holstein [3] notified the public that for the month of October, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) has plastered billboards all over its buses, promoting the falsehood that only men ever commit domestic violence.

The misandry in DART's campaign is so blatant that it distracts attention from this even more offensive fact:

Article here. Excerpt:

'But a new analysis shows that they are poised to become the dominant force in the workplace over the next decade, paving the way for a dramatic feminisation of society.
...
Dr Mark Batey, of Manchester Business School, said: "Women are going to be dominant in the professions over the next decade. They will begin to hold far more positions of power in the workplace.

"Employers realise that women are more suited to the modern workplace, where the emphasis is on the qualities of team-work, leadership skills, communication and emotional intelligence in which they excel – rather than the intellectual ability or physical strength on which men have relied. Already employers, such as law firms, are struggling to find good male candidates for vacancies because women are not only getting better academic qualifications, they have a better range of skills."'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A woman who helped send her former partner to prison for 10 months after lying in court has escaped with 50 hours community service.

Marion Anne Carter, 61, was sentenced in Hamilton last week after earlier pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice.

Her lies under oath helped convict Robert "Bob" Sutton of
two rapes, four assaults with a weapon and nine assaults on a number of people that saw him jailed in November 2005.'

Entry here. You don't need to register for an account to submit a comment. Comments appear right away, there's no moderation. Excerpt:

'Well it should come as no surprise to anyone that Mr.Sacks (I won't link to him) is continuing on with his misogynistic attacks against women. In his teeny little world, it is all about the penis, and if you don't have one your story does not deserve to be told. We certainly cannot have a world where women speak out against the violence and the oppression that they face at the hands of men, that would be far to threatening to patriarchy.

The Family Place domestic shelter paid $25,000 for 45 bus-side ads and 300 bus interior ads to appear on DART, the Dallas transit system. Sacks and his minions have declared these ads offensive to men and fathers. They have started a campaign to get the ads taken down.'

Story here. "Remember Winston, it isn't what your eyes tell you. It's what The Party tells you." Excerpt:

'NEW YORK – Paula Radcliffe defended her title at the New York City Marathon on Sunday to become the second woman to win the race three times.

Marilson Gomes dos Santos of Brazil won the men's race for the second time in three years, passing Abderrahim Goumri of Morocco with about a mile to go.
...
Unlike Radcliffe's tight victories in 2004 and '07, the world record holder from Great Britain pulled away from Ludmila Petrova in the 22nd mile to win comfortably in two hours, 23 minutes, 56 seconds.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Fathers-4-Justice members from Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia rallied in front of Heinz Stadium this past Sunday, October 26. Members felt a football stadium on a Sunday afternoon would be the perfect place to find dads and increase public awareness. The rally was a tremendous success. Members, armed with flyers, signs and flags, walked through the public parking lots and along the sidewalks talking to people about equal parenting. “People were running after us to get our information, one guy chased me, when he caught up to me, he said he has been fighting the family court system for almost 24 years. He thanked me for being there and spreading our message. He asked for some information to give to all of his friends in the same situation, I gave him a stack of flyers, and off he went to distribute them. That was a great moment.” Brian Holladay, a National Boardmember for Fathers-4-Justice, said.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'IOWA CITY, Iowa — The mother of a toddler who was found dead after being reported missing by his father was charged with the boy's murder.

Michelle Kehoe, 35, was charged Thursday with first-degree murder in the death of 2-year-old Seth Kehoe. Buchanan County Attorney Allan VanderHart said she also faces charges of attempted murder and child endangerment resulting in serious injury for attacking her 7-year-old son, Sean.

Eugene Kehoe reported his wife and children missing Sunday night. They left their Coralville home to visit relatives earlier in the day and were found Monday when Michelle Kehoe walked into a home in Littleton and said the children were in danger, investigators had said.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'MANASSAS, Va. — An 18-year-old Manassas woman has pleaded guilty to arranging with her mother to have her father killed.

Jessenia Blasini pleaded guilty in Prince William County Circuit Court on Thursday to conspiracy to commit capital murder, solicitation to commit capital murder and malicious wounding.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'A quietly spoken father of three, he finds that his life rarely gets more exciting than his weekly game of golf. But when he called the social workers as requested, he was confronted with a series of astonishing facts.

They said he was the father of another child - a five-year-old son from a previous, short-lived relationship. A former girlfriend, unable to cope with the demands of motherhood, had handed the boy over to foster parents.

A meeting with this new-found son was out of the question, he was told, let alone any sort of relationship. He was also informed that the boy was to be formally adopted and that the council was ringing merely to let him know.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Police descended on the Petrides School yesterday after a student there claimed she'd been taken to the basement and raped by four men in costumes -- but the account was a fabrication, she later admitted to cops.

Parents were panicked and rumors flew through the Sunnyside complex after the 13-year-old reported she'd been raped at about 12:45 p.m. She was taken to Staten Island University Hospital, Ocean Breeze, and later confessed that she'd concocted the whole thing, police said.
...
Police said that as of last night, the girl had not been charged with any crime.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Amanda Knox, the American student accused of murdering Meredith Kercher, her British flatmate, claims she regrets having lied in police interviews to incriminate an innocent man.

Ms Knox, 21, said she was "afraid" but believes she will be acquitted in the end. On Tuesday Paoli Micheli, the pre-trial judge, ordered both her and Raffaele Sollecito, her former Italian boyfriend, to stand trial on December 4 on charges of murder, sexual assault and theft.
...
Ms Knox said she regretted she could not vote in the US election. "Oh, I'd really like that" she was quoted as saying. "I'm a good American girl and I feel it is my duty to vote."...