Insane Levels of Stress

With special guests:

• “Matthew”
  
• “Dave” and
• “Steve”.

In the wake of an appalling tragedy where a four year old girl was allegedly thrown off a bridge by her father, we talk with three fathers about the stresses in their lives. It surprised no long term observers that shortly afterwards the father was found and then arrested in the environs of Melbourne’s Family Court.

While vigilantes have called for the man’s blood, others have called for compassion and understanding. Disgracefully, some feminist commentators have attempted to use the incident in their ideological campaign against the commonsense notion of shared parenting.

While making no direct comment on the case itself - the father has now been charged with murder - we do look at the insane levels of stress that fathers are put under by our reviled family law system.

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The Perils of Ideology

Erin Pizzey

With special guests:

• Erin Pizzey
• Mark Sutton and
• Susan E. Block.

In May 2007 Dads on the Air interviewed the founder of the world’s first refuge for battered women, Erin Pizzey. This interview was circulated far and wide, making it one of the most publicised broadcasts in DOTA’s history. As the Australian Government has recently been raising the issue of domestic violence from a one-sided ideological perspective, including the establishment of the National Council to Prevent Violence Against Women and Children, we thought it would be timely to re-broadcast the Erin Pizzey interview to try and bring some balance and rationality to the domestic violence debate.

Also on today’s program we feature another wonderful contribution by Mark Sutton from Liberal Arts Radio in the US. Alec Baldwin took a lot of heat after an angry voicemail to his daughter was leaked back in 2007. In his recently released book about Parental Alienation, A Promise to Ourselves, he confides that he was suicidal after the voicemail incident. Susan E. Block, a family law attorney and the former Administrative Judge of the Family Court of St. Louis County, looks at the problems facing non-custodial parents as well as new solutions that are being implemented in the US state of Missouri. More at www.liberalartsradio.com.

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Get Off the Bench

With special guests:

• Bob Norton
• Larry Holland
• Peter Van de Voorde
• Mark Sutton and
• Angelo Lobo.

This week on Dads on the Air we present excerpts from two popular US radio programs that deal with men’s and fathers’ issues. First up, Dads on the Air recently joined the discussion on popular weekly American radio program Get Off The Bench. Our own Peter van de Voorde together with the co-hosts of the program, Bob Norton and Larry Holland, discuss many of the Family Law issues that are presently faced in so many countries around the world.

This is followed by an excellent interview with filmmaker Angelo Lobo on Liberal Arts Radio. Liberal Arts is a radio show that explores the arts from an unapologetically political perspective. Host Mark Sutton (NPR, Air America, XM Satellite Radio) is joined by politically-opinionated guests from the world of music, art, political cartoons, film and more. The Family Court system is on trial in Angelo Lobo’s documentary film Support System Down, which looks at ways in which people have been trapped in divorce proceeding that can last for years, cost into the millions of dollars, and separate parents from kids.

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Propaganda

With special guests:

• Robert Belcher
• Geoffrey Greene and
• Sue Price.

The widespread use of propaganda by governments in the climate change debate to convince a naive population to accept yet more taxes and yet more government control has many corollaries with the taxpayer-funded war on fathers. Which is why Dads On The Air has paid particular attention to the debate.

Robert Belcher is the founder of Sustainable Agricultural Communities Australia. He is one of the few voices speaking out against the Rudd government’s plans to literally change the entire rural landscape of Australia by converting it to carbon sink forests, using generous tax concessions to promote this change.

With the Rudd government rapidly moving to overthrow even the extremely modest family law reforms of the Howard government, it is even more essential to understand how the government has essentially killed a social movement, by marginalising them, ridiculing them and failing to fund them. And by the incessant use of propaganda.

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European Update

With special guests:

• John Forsyth and
  
• Jiri Fiala.

John Forsyth is a journalist based in Scotland who worked for the BBC in London for 10 years before returning to Scotland to become Political Editor of Scotland on Sunday newspaper. He has recently resumed freelancing for newspapers. John has taken some interest in the Scottish Government’s persistence with a gender-based analysis of domestic abuse to provide 10s of millions of pounds in funding for support groups for female victims of domestic abuse and violence and zero for males in the same situation. The latest 2007-8 domestic abuse statistics were published recently with a government press release saying police reports of domestic abuse had gone up 2%. Somehow they managed to gloss over the fact that police reports of women as victims of men had fallen while incidents of males on the receiving end had gone up by 12%, as they have in each of the last 8 years.

Jiri Fiala is the founder and director of the Czech Republics’ fathers group K213. Jiri has been desperately trying to obtain contact with his two children, which the Czech Courts will not support. After taking his case to the European Court of Human Rights, who incidentally ruled in his favour, the Czech Family Court still refuses to act upon the directions of the European Court of Human Rights, and will not enforce his legal contact with his children.

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Renovations Required

Dr James Cumes

With Special Guests:

• Rainer Sonnenberger and
• Dr James Cumes.

First up we are joined by Rainer Sonnenberger from Germany. Rainer is a member of the board of directors of the largest organization for fathers and childrens’ rights in Germany Vateraufbruch Fur Kinder.

Next we speak to James Cumes, renaissance man and author of, amongst other things, America’s Suicidal Statecraft. James was one of the few commentators to predict the current global economic crisis. We speak to him from Vienna where he explains some of the causes of the global predicament and offers some sensible solutions to resuscitate the Australian and global economies.

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Two Sides to Every Story

With Special Guests:

• James Adams
• Sue Price and
• Warwick Marsh.

There are two sides to every story, but when it comes to gender issues including domestic violence and shared parenting, the Australian public are only hearing one side.

Much of the Australian media has completely neglected to point out that there is a great deal of debate academic and otherwise over the massive taxpayer-funded domestic violence industry and its portrayal of men and fathers as abusers and women as victims.

The Labor Party has now been in power for a year, and the anti-father anti-male propaganda machine is in full swing. The public has been inundated with horror stories of evil men bashing women and how the extremely modest reforms by the previous government to dilute the extreme anti-father bias of our family law system are allegedly placing women and children in danger.

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Rites of Passage

Dr Arne Rubenstein

With Special Guests:

• Arne Rubenstein and
• Ruedi Oswald.

At the Men’s Advisory Network’s Second National Conference back in August, in Fremantle, we recorded Dr Arne Rubenstein’s inspiring keynote address titled Creating contemporary Rites of Passage and the Pathways to Manhood Program. Dr Rubenstein is the co-founder and CEO of the Pathways Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that runs the national award winning Pathways to Manhood Program in schools and communities around Australia. This program for teenage boys and their fathers is a contemporary Rite of Passage that aims to inspire the boys to have a vision and reach their potential.

Ruedi Oswald, is a licensed Swiss social worker who is going to give us an insight into what happens to separated fathers in Switzerland, and how easily they can be separated from their children once one parent is allotted sole custody by the legal system. We’re going to try and find out what differences there are in the way that separation and divorce are dealt with by the Swiss Family Justice System compared to what happens in the rest of the western democracies. While his wife, who is a doctor, lives in the family home and he hasn’t seen his 3 kids for 10 years, he is forced to live out of the back of a converted van. Ruedi is looking for support and can be reached at swiss.socialwork@web.de.

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What Lies in the Hearts of Men

With Special Guests:

• John Simpson
• Sue Price
• Warwick Marsh
• Greg Andresen
• Robert Gordon.

This week we covered a great deal of territory, from a fascinating interview with the creative director of a powerful new movie Men’s Group, to International Men’s Day to the debate which has erupted over the potential jailing of men who dare to get a DNA sample of their children without the mother’s permission.

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Save the Males

With Special Guests:

• Kathleen Parker and
  
• Peter Burns

Author Kathleen Parker has created a furore around the world with her new book Save The Males. Don’t miss this fascinating interview. So disenfranchised have men become, that only a woman can state the bleeding obvious, that the extreme sexism of gender feminism has done a great deal of harm to men, women, children, and society as a whole.

One person who knows all about the brutality of the modern state is Peter Burns, one of the leading members of the fathers’ rights movement in NZ, he hosts a very successful website http://dad4justice.blogspot.com/ where he dispenses a wealth of information from around the world to do with fatherhood issues.

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Child Support: The Bitter Harvest

Matt Miller

With Special Guests:

• Matt Miller
• Sue Price
• John Flanagan
• Phillip York.

Nothing makes separated dads more upset or more angry than the Child Support Agency, with its constant and brutal intrusions into their lives and its systemic stripping of their income and assets. While the government has built an enormous and ruthless bureaucratic empire around child support, and will pursue fathers literally to the grave for a few dollars, the same government does absolutely nothing to ensure that kids get to see their dads.

This government is now overseeing complex and confusing changes to the child support system which is meant to make it fairer, but in fact will see many if not most fathers paying more, while stripping them of their family allowance.

While he heads the country’s most despised and destructive institution - and has rapidly become the country’s most disliked bureaucrat - at least Matt Miller has had the gumption to come on and attempt to justify the changes. Also on the show this week are John Flanagan from the Fairness in Child Support group, Sue Price from the Men’s Rights Agency and Phillip York from Dads In Distress.

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Social Justice: Think Twice

With Special Guests:

• Angela Conway
• Toni McLean
• Richar’ Farr
• John Flanagan.

The Australian Family Association is campaigning against the proposed changes to NSW legislation that would remove the word ‘father’ from birth certificates and get rid of the term ‘paternity leave’. We are pleased to have their spokeswoman Angela Conway on the program. “We oppose the change, it is part of the national and international picture of eroding the traditional family and the concept of a natural parent,” she said. “The social science evidence is pointing us in the other direction; that natural parents, both mothers and fathers, are vital to their children.

We are also delighted to have domestic violence counsellor and expert Toni McLean on the show. She has had the courage and integrity to genuinely think outside the square when it comes to violent couples and the best way to promote healthy relationships. Together with supportive and experienced group facilitators, her Think Twice program offers a complete range of options for individuals and couples experiencing difficulty in their relationships from normal conflict through to all forms of abuse, as well as physical violence.

We close the show with the ever entertaining Richar’ Farr, a leading figurehead in the international fatherhood movement. He is the founder of KRights Radio and the nationally syndicated program The Message. Richar’ describes his new internet radio station as “a town hall meeting on radio.” He calls it Kids’ Rights Radio - KRights for short. The unique station began its unusual and compelling broadcast on Aug 1, 2004, and is now on the air 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

We also talk with John Flanagan about the upcoming Dads4Kids Rally at NSW Parliament House to protest the removal of the word ‘father’ from birth certificates.

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Women Who Speak Out For Men

Barbara KayWith Special Guests:

• Barbara Kay and
• Malia Blom.

Barbara Kay is a columnist for the National Post, Canada and the author of such courageous and widely-circulated male-friendly articles as On domestic violence, no one wants to hear the truth, The plight of divorced dads and The last white ribbon.

Malia Blom is executive director of the Boys and Schools program in the USA. Boys and Schools is dedicated to improving the lives and futures of boys. Their outreach efforts focus on raising public awareness regarding issues related to boys’ health and achievement. The Boys and Schools program is a project of the Men’s Health Network, a non-profit educational organization committed to improving the health and well-being of men and boys.

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The Woman Racket

With special guests:

• Steve Moxon and
• Sue Price.

Steve Moxon is the English author of a new book called “The Woman Racket - the new science explaining how the sexes relate at work, at play and in society”. Notwithstanding its provocative title, The Woman Racket is a serious scientific investigation into one of the key myths of our age - that women are oppressed by the “patriarchal” traditions of Western societies. Drawing on the latest developments in evolutionary psychology, Moxon finds that the opposite is true - men, or at least the majority of low-status males - have always been the victims of deep-rooted prejudice. As the prejudice is biologically derived, it is unconscious and can only be uncovered with the tools of scientific psychology. The book reveals this prejudice in fields as diverse as healthcare, employment, family policy and politics: compared to the long and bloody struggle for universal male suffrage, women were given the vote “in an historical blink of the eye”

Also Sue Price, from the Men’s Rights Agency joins us to talk about the new Child Support Agency scheme to go through old income tax records in an attempt to bring some additional pennies into its coffers.

Plus the 5th and final instalment of the radio drama Hero Joe, produced especially for Dads on the Air.

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The Best of 2007 - Part 2

With special guests:

• Dr Warren Farrell, famous social commentator and author of best selling books including Father and Child Reunion: How to Bring the Dads We Need to the Children We Love
• Dr. Amy J.L. Baker, US author of Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties that Bind. The world’s first study of child victims of Parental Alienation Syndrome
• Terry Hicks, a special father who loves his child unconditionally, and has dedicated his life to help protect his son, David Hicks from harm and appeals for “a fair go” for his child
• Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism and The War Against Boys interviewed at the Boys and the Boy Crisis conference in Washington DC
• Eric Burch, US serviceman and musician

Plus the Dads on the Air speech given at the Lone Fathers National Convention at Parliament House in Canberra in August 2007.

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The Best of 2007 - Part 1

With special guests:

• Sue Price: founder and spokesperson for the Men’s Rights Agency
• Dr Ludwig Lowenstein: world expert on Parental Alienation Syndrome
• Maggie Hamilton: author of What Men Don’t Talk About
• Andrew Denton: TV personality from many shows including Enough Rope
• Erin Pizzey: founder of the world’s first refuge for battered women
• Tony Coe: president of the UK’s Equal Parenting Council
• Ann Bressington: outspoken South Australian MP, who is calling for better Child Protection
• Mark Harris and Jolly Stansby: Fathers4Justice UK activists. Mark is also the author of Family Court Hell
• Jim Bailey: New Zealand father’s activist.

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Family Court Hell

With special guests:

• Mark Harris, jailed for waving at his daughters as they drove past in the family car, and author of a new book Family Court Hell, a rare insight into the closed British family court system
• Jolly Stansby, activist from the UK’s Fathers 4 Justice, most famous for dressing up as a superhero and scaling public buildings to bring awareness to the injustice in the British family courts. Jolly was most recently arrested in the USA for scaling the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC
• Damon (not his real name), an Aussie dad who has been fortunate enough to receive 50-50 shared care of his children
• Ted Donnelly, from Lane Cove Community Men’s Shed talking about the 2nd National Community Men’s Sheds Conference.

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Dissident Voices

Christina Hoff Sommers

With special guests:

• Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism and The War Against Boys interviewed at the Boys and the Boy Crisis conference in Washington DC
• Independent MP Ann Bressington from South Australia who is calling on the Federal Government to take action to protect children from being caught in the middle of divorce and separation disputes
• The Hon Philip Ruddock MP, Australia’s Attorney General, answering questions from dads at the recent Lone Fathers National Conference in Canberra.

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New Zealand Special

With special guests:

• Celia Lashlie, author, He’ll Be Okay: Growing Gorgeous Boys into Good Men
• Jim Bailey, outspoken critic of the government-promoted mistreatment of fathers at the hands of the judiciary and the bureacracy
• Jim Bagnall, chairman of the Separated Fathers Support Network

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